Some WWE Hits and a Bonus from Puro Central Shop

Yesterday was a pretty good day for me. We finished up our work for the Federal fiscal year-end on Friday, so Saturday was my first day off in quite some time. In the afternoon I headed into Boise for a WWE book signing by Charlotte Flair, who was at the Barnes & Noble store autographing copies of 'Second Nature.' I had picked up my book and wristband on Friday, but once I got in line I saw that she was allowing photographs, so I had to run back out to my car and get my phone. One of the bookstore employees complimented me on my Cthulhu-inspired shirt, so that was pretty cool.

I was near the end of the line, so I had a little bit of time to wait, but it wasn't too bad. The line snaked past several discount shelves and I used the time to browse the books. Charlotte was really cool during the signing, making sure to converse and take pictures with everyone in the line. Overall it was a very cool experience, and I was glad that I decided to go. I put this picture on Twitter after I got out of the building and she re-Tweeted it, so that was pretty neat for me.

Here's the autograph I got. The employees at the store had everyone write their name on a Post-It Note so that she could personalize the autographs. The store staff were pretty helpful and personable. It made me feel a little bad for doing most of my shopping online these days.

Charlotte Flair wasn't just in town for the book signing, though, as there was a WWE Live event in Boise Saturday evening. I bought tickets soon after the event was announced, and soon after I got home from the book signing we headed for the arena. I was pretty entertained by the event, and my wife and one of my six year-olds enjoyed it a lot.

My other six year-old whined the whole time and wanted to go home, and my eight year-old was determined to have a bad time until Dolph Ziggler insulted the people of Boise and he started to get emotionally invested in the matches. I think that by the end of the show he was having an okay time. Really, the key to enjoying a wrestling show is to allow yourself to buy into the storyline and be a part of it. It's a lot more fun when you cheer for the faces and boo the heels.

Some of today's featured cards show wrestlers who appeared in last night's show. I got these from the eBay store of the now-closed Puro Central Shop, which until mid-September was one of the primary U.S. sources of Japanese wrestling cards and memorabilia. This is a 2017 Topps WWE Undisputed Green autograph of Natalya, who appeared as part of the losing team in a 6-woman Tag Team match just after the intermission last night. Carmella and Lana finished out her team, while the winning team featured Charlotte, Becky Lynch, and Naomi. This Green parallel autograph is numbered # 23 / 25.

The first match of the night included Big E as part of The New Day tag team defeating a team made up of Breezango and The Usos. It was a pretty entertaining battle. I know a lot of people don't like The New Day, but those same people probably don't like anything fun. This Bronze parallel of Big E's autograph is numbered # 24 / 99.

This TJ Dillashaw relic card from 2016 Topps UFC Knockout was included in the package as a bonus, as the owner of Puro Central Shop knows I collect UFC cards. I thought this was a pretty cool gesture. This mat relic card is numbered # 106 / 188.

After the opener between The New Day and The Usos/Breezango, Chad Gable and Rusev battled it out, with Rusev eventually gaining the upper hand. The match was all right, and Rusev got soundly booed after his victory.

Next up was another Tag Team match between The Hype Bros (Zack Ryder and Mojo Rawley) + Luke Harper and The Ascension (Konnor and Viktor) + Erick Rowan. The crowd was on the side of the Hype Bros, and they eventually delivered a victory.

Once that match was done, Sami Zayn came out and beat Mike Kanellis. Sami Zayn seems to be incredibly popular, so the crowd was pretty excited about this one. After losing, Mike Kanellis got the microphone and complained that Mike Kanellis never loses. He demanded another match, and someone whose name I can't remember ran out and beat him up again and pinned him.

The last match before the intermission was a Fatal Four-Way match for the WWE US Belt. The participants were AJ Styles, Baron Corbin, Kevin Owens, and Tye Dillinger. Most of these guys have pretty strong followings, so the crowd was pretty happy as the momentum swung between the different wrestlers. AJ Styles eventually won, and then the show went into a short break.

Following the intermission was the Women's Tag Team match between Charlotte-Becky Lynch-Naomi and Natalya-Carmella-Lana. Becky Lynch got easily the biggest response from the Boise crowd, so she's pretty popular here. Each wrestler got a little time in the spotlight during the match, and Charlotte finally closed it out with a submission victory.

One of the most entertaining matches came next, as Dolph Ziggler came out and turned the crowd against him with an insulting speech, and Bobby Roode put on quite a spectacle during his entrance. I hadn't watched many of Roode's matches previously, but he really seemed good at working the crowd. I always like it when a wrestler I've overlooked comes out and makes me a fan.

The Main Event was a bit of a dud, with Jinder Mahal defeating Shinsuke Nakamura in a battle for Mahal's WWE World Title. Mahal and the Singh Brothers riled up the crowd and made the event into kind of an India vs. the United States thing, but that didn't make a lot of sense as Nakamura is a wrestler from Japan. The crowd didn't seem to know what to do, and I thought it was awkward that, "U! S! A!" chants kept breaking out when Shinsuke Nakamura would get the upper hand. The match itself was pretty good, but the crowd never really figured things out and that really killed the energy, especially immediately following a couple of pretty exciting matches with a lot of crowd involvement.

Overall I had a great time and enjoyed most of the matches and the pageantry of the event. I hope the WWE comes back to Boise sooner rather than later, but there was a lot of empty space in the arena. I was hoping there would be a better turnout, as it would provide more motivation for them to bring more shows to the area. I did my part by attending Charlotte Flair's book signing and filling up five seats in the arena.

Some Old Pick-Ups that are Surprisingly Relevant Today - UFC 212

I am compounding a bad decision by writing this post after I stayed up too late to watch UFC 212. I have to work in the morning, and I should not still be up. I just couldn't bring myself to miss out on Claudia Gadelha vs. Karolina Kowalkiewicz and Jose Aldo vs. Max Holloway. Those fights didn't disappoint, and neither did the ones earlier on the card. I was pulling for both winners of the two biggest fights on the card, although I missed on a lot of my earlier picks in the UFC Pick'em game.

I picked up these cards months ago, but most of them feature guys who were on tonight's fight card. I must have picked them up in late January, when Nate Marquardt last fought on the Valentina Shevchenko vs. Julianna Peña card. Marquardt lost his fight tonight via a decision that went to Vitor Belfort. I didn't see much of that fight, but the reaction on Twitter told me that there may have been some homer judges in Brazil voting with their hearts instead of their eyes. I guess that's why you don't let the decision go to the scorecards. This autograph comes from 2010 Topps UFC.

This relic card comes from the same set, and features a bit of the mat from UFN 8 in January 2007, where Marquardt defeated Dean Lewis by a unanimous decision. Judging by the scores (30–27, 30–25, 30–25), it was a pretty convincing victory.

Raphael Assuncao won his fight tonight, a decision victory over Marlon Moraes. Cardboard Connection says that this is a Blue parallel out of 2014 Topps UFC Champions, but it sure looks Purple to me. It's numbered # 56 / 88.

Andrei Arlovski didn't fight tonight, but he is scheduled to fight in a couple of weeks at UFC Fight Night 111. He's lost four fights in a row after a six-fight win streak (4 of those were in the UFC), so he really needs to put a victory up against Marcin Tybura to remain as a contender. This is a Gold parallel from 2016 Topps UFC Knockout. I think this one is numbered # 80 / 99.

Wasted Time

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.

Seeking Redemption 18: Quick Turnaround

I posted just about a month ago that I had received a couple of Topps redemption cards from group breaks. Very shortly after I posted that I saw that both had gone live on Topps' weekly(ish) redemption report. A while after that both cards I was waiting on shipped out. That leaves me with only two outstanding redemptions, with one from Topps and one from Panini. The Topps card is a Frank Robinson # / 10 framed autograph from 2013 Topps Archives Baseball, and the Panini card is a Rookie Signatures autograph of Kawhi Leonard from 2012-13 Panini. I tried to get the Frank Robinson autograph substituted a couple of months ago, but I was told it was produced and would ship out 'soon.' The Leonard autograph was announced by Panini as being live a couple of weeks ago, but so far it hasn't shipped out.

The first card in the package from Topps was this Donald Cerrone base autograph from 2016 Topps UFC Knockout. When I saw that it was numbered # 42 / 49 I thought maybe they'd sent me a parallel or something, but the checklist just says that base autographs are numbered to # / 249 or less. It was a nice surprise to have the print run on this one be so low. In this picture Cerrone looks a lot like a guy in my National Guard unit. It makes me laugh a little because the guy I know always seems a little dazed, like he's been hit in the head a couple times too many.

This is the card I was really looking forward to receiving. It's a Dual Autographed Fight Mat Relic of Dominick Cruz and Urijah Faber, also from 2016 Topps UFC Knockout. In the past these cards have been one-sided, with both fighters appearing on the same side of the card, but this year's cards stretch out a bit and give each fighter a whole side to themselves. This copy is numbered # 07 / 10. I should probably put it up on eBay, but I don't know yet if I'll be able to bring myself to do it. I'm kind of a Faber fan, although Cruz whupped his butt for five rounds last weekend in their third (and probably final) fight against each other last weekend. This is a pretty cool card. My only issues with it are that Cruz didn't manage to stay on the sticker with his autograph and there is a ding in the corner closest to Faber's head. Outside of that this is an awesome card and easily the best UFC card in my collection to date.

Building a Collection through Combined Shipping

I've noticed that UFC card prices are all over the map, so often I can get cards that are a pretty good deal by taking a shotgun approach to bidding. If I find something I like, I will look at the seller's other items to see if there is anything interesting that I can place a low bid on. If I don't win it doesn't break my heart, but a lot of the time one or two extra cards will fall to me. With combined shipping in place, it doesn't wind up costing me much more than just purchasing the original item I was after. One thing that happens from time to time, though, is that I get outbid on my original item of interest and wind up winning the extra items. That didn't happen with today's cards, but it has happened to me.

This is the card I was originally chasing. It's a Gold parallel of Randa Markos from the 2016 Topps UFC Knockout set. As far as I know, she doesn't have any autograph or relic cards, so I am limited to chasing parallels or inserts for my PC. I am able to pick up most of the ones with higher print runs fairly easily, but any of the Red/Ruby # / 8 cards or the 1 / 1 cards are beyond my means. I'd rather spend that money on other stuff.

The seller had some other UFC stuff up for sale and I bid on a few things, but this Cat Zingano relic from 2015 Topps UFC Chronicles was the only extra I wound up with. It's not numbered, but it's got a nice red fabric swatch. Zingano has a fight coming up against Julianna Pena, her first since losing to Ronda Rousey in February 2015.

Breaking it Down 34: 2016 Topps UFC Knockout Hits

This is going to be a, "Look what I got!" post because I've run out of things to say and for the most part no one looks at my UFC posts anyway. I got these from some box breaks over at Team Breaks.

Based on eBay traffic this Cole Miller autograph from 2016 Topps UFC Knockout seems to be a dollar box-filler hit. I guess getting a hit is better than getting no hit, even if the hit is more 'hit' than hit. I was going to say that at least it's not a manu-relic, but the last manu-relic I got from a box break was a case hit that I sold for $42. This autograph is numbered # 019 / 249.

I was much more excited about this card, as Neil Magny is a guy I collect. This is a Knockout Autograph Relic card, numbered # 016 / 350. That seems like an awfully big print run for a relic / auto card from a niche sport, but I'm not the one making the decisions at Topps. Each box has at least 8 hits in it, so they needed plenty of cards with relics and autographs to fill out the cases. In spite of my snarkiness, I was happy to get a card of a PC guy from a break. I take kind of a shotgun approach to collecting UFC cards, grabbing whatever is interesting and cheap, but I do focus a little more on a few fighters. Neil Magny is one of the fighters I will grab whenever I can. Often watching a UFC event or looking at an upcoming fight card will prompt me to look for cards of a few fighters I find entertaining, and in turn my card collection will sometimes influence my rooting interest when watching fights. I've been having fun with it lately, so my blog and my buying have had a heavy UFC flavor recently.

Seeking Redemption 17: Some Big Hits from 2016 Topps UFC Knockout

Although I am not as active as I was earlier in the year, I still participate in the UFC breaks over at Team Breaks. I did pick up a fair number of spots in late March and early April when they were breaking 2016 Topps UFC Knockout. I had a couple of decent hits for various fighter collections that I will show off eventually, but today I am showing a couple of redemption cards I picked up during that time frame.

The first one is a base autograph of Donald Cerrone. I think I actually grabbed the Donald Cerrone spot in a Pick Your Fighter break. I don't necessarily collect Cerrone cards, but I think in that particular set of breaks the fighters I usually buy were taken and I took a chance on a few spots for fighters who seemed to have a lot of hits in the product. I happened to get lucky in this case and get a Cerrone autograph.

The other card here is a pretty big hit. It's a Dominick Cruz / Urijah Faber Dual Autographed Fight Mat Relic card. I think these are serially-numbered to # / 10, so they're a pretty rare hit. I believe I got this one from a Random Weight Class break. When it was pulled back in early April there were a couple on eBay that I think went in the $50-60 range. Another copy sold a couple of days ago for around $110. I still haven't decided if I will keep it once I receive the card. I kind of follow Urijah Faber, but I also wouldn't say no to $110. That's half a master set of Heritage baseball.

Both of these cards were reported as live in the latest Topps redemption update, so I am hoping it won't be too long before they are marked as shipped. I bumped them up in the posting queue to make sure I got this post up before I received the actual cards in the mail. I'm still waiting on a Frank Robinson autograph from 2013 Topps Archives Baseball. During my last exchange with Topps Customer Service they told me that card was produced and should ship soon, but I haven't seen any updates confirming that. I know there have been a few redemption updates announcing that other Frank Robinson autographs are live, but maybe mine is taking a while because it's an on-card signature which then has to be mounted in a frame. Anyway, I am looking forward to getting these redemptions filled soon.