Holly Holm Auto Relic

A while back I was searching for a UFC Panini Kaboom! card to add to my collection. I wasn't feeling too particular about which fighter was featured on the card, but I certainly have favorites and fighters I don't care as much for. The prices on Kaboom!s are pretty high, so I wound up passing (for the moment), but while looking at Holly Holm Kaboom! cards I realized that some of her autographs are pretty reasonably priced. This led to a couple of bids, and eventually to an auction win on this 2022 Immaculate Collection autographed memorabilia card. I liked this card because of the decent 2-color relic swatch and the on-card autograph.

Today my boss let us know he'd taken another job and will be leaving in the next couple of months. Another coworker also announced that she is moving to be closer to family and will be quitting if she can't get approved for remote work. That's a lot of change for me, and not particularly good change. I have a good boss right now, and I like that other coworker a lot more than many coworkers I've had. We have a pretty nice vibe in the office, and even hang out and go hunting together outside of work. All good things come to an end, though, and I suppose work situations are one of those things that are prone to shifting. The people who are left will probably be fine and band together to get through the transition, but we'll add people to replace the outgoing folks and that could go any which way. It's hard to imagine that things will get better than they already were.

A Blaster Box of 2023 Topps Stadium Club

I found myself at Fred Meyer yesterday, and decided to look for the trading card section. It was an unfamiliar store, so it took me some time to locate the cards. Once I found them, I noticed that Stadium Club was on offer. Since that's the hot new thing on social media right now, I grabbed a blaster from the row to try it out for myself.

Ronald Acuña Jr. had a pretty good season last year, and gets to be on the cover of the Stadium Club box.

Things start out pretty well for an Astros fan, with the box topper Master Photo featuring Yordan Alvarez, one of the best hitters in the game today. I'm no internet sleuth, but it looks like Yordan has just hit something big in this photo.

Here are some of my favorite base cards from the box. Altuve is probably the best of the bunch for me, but Barry Larkin's card features dogs!!! I picked Dennis Eckersley for his mustache and Mike Trout because he's Mike Trout. I saw him play live last year in Colorado, when the Angels hung 25 runs on the Rockies.

There's me in Denver, watching a baseball game. I'd driven to Denver for a concert, but decided to see if the Rockies were playing at the last minute and wound up getting to see Mike Trout and Shohei Ohtani play live. Pretty cool stuff.

Here are a couple of horizontal shots, with the great Ichiro's batting stance and a celebration shot of Michael Harris II.

I pulled a Black Foil parallel of Robbie Ray, and three Red Foil parallels. I especially like the Dave Winfield and Joe Morgan cards in this batch.

I believe the Sepia parallels are retail-exclusive. This Andre Dawson photo seems to be a favorite photo among collectors on Twitter/X, so I was happy to pull an example of it from this box.

Among the inserts in the box I pulled a couple of sluggers in Aaron Judge and Yordan Alvarez. I'm always happy to get another Yordan for the collection, and even though Judge plays for the Yankees I don't mind pulling his cards. 2023 was kind of a down year for Judge, but I bet most players wish a down year for them included an All-Star appearance and 4.5 WAR.

The final insert of the box was this die-cut Cal Ripken Jr. Triumvirates card. My cousin collected Cal when we were kids, so I always enjoy pulling a nice Ripken card for my collection. It takes me back to the good parts of my teen years, which were few and far between.

An Addition to the Wally Moon Master Set

One project that's received a little energy from me lately is my Wally Moon PSA Master Set, which is basically all of his card appearances from his career, encased in PSA graded holders. I already have his Basic Set, which is just a run of Topps base cards from his career. The Master Set adds other card appearances, team issues, stamps, things like pins and buttons, and food issues.

I am not worrying too much about condition for this collection, as higher grades on vintage cards command more money than I'm willing to shell out for this project. A PSA 5, like this 1962 Topps NL Batting Leaders card, is just fine by me. Especially for a card that features Roberto Clemente. Some of the tougher cards to get in this run are tough because Wally Moon shares them with another player, like Roberto Clemente or Brooks Robinson. I'd imagine those players have more competition than my Wally Moon project does. I currently hold the #1 Wally Moon Master Set in the PSA registry, mostly because no one else is chasing it. According to my checklist, I still need 12/36 items to complete the run, along with 2 items I have that need to be sent in for grading.

A Blaster Box of 2022 Upper Deck AEW Allure

I found myself at Walmart this afternoon, and decided to check out the card aisle. There wasn't much there outside of some Prizm football. I guess I could have bought that and chased a C.J. Stroud card like everyone else on social media, but I just can't get into football. They also had some 2023 Topps Series 1 Baseball that was discounted, and some 2022 Upper Deck AEW Allure wrestling cards. Since I hadn't opened Allure before I decided to go with that, even though historically Upper Deck products have been low bang/buck for me.

I knew absolutely nothing about Allure going into this and very little about AEW, so I guess we'll learn as we go along. I recognize two of the three wrestlers on the packaging, MJF and Toni Storm. Apparently the guy in the middle is called Powerhouse Hobbs.

The base cards are kinda Chromey/Prizmy. Interestingly enough, I think the only person in this group that I follow on social media is the referee, Aubrey Edwards. I recognize everyone else, though.

I think the horizontal cards are short-printed slightly. I got one per pack. Bryan Danielson and MJF were the biggest names of the bunch.

One of the common parallels is called "Tables" and features a woodgrain background. I recognize Skye Blue's name, but I couldn't say much beyond that about her. Athena is someone whose cards I collect already, although I know her better as Ember Moon from her time with the WWE.

This Ricky Starks card is a Red Rainbow parallel, which apparently falls 1:12 packs. I don't think I've ever heard of Ricky Starks. The card is pretty shiny, though.

This Jade Cargill Horizontal Black Rainbow parallel is probably the hit of the break, combining a big name with 1:24 pack odds on the parallel. She recently switched from AEW to WWE, and apparently is married to former MLB player Brandon Phillips.

For inserts I got a couple of die-cut cards, including this wavy Title Ambitions card of Jamie Hayter, another name I recognize but don't know a whole lot about. I could regurgitate her Wikipedia page here, but I will not.

The other die-cut insert in the blaster was this My Squad card featuring faction The Firm. They look like a serious bunch of dudes. I don't really follow AEW outside of headlines and the occasional wrestler whose name I recognize, so I can't tell you much about The Firm.

The final card I'll show is yet another appearance by Bryan Danielson, this time on a Color Flow Red-Orange insert. The Red-Orange cards are the most common Color Flow variation, falling 1:8 packs. It's a nice shiny card, and I reckon it's the 2nd-best pull of the break.

So that's 2022 Upper Deck Allure AEW. I pulled more recognizable names than I thought I would, and got a decent parallel and insert card. I don't know that I'd bust another box of this at the $30 price, but it was fun to do it once.

Joining the #Drumline

I'd forgotten how hard it is sometimes to churn out a blog post every day or two. For several years of my life it was a regular thing, but I lost the habit and am struggling to keep the mojo going here upon my return. That was one draw that pulled me into Twitter/X during my blogging hiatus, as you could just snap a pic, throw out a sentence or two, and post away. I never really gained much traction on Twitter/X, though, as my content probably wasn't focused or frequent enough to grab an audience. I wouldn't say I have a huge blog audience either, even during my most productive blogging years, but there are a few folks who stuck around and read what I have to say. Recently my blog even got a shoutout on a Facebook group as a good reference for Japanese women's wrestling cards. I don't know where I'm going with all of this, except to say that it's hard to churn out content no matter the platform, and that it's hard to get a following unless you are focused and charismatic in ways that I am not.

Recently on Twitter/X, a user by the name of @crackthepacks started a movement called the Drumline, which is basically a club of people who own Star Wars autograph cards of Murphy Patrick Martin as a drummer. He shows up in a few products, and I grabbed this base autograph from him so that I could join the #Drumline. It's kind of fun, and @crackthepacks does giveaways and shoutouts to #Drumline members from time to time.

Demand from the #Drumline started driving the prices of Murphy Patrick Martin autographs up to the point that some people couldn't participate, so the group that heads up the #Drumline decided to grant membership to people who own autographs of Allan Graf as the Bartender. I also picked up one of those in order to attain dual membership in the #Drumline.

Anyone who is so inclined can join the #Drumline by obtaining a Drummer or Bartender autograph from a Star Wars product and posting about it on Twitter/X with the #Drumline tag. Eventually @crackthepacks will notice your post, welcome you to the #Drumline, invite you to the special group chat, and add you to the official spreadsheet. Very prestigious stuff.

Highlights from 3 Boxes of 2023 Topps Holiday Baseball

I don't feel much like posting tonight, but I don't want to lose steam on this blogging thing before I even really get restarted. I've been thinking today about my hobby goals moving forward, trying to find a direction before I let the wind take me too far off course. Kind of surprising to me, the most compelling projects on my mind involve vintage cards, such as completing my Wally Moon master set and building the rest of my Allen & Ginter Prize & Game Chickens set. I haven't thought of a lot that I'd like to accomplish with current products. I think the prices on current wax have got me a little down on modern cards at the moment. There are still fun products to be had, though, like my annual dive into the Topps Holiday Baseball set, which takes a stars and rookies approach to the current year's Topps design and adds snowflakes. I acquired 3 boxes of it to open. Here are the highlights. 

The Metallic Snowflake parallels fall about 5 per box. These were 6 of my best pulls from the lot. Nothing really notable as far as my collecting interests go, but I guess that's what you get when you bust packs sometimes.

These were the best of the holiday photo variation cards I pulled. Again, nothing too astounding. I think my favorite of the bunch is Bobby Witt Jr in a Santa hat. I recall him absolutely killing the Astros in a late-season series that they needed to win last year. Or at least in one of the games I watched it seemed like he was hurting them every time he was involved in a play.

It seems that 99% of the time you pull a base relic as the promised hit in these boxes. I'm not too concerned about the hits in this product, as I mostly enjoy collating the set each year. I did pull a Santa hat relic one year, which is the best hit I've gotten out of Holiday across at least 30-40 boxes over the years. If I recall correctly, it was a Kris Bryant card numbered /25. Arguably the hit of this break is the Gunnar Henderson relic card. The Orioles made some noise last year and might be on the upswing while some of the other AL East teams flounder a bit. Maybe. I'm no baseball analyst.

Plenty of duplication among the base cards mean I am far from a base set still, which is my primary goal when it comes to Topps Holiday. Luckily the boxes are relatively cheap and often plentiful, so I may be able to fill this checklist out before too long. If I were more ambitious I'd chase a Metallic Snowflake parallel set as a challenge, but that's probably a step too far for what is essentially a gimmick winter release.

A Box of 2022 Panini Revolution WNBA

As part of an order I made from Blowout Cards a few months ago, I picked up a box of 2022 Panini Revolution WNBA. It's pretty rare for a Revolution box to guarantee an autograph, but that was the case with this one. It turned out to be just about a perfect box for my collection, which is pretty rare when busting wax. 

I pulled 2 cards of retired Point Guard Ticha Penicheiro, who is the subject of my longest-standing WNBA player collection. One of them is an Astro parallel of her base card in the set, and the other is her Vortex insert. I've always been drawn to players who do secondary things well, so rather than scorers I'm drawn to the assisters, rebounders, and shot blockers. For a while Penicheiro was the all-time WNBA assists leader, but she has since been passed by Sue Bird and Courtney Vandersloot. I am not super active about chasing her cards down, but I grab them every so often when a new set comes out.

I pulled 3 numbered cards from the box, which feels like quite a few from a Revolution break. Maybe WNBA wasn't printed in very high numbers. The Diamond DeShields Impact parallel is numbered /149. She is the sister of former MLB player Delino DeShields Jr. and the daughter of former MLB player Delino DeShields. Her mom was also an All-American college heptathlete, so a lot of athletic prowess in her family. The Cheyenne Parker card is an /99 Cosmic parallel, and the Kelsey Mitchell card is an /75 Sunburst card.

The hit of the break was this Sabrina Ionescu autograph. This is about the best base auto you could pull from these boxes, so I was pretty stoked to get it. I also have a small Ionescu collection, partly because she is a big star and partly because of her Romanian heritage. One of my earliest basketball player collections was Gheorghe Muresan, another Romanian. My dad's wife is Romanian, and they currently live in Romania. I visited there in 2021 to see some sights and hunt with my dad, so I feel a bit of a connection to Romania.

Here's a picture of me at Bran Castle, the traditional Transylvanian home of Count Dracula. They kind of downplay the vampire theme during the tour of the actual castle, focusing more on historical facts and other royalty that called the castle home, but the Dracula merch is on full display in the gift shop.

Caitlin Clark Instant Collection

I mentioned a couple of posts ago that I was accumulating a stack of Caitlin Clark cards for a small player collection. So far everything I've picked up comes from Topps' Bowman U Now line of cards, a print-to-demand set that focuses on the exploits of college stars.

I've bought a few direct from Topps during the ordering windows, and a few from eBay resellers who buy in bulk hoping for parallels and offload the base cards at a slight discount.

My current boss grew up in Iowa, and says that the whole state is pretty caught up in Clark's career to date. I reckon that with the print runs on these being what they are I won't be making any money on my collection, but profit has never really been my driving force when it comes to collecting. A card that enters my collection rarely leaves it. My collection really is a story about my life, but unfortunately it's a story my family won't appreciate when I'm dead and gone, because they won't be able to read it. Hopefully my blog will be there still for them to read and put some of the pieces together if they want to. I'm not planning on going away anytime soon, but I sometimes contemplate what will happen to the stacks of 5000-count boxes in the shed when the time comes. It's a valuable collection and a record of my life and interests, but it won't likely be worth the labor of sorting through it all and disposing of it for money.

That took a dark turn for a second there. I imagine it's something many collectors think about from time to time, as our collections grow larger and we get a little older. Another thing I've been contemplating recently is what my next hobby project should be. I have been feeling a little directionless lately. A lot of the projects I used to work on each year have run out of my price range, and I don't want to work on projects that just require me to throw money at them. I'd maybe like to build a set the old-fashioned way, through busting packs and collating the cards myself. The problem is picking a set that is compelling enough for me to chase it, and cheap enough to be worth the hassle. I haven't come up with a solution yet. I had some fun sorting some Donruss Racing cards today. That would be an option, but I'd want to wait for boxes to go on sale at one of the big online retailers before I committed to that. Another option might be to wait for Topps Heritage this year and try to put that one together. Something to think about, I guess.

Another Addition to the Jamie Moyer PC

Just a one-card post today, as I am tired and have to get up extra early tomorrow. We've had a bunch of snow over the last little bit, like much of the US, and I've mostly been working from home during the storms. My wife's car can't make it up the lane in it's current state, so that means I have to get up early to get her and the kids to school (she works as a teacher in the school our kids attend). Today a neighbor, the UPS truck, and the Amazon driver all got stuck on the hill that serves as the driveway for our neighborhood. My truck got up and down it okay with snow tires and 4WD, but it's pretty sketchy. I guess things could be worse, but I'd prefer for the snow and cold to move along.

I mentioned a few days ago that I had sought out a few rarer cards for my Jamie Moyer player collection. This time I snagged an autograph from 2005 Donruss Diamond Kings. I assume it's the Bronze variation based on a cursory look at the Trading Card Database, but there are so many variations with different serial numbers that it would be difficult for me to know for sure. Either way, this one is limited to 50 copies. It's not in great condition and I definitely overpaid for it, but now I have an autograph for the Jamie Moyer PC. I'm not looking to get all of his cards, but I'd like to have a few nice ones in the collection. This one fits the bill as far as I'm concerned.

 

2 Rack Packs of 2023-24 Panini Hoops

I had to go to Walmart a couple of days ago, and I went to the card section kinda hoping to find some Topps Holiday Baseball cards. They didn't have those, and they really didn't have much of anything, but I settled on a couple of rack packs of 2023-24 Panini Hoops NBA cards. Busting these packs helped mostly to showcase how out of touch I am with the NBA currently, as most of the names I recognized are guys who've been in the league for many years.

Zion Williamson seems to me like a new guy, but he's been in the NBA since 2019. I don't know if he's still a star, as the headlines I read made it sound like he's spent a lot of time injured and/or overweight. I'm not the guy to ask if that's all true. Kevin Durant has been around a while, but I always forget he was traded to the Suns after the big Nets implosion, which even an outside guy like me could have told you would happen.

I tend to be a fan of the big men on the court, and Nikola Jokić fits that bill, a center averaging nearly a triple-double over the last couple of years. My favorite card from the packs was probably that Shaquille O'Neal base card, featuring one of the most dominant big men of all time, and certainly one of the most marketable.

I pulled several rookies in the packs, which appear to come in two different styles. I'm not sure what the difference between the styles is, but in the end I guess it means plenty of rookies for everyone. I vaguely recognize Scoot Henderson's name, but I couldn't tell you anything about him. The rest of these guys I have no clue about. I was about to complain about the reused photo on the Ausar Thompson cards, but I just realized the photos are slightly different from each other, with his arms at slightly different angles.

Ausar Thompson's similar pose comes back for a third time in the break on this insert. All of the inserts I pulled have a travel theme to them, with Thompson's card featuring a boarding pass and the three Skyview cards showing the players leaping out of clouds outside of an airplane window.

I pulled two Purple parallels and two Teal Explosion parallels. I think the Teal Explosion parallels are exclusive to these rack packs. Draymond Green recently returned from a(nother) suspension for misconduct on the court. It was an indefinite suspension that ended after 16 games, and I'm sure he has learned his lesson and reformed, and will be a model player on the court from here on out. Derrick Rose was on track to be a star for the Bulls, but got derailed by an ACL injury and, to his credit, has hung around the NBA for many years since. Apparently he's with the Grizzlies this year. I recognize Bojan Bogdanovic and Aaron WIggins by name, but I don't know a single other thing about them.

Why did I buy basketball cards if I don't really follow the NBA anymore? I don't know. I guess I was just really jonesing for some new cards, and figured a 2023-24 product might have the latest rookie star, Victor Wembanyama, in it. Part curiosity, part lotto ticket.

Highlights from a Box of 2022 Panini Revolution WWE

A while back I ordered a few boxes from Blowout along with my annual Hobby set of Topps baseball cards. One of those boxes was 2022 Panini Revolution WWE, which I believe was the first year that Panini did a Revolution set for the WWE brand. It's a rather shiny and colorful set, kind of like Topps Tek on cardboard instead of acetate. Parallels are distinguished by different patterns in the holofoil. I don't have a solid solution for scanning cards at the moment, and the lighting in my house is bad for photos, so I only took pictures of the two numbered cards in the box. Maybe if I get super motivated while writing this post I will take a few more pictures.

The first parallel is an Angular card of Japanese crossover star Asuka. This variation is /199. The Bret "Hit Man" Hart card is the hit of the break, being a Lava parallel /10. Most of the time Revolution boxes don't guarantee a hit, and I think the big chase is for the various limited parallels, such as Galactic and Lava cards of big stars.

The base design features a speckled motif in the holofoil. Shown here is Meiko Satomura in the basic design and Andre the Giant from the Legends subset. The set has a pretty robust Legends checklist, which I feel is a positive, as much of wrestling fandom is built on nostalgia for the stars of your youth.

Here are a couple more parallels, these of the unnumbered variety. Cactus Jack is a Fractal variation, while Kevin Owens appears on a Groove parallel.

The Liftoff! insert set features the high flyers, like Rey Mysterio, and features a die-cut design that defies you to try putting it into a penny sleeve, a card page, or in a neat stack with conventional rectangular cardboard.

A couple more inserts are Supernova and Vortex, illustrated here by real-life couple Seth Rollins and Becky Lynch. There is one more insert called Shockwave that I didn't take a picture of. Most of the inserts have a selection of parallels available as well, but I didn't pull any of them. With just a handful of inserts per box, it would be quite an undertaking to build a master set of base + inserts, even without considering the parallels.