One of the biggest card days of the year for me is the day I get my first BBM True Heart Japanese Women's Wrestling cards. The product usually releases in the early part of the year, and it is torturous to wait for my shipment to arrive from across the ocean. Anyone whose hobby shop or big box store stocks Topps Series 1 late will be familiar with the feeling. For whatever reason, the USPS site said my cards were supposed to be delivered on Sunday, but that didn't happen. They delivered a couple of Amazon packages on Sunday, but not my cards. Usually someone has to sign for packages from Japan, so me or my wife has to be around when the mail comes. I pestered my wife to keep an eye out because I had to work the weekend, but the Amazon packages were all that showed up.
I didn't have work on Monday, so I woke up and set up camp on the couch to wait for the mail carrier. Our mail is almost always delivered before noon, usually by 10:30, so I made sure to be downstairs by about 9:00. Then I waited. And waited. Ten o'clock rolled past. I played on the XBox for a while, as the morning rolled into the afternoon. I kept losing races because I'd pause the game and look out the window every time I heard a sound. I paced around. My wife left to volunteer at our twins' Valentine's Day party at school. I decided that it was too late to still be in my pajamas, so I changed into some real clothes. I wouldn't want the mail carrier to think I was some kind of crazy person who sits around all day, waiting for the mail.
I was tired of playing XBox, so I took out the trash. I checked the mailbox, just to be sure. I went back into the house and looked out the window. I went upstairs and checked some other tracking numbers that showed as 'Out for Delivery' at around 8:00 in the morning. The afternoon school bus went by at around 4:00. My wife and the kids came home from the school around 4:30. I asked my wife if she'd seen the mail truck on the way through the neighborhood. She hadn't. My kids told me about their school day. I did some dishes. I opened the front door and saw a package on the step. It was my cards. They hadn't knocked or anything. After gathering the mail, I checked the tracking on the USPS site. It showed that I had signed for the package at 5:31 PM. They must have signed it for me, seeing that the route was running about 7 hours late.
I'll post my annual review of the product soon(ish). I didn't pull much in the way of wrestlers I collect, but I've got some of those cards coming from elsewhere. Although I am a little irritated that the post office signed my name for me, I am happy that they didn't just leave a delivery attempt notice and take my cards back to the office. Waiting another day would have been the end of me.
The cards in this post probably came from eBay. I saw that Takeya Mizugaki had a pretty cool signature, so I set out to get an autograph of his. I wound up with two, one from 2010 Leaf MMA and one from 2015 Topps UFC Champions. I'm not complaining about that.
The Michelle Waterson cards are Silver and Gold parallels from 2016 Topps UFC Knockout. There is an eBay seller who lists cards of the fighters who are fighting in each UFC event, so I probably got these a little while back when Waterson and Paige VanZant fought. I guess Mizugaki was on that fight card, too, so these probably came from the same place. The Silver is # 131 / 227 and the Gold is # 86 / 99.
Cat Zingano didn't fight on that card, so I am not sure why her card ended up here. Sometimes my stacks get a little disorderly before I scan them, so there is some mixing of lots, especially when it comes to my UFC collection. This card is a Black parallel from 2015 Topps UFC Champions, numbered # 115 / 188.
I'm a little disappointed in myself for wasting basically an entire day waiting for the mail to come, but I did get a few things done and I managed to get some recreation in. It was mostly wasted time, though. I don't think I've ever actually seen this music video before, but I listened to the album about a million times back when it came out. I'm a pretty big Kings of Leon fan, I guess.
