A Hobby Box of 2016 Topps WWE Heritage

A few months ago I ordered some boxes from Dave & Adam's Card World. One of the boxes I ordered was a Hobby box of 2016 Topps WWE Heritage. I didn't know a whole lot about the product outside of the boxes being relatively affordable and promising two hits.

Here's a look at some of the base cards and inserts from the box. This set is based on the 1986 Topps Baseball design, with cards for current wrestlers, legends, and NXT. It also has the same subsets as the 1986 Baseball set has, with Record Breakers, Turn Back the Clock, and All-Stars. I didn't scan the card backs for these, but you can see the basic card back below where I scanned the parallels from the box.

I pulled a Bronze parallel and a Silver parallel from the box. The Bronze card is a Legend base card featuring Lita. It is numbered # 01 / 99. Not to spoil the stuff that I haven't shown yet, but the Bayley Silver parallel was probably the best card in the box. It's numbered # 40 / 50.

The insert set that doesn't really fit in with the rest of the product is The Rock Tribute set. Each year Topps does some of these sets that run through several products, highlighting the careers of big name wrestlers. Hobby boxes of Heritage in 2016 had cards 21-30 of this set, with the other cards in the set being packaged in other products. They were seeded 1:6 packs, so I got four of them.

One of my hits was a manufactured patch of Terry Funk. This is the base version, numbered # 053 / 299. I know manufactured relics have been around for a while, but I hate pulling them as 'hits.' They have their place, maybe as a bonus in a blaster box, but whenever I pull one as a promised hit card in a box, I feel a little irritated. I guess I should have read up a little more on the product before I pulled the trigger on this box.

The other hit in the box was a Silver parallel autograph of Tatanka, numbered # 19 / 50. This card isn't going to set the world on fire, but it's an on-card autograph that fetches $8-10 on eBay.

There wasn't anything super exciting about this break, but I like the look and feel of this set, and it was cool to pull a nice Bayley parallel for my collection of her cards. I like the on-card autographs, and I like seeing the Legends especially on this older card design.

I made a pretty big Black Friday/Cyber Monday week order on Blowout cards a few days ago. It was a lot of boxes of cards, and because of the size of the order I wanted to stretch out the break so that I don't just open all of the cards in one day. One blogger who's really good at stretching breaks out is Chris over at Nachos Grande, but I can't slow roll quite as slowly as he does. There are limits to my impulse control. I finally decided to break things up by the number of hits per box, so for a normal box with a couple of hits in it, I might open 8 packs, but for a high-end box with a hit per pack I might only open one pack. After I broke each box down into slots, I put them through a randomizer so that I open one slot per day until they are all gone. That means I get to open something every day for almost two months, and more often than not it will be something different each day. I hope I can stick to the plan.

Then today, Topps announced a sale of the day on a bunch of WWE and UFC card products. The big prizes in that sale were hobby boxes of 2017 WWE Undisputed and 2017 UFC Knockout at about 25% less than the big online retailers sell them for. The WWE Undisputed cards sold out ridiculously fast, but I managed to grab two boxes of UFC Knockout. I'll be adding them to my randomized list, too. There's some other okay stuff on sale, like Hobby boxes of 2017 WWE Heritage for $42 and boxes of the online-exclusive WWE NXT and UFC Fire for 50% off. I don't know how long the deals last, but if you're into wrestling or UFC cards it might be worth a visit to the Topps site. There's a Deal of the Day link on the front page that will take you there.

The Start of a New Wrestler Collection

I wasn't really planning on watching WrestleMania, but I read a post by Royal Card Review about getting a free trial subscription to WWE's streaming service, and I figured I might as well check in and see what it was all about. While I proclaim to be a wrestling fan, I don't think I've ever watched a WrestleMania before. The heyday of my wrestling viewership was in the late 90's, and I didn't have access to any Pay-Per-View stuff back then.

I missed some of the early stuff, but I got logged in during the lead-up to Kevin Owens vs. Chris Jericho. While there were a few entrances that took about 30 minutes too long (especially HHH), I was pretty entertained by the event as a whole. It was especially cool to see Undertaker's last match, although he certainly showed signs of his age throughout. It was a good time, and I was entertained. I'll probably be tuning in to some more wrestling when time permits.

I was happy to see Bayley retain the RAW Women's belt, but it's too bad that Nia Jax didn't get a little more screen time. It fits the storyline to have the other three wrestlers team up against her because they are afraid of her power, but it also seemed like they were pushing hard to get the big girl out quickly. Maybe that's a good sign. You wouldn't bat an eye if a few male wrestlers ganged up to eliminate someone like Andre the Giant or The Big Show, because being big and powerful is an advantage in wrestling. It could be a signal that women's wrestling in the U.S. has progressed beyond sideshows like bra & panty matches and mud wrestling. I wonder if Jax will get the belt at some point in the future?

I picked up a couple of Nia Jax cards over the last couple of months. The first was this autograph from 2016 Topps WWE Heritage. It's got an aesthetically-pleasing serial number ( # 33 / 99 ) and a clean on-card signature.

I also got this Mat Relic card from 2016 Topps WWE Divas Revolution. This one is a Silver parallel, numbered # 46 / 50. The parallels in this product tend to be pretty subdued, and in some cases I've only been able to tell them apart because of the serial number or by setting a parallel next to a base card.

I've posted a couple of other Nia Jax cards here, and I've decided to start a collection of her cards. I probably won't throw a ton of money at it, but I'll pick something up here or there as it catches my eye.