This will probably be a pretty short post, as my kids brought home a cold a few days ago, and it finally caught up with me. I will be attempting to go to bed early tonight in an effort to recover, as I don't really have time right now to be sick. I have a lot to get done before this weekend, when I travel to Portland, Oregon, for some training. This is one week when I'd be grateful for a few extra hours per day to get everything taken care of at the office.
I picked up a couple of 2016 WWE Undisputed autographs from one of my favorite wrestling shops, The Puro Central Shop. They are closed right now because the owner is moving after a job change, but eventually that link will take you to their storefront. Usually I buy Japanese wrestling stuff from them, but I kind of started a Nia Jax wrestler collection and this was the right card at the right price. I actually think I bought these from their eBay store, but it's all the same folks. The Nia Jax autograph is a Bronze parallel, numbered # 35 / 99. I was looking for a wrestler outside of Bayley to collect, because I can't afford to collect Bayley, and I pulled Nia Jax hit from a blaster of Divas Revolution and figured I might as well go that route. I've watched a few of her matches, mostly between her and Bayley. I think she could stand to work on her mic skills a bit, but that's true of most wrestlers. As far as wrestling pedigree, she's related to Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson, the Usos, and Roman Reigns.
I honestly don't know much of anything about Big E, but his picture on this card makes me happy, so I bought it. Okay, I went and watched some New Day (Big E's team) stuff. It was pretty entertaining to me. I don't know if I will seek out more stuff, but I am glad I got a copy of this card. It is the Silver parallel, numbered # 47 / 50.
That's all for today. I am approaching my self-imposed bedtime for tonight and there are still things to do, so I had better get out of here.
I kind of disappeared for the weekend. It wasn't intentional, but I had reasons. Thursday the snow was still pretty bad, so I called in to work again. I knew I would have to go in on Friday, though, as it was my National Guard weekend and we don't really get days off for that. In the morning a neighbor's moving company cancelled on them, so I went and helped them load up their truck (after helping to dig their truck out of the road). Then I spent several hours shoveling our cars out of the snow enough to back them out of the ditch and give us a better chance of at least making it onto the road. Then I did walkways and whatnot, as well as cleaning up the edge of the roof and pulling the gutters off the house. The gutters had needed attention for some time, and they were causing problems.
My wife was able to get out of the neighborhood in the afternoon. Her vehicle has a higher clearance than mine, and she got enough groceries and household stuff to get through a few days. I tried twice to get out of the neighborhood, but both times I was blocked by stuck vehicles, including a garbage truck that was being pulled out by another garbage truck, and had to turn around. I decided that instead of commuting back and forth during the weekend, I would just pack a bag for the full three days and keep trying to get out of the neighborhood until I was successful.
I made it out late Thursday night and slept in my office until work started on Friday. That was pretty uncomfortable, so I booked a room in the barracks for the next two nights. My job on the National Guard side involves talking to a lot of people (I talked to over 400 soldiers this weekend about their pay accounts), and my introverted self was too burnt out by the end of the day to blog or do much of anything but sleep until the next day. More snow fell over the weekend, and it turned to freezing rain and regular rain today. My drive home after work was pretty eventful, as I slid around on the interstate more than I would have liked. I kept the rubber side down, though, and got home without a wreck. Then I shoveled some more snow to keep my car from getting stuck again, as the snow in my parking space was up as high as my bumper. After that I was really exhausted and I sat down to work on a blog post and catch up on reading blogs that I missed over the weekend.
Just about the time I sat down, my wife told me that a friend's house was leaking and they needed some help, so I grumbled for a second and then changed my clothes to go see what I could do. My wife went, too, so that she could help out with watching their kids. I helped shovel their roof around the leaky spot and the driveway around their cars, and once they were taken care of we headed home. It's nice to help out, but I am dragging after the last few days. And that's why I am posting about my favorite card of 2016 just before the January 9th deadline.
This Bartolo Colon card from 2016 Topps NOW is probably my actual favorite card of 2016, but it's shown up on a lot of blog posts in this contest and I don't want to be that guy. It isn't a particularly historical moment, but it did set a minor record (oldest player to hit their first MLB home run) and it was one of the more fun moments in the MLB season. I talked plenty about this card back in June and a little in October, so I won't say much more about it here. It is probably my actual favorite card of 2016.
This is not my favorite card of 2016. I don't even know who this dude is, to be honest. I pulled this autograph card of Andrade "Cien" Almas from a box of 2016 Topps WWE NXT just a little while ago. I was kind of disappointed by this pull, but it turns out it wasn't that bad. I sold it for more than I paid for the box, and I used that money plus a handful of eBay Bucks to land my actual favorite card of 2016 (outside of Bartolo Colon's Topps NOW home run card).
I picked up this on-card NXT Autograph of the WWE's Bayley from 2016 WWE Undisputed. I have been wanting a Bayley autograph for a long time, and I finally was able to get one at the right price. I wanted an on-card autograph because Bayley has a big signature and her sticker signatures look squished. This is the base version, numbered # 152 / 299. I admittedly don't watch a lot of the WWE's offerings, but Bayley's enthusiasm, brightly-colored clothes, her penchant for hugging, and her persona's overall positive vibe have made me a fan.
You can't feel bad after watching that entrance, can you? One of my hobby goals for 2017 was to finally obtain a Bayley autograph, and I got a pretty good one practically before the year even got started. I probably picked up higher-valued cards in 2016 or cards that were more rare, but I think one valid measure of a card is whether you feel happy when you see it in your collection, and in that test this Bayley card is currently near the top of the list. That's why I chose it as my favorite card of 2016.
I think I mentioned the other day that I was postponing a Sketch Card Week because I had some cool stuff coming in this week that I wanted to show off. This pack of 2016 Topps WWE Undisputed is part of that stuff, but it honestly isn't that exciting. The one good thing about it is that it's only got 5 cards in it. I am short on time and I'm a little short on patience today, so I should be able to blow through this pretty quickly and move on to bigger and better things tomorrow. I was browsing Blowout Cards and noticed that a couple of things I am interested in were on sale, so I put an order together. Packs of WWE Undisputed were not on sale, but I added one to my cart just to see what I might pull. There are 5 cards per pack, with one guaranteed hit.
The pack contained 2 base cards and an NXT Prospects insert. I guess maybe the WWE has passed me by, as none of these folks really strike a chord with me. I admittedly haven't watched a lot of WWE since I was in high school. There is a lot of other stuff competing for my attention.
The parallel in the pack is this Blue NXT card of Finn Balor. It's a pretty nice-looking card, although for the life of me I would call the color in-hand Purple a lot sooner than I would call it Blue. But the pack odds don't list a Purple parallel, so it must be Blue. These are a 1:48 pack find, and this one is numbered # 14 / 25.
Last time I posted about this product, I mentioned that the relic cards look stupid because they have a big blank spot on the front so they can slap an autograph sticker on them without tweaking the design at all for relic autos. I stand by that assessment. This card looks cheap and dumb. The relic swatch is actually a neon yellow color, but like some highlighters it doesn't come through in copies or scans. I am fed up with a great many things tonight, so I am not bothering to take a picture of it so you can see the relic swatch. I don't have anything against Sin Cara. He's just a wrestler I don't have a lot of familiarity with, and the design on these cards is uninspired. It is numbered # 071 / 175. I can't even find pack odds for these. I guess the assumption is that if you don't pull something else as a hit, you get one of these. Or I just can't read that tiny print effectively.
Well, there's the pack. It wasn't a terrible pack because of that Finn Balor parallel, but it certainly wasn't as good as the first pack I opened. I just don't like these relic cards. We've seen similar designs in the various baseball products, so this isn't new. I just don't like it. I hope that tomorrow will be a better day.
I needed a couple of card boxes so that I can carry home all the cards I've picked up on this trip, so on Saturday I headed back to TCI Sports Fan to see what I could get. Their prices on card supplies are very reasonable, and I grabbed a couple of 500-count boxes for a dollar.
The shop was pretty busy, with several customers browsing and talking with each other about their pulls. I think the shop might have an arrangement where certain people have their own areas of the store, where they can set up and sell their cards, probably with some kind of rent or commission involved. Anyway, a guy was set up and he was breaking NASCAR Prizm at his table. He showed off a beautiful Blue Flag Prizm Autograph of Danica Patrick, as well as some other nice hits. I was pretty jealous of that autograph, though. There was another collector in the shop with her sons, and she was also jealous of the Danica Patrick autograph. She said she had pulled a Danica tire relic from the product.
I browsed the singles for a while, but didn't find anything I had to have. The prices were a bit high across the board, but I guess not much more than you'd pay for a single + shipping on eBay. There were plenty of discount boxes, too, but I can't browse singles for very long without my ADHD kicking in and prompting me to move to something else. I don't have what you would call a laser focus. They also had decent prices on complete sets of all kinds, but I don't have enough of a handle on my collection to know which ones to go after.
I did pick up one thing at the shop. I grabbed a single pack of 2016 Topps WWE Undisputed wrestling cards. This is Topps' high-end wrestling product and I knew I wouldn't be able to buy a box of the stuff, so when I saw that this shop had a box open to sell single packs I knew I wanted to try one out.
Each pack contains 5 cards, which I believe usually break down as three base cards, one parallel/insert, and one hit. Not much else to say about it here; let's see the cards!
The base cards look similar in style to the inaugural 2015 set. To be honest, if you put a card from each set in front of me I couldn't tell you which year was which. My favorite base card here is Paul Bearer. The other two guys don't move the needle for me.
My parallel was a Bronze card of Batista. I thought that was a decent card. Batista is a guy I've seen wrestle live, and I thought he did a pretty good job as Drax in Guardians of the Galaxy. This card is numbered # 05 / 99.
The hit of the pack was another Bronze parallel, this time an Undisputed Autograph card of Brie Bella. It is numbered # 63 / 99, and isn't a bad card to pull. I think prices have come down after the big hype of last year's Undisputed release, so this card wouldn't earn back the pack price in spite of being a solid hit from the Divas division. I'm not sure yet if it's worth trying to sell it so I can trade up toward a Bayley or Asuka autograph. It'd be cool to get a John Cena autograph for my collection, too. I guess we'll see. Odds are good that it stays in my collection for a while.
I am pretty happy with my pack. I pulled a decent hit, a nice Paul Bearer base card, and a Batista parallel. I'm glad my hit was an autograph, as the relics in this product don't look that great. Instead of designing different layouts for the relics and the auto/relics, Topps just left the blank spot where the autograph sticker goes on the relic cards, so there's a lot of wasted space and it's really obvious that Topps got lazy on the relic card design. That's my one big complaint about this product, and luckily it didn't come into play in this pack.
