Some Box Breaks and Other Things

A while back I wanted to bust some packs, so I ordered some boxes of my favorite products of the last year or so from Blowout Cards. It feels a little weird that I don't have any baseball product in this order, but I've sort of moved into only buying singles and sets for that sport. I collect a relatively small number of baseball players, so the likelihood of pulling something that fits into my collection is slim. I tend to enjoy all kinds of stuff from racing, wrestling, and UFC, so the randomness of box busting is a little more collection-friendly for me.

There's the lineup of boxes. For wrestling I got a blaster of 2017 Topps WWE Women's Division, a hobby box of 2018 Topps WWE Women's Division, and a hobby box of 2019 Topps WWE Road to WrestleMania. For racing I got a box of 2018 Panini Victory Lane and a box of 2018 Panini Certified. I also got a box of 2018 Topps UFC Chrome. The pictures below are not really in order, so anyone who can't handle chaos should probably take off, eh.

Here are a couple of card from the Victory Lane box, an insert parallel of Alex Bowman and a Engineered to Perfection triple relic of Denny Hamlin. I guess this is as good a place as any to repeat that I have a mild interest in Hamlin cards because I worked for his sponsor, FedEx, for a couple of years.

The blaster of 2017 Topps WWE Women's Division turned out to be a pretty good one, with a Blue parallel of Lana and an autograph of Nikki Bella.

These breaks were pretty heavy on the Alex Bowman cards. These cards all came from 2018 Panini Certified. I got that Red Certified Signatures Alex Bowman autograph with two relic swatches, a Gold All-Certified Team insert of Kyle Larson, and two different versions of Bowman's Skills insert.

Here are some Red and Gold parallels and hits from the Certified box. I bought the Certified stuff hoping to get a Hailie Deegan autograph, but that didn't happen for me.

Here are the last couple cards from the Certified box, a couple of basic relic inserts featuring Jamie McMurray and Chase Elliott.

Here are the hits from the 2018 Topps WWE Women's Division box. I got a Silver parallel of Rusev kicking Elias in the face, which kind of makes up for the fact that there aren't any Women's Division wrestlers on the card. That Carmella autograph is a testament to the fact that female athletes don't always have great penmanship. I am always happy to get another Naomi card, even if this is just a manufactured relic.

I got a # / 25 parallel, a Kofi Kingston autograph, and a Titus O'Neil manufactured relic out of the 2019 Topps WWE Road to WrestleMania set. You may recognize Kofi Kingston as the current WWE World Heavyweight Champion.

The UFC Chrome box was a fun break, as usual for this particular product. These insert Refractors are of the # / 50 variety.

These are some of the more colorful Refractors in the box, an Orange # / 25 of Lyoto Machida and a Green # / 99 of Chuck Liddell. 

The box was a hot box, meaning that every pack contained one of those Refractors with the crazy patterned background shown on the Rose Namajunas and Holly Holm cards. X-Fractors and Blue Wave Refractors both come one per box, but X-Fractors are unnumbered while the Blue Waves are # / 75.

Each box of UFC Chrome has two autographs (unless you get a hot box with an OctoFractor), and I did pretty well here. The Claudia Gadelha signature is a base autograph, while the Amanda Nunes is an Orange # / 25.

Back to racing with some more Victory Lane stuff, including a Justin Haley autograph, a nice Chase Elliott auto-relic, and a dual relic of Justin Allgaier.

I pulled two # 1 / 1 cards in this break, and they both came from the Victory Lane box. One is a Yellow printing plate featuring none other than Dale Earnhardt Jr. The other is a Prime Patches card of Jamie McMurray, featuring the series sponsor patch from his firesuit.

Here's a bunch of other stuff I've picked up over the last couple of months. These two autographs were fun finds for me. The Josh Reddick comes from 2012 Topps Mini. It was hard to find autographs in these Mini products, so it was cool to see one in the wild. The R.A. Dickey card is a wrapper redemption autograph from 2013. I don't recall seeing many of these out there, either.

I was glad to add another Jake Butt card to my collection. I believe this one comes from 2017 Panini Unparalleled. The Charlotte Flair signature is a Silver parallel from 2019 Topps Road to WrestleMania. I like the design of that set's autographs, so I was happy to get one of the Queen.

Here are a couple of redemptions that came in from Topps. One is a UFC Museum Collection autograph of Maryna Moroz, which I believe is the first Moroz signature in my collection. The other is a Vanessa Borne card from the 2018 Topps WWE Women's Division set. Again, I think that might be my first autograph from her.

These cards were COMC purchases. Up first is an Octane Autographs card of Bubba Wallace from 2018 Panini Victory Lane. The other is a Green autograph of Naomi from 2018 Topps WWE Undisputed. The parallel coloring bleeds into the photographs on this set, leading to some weird situations, but in this case the green matches well with Naomi's gear.

This year's Topps Heritage set included box toppers featuring Topps staffers. I had to chase this one down on eBay because it pictures Sooz, one member of the A Cardboard Problem blog team and an active member of card Twitter.

I was one of the people who ordered one of the tablecloth relic cards from Manny Machado's press conference. The backlash against this card was so furious that I had to get one for my collection. I love things that other people hate, and the laugh I get from seeing this card in my collection is well worth the price.

The Alex Bregman card is a replacement for a damaged Bregman relic I got in the mail after buying a 2018 Topps Holiday box that was missing a hit. Attached to the card was a sort of passive-aggressive note reminding me that the damaged card was not folded in half when it was shipped. That was kind of the point. I was disappointed in the packaging. Poor packaging tends to lead to shipping damage. The other card is a replacement for a damaged Sandy Alcantara card I pulled from a rack pack of 2018 Topps Fire.

I was chasing a Ricky "The Dragon" Steamboat card from 2018 Topps WWE Legends set, and I was pretty happy to get this Bronze autographed relic. I also picked up a Diamond Dallas Page autograph.

I also got this cool Alundra Blayze Hall of Fame Ring relic autograph card. This is the Gold version of the card, so it is limited to 10 copies. In the same group of auctions I picked up this Paige VanZant signature from Leaf.

That about does it for this bunch. Although my production of blog posts has slowed to a crawl, I am still actively collecting. I am trying to get back into the swing of my hobbies, but there are a lot of things competing for my attention right now and I spend most of my time feeling worn out.

No Bowman, and Spring Cleaning

Today was my scheduled off day from work, so I took some time to look for 2018 Bowman cards at the local retail stores. I hit three different stores, and wasn't able to find any of the product. There weren't display boxes out or anything, so it probably hasn't been stocked locally yet. I finally decided on a hanger box of 2018 Heritage and a bag of Skittles, and I headed for home, picking up an order of Super Nachos from the local taqueria. They taste so good, but the serving size is huge and I am paying the price now for eating them all. I don't have the iron stomach I did fifteen years ago. After I got home, I decided to clear out the center console of my car. That's where a lot of my retail breaks end up if I don't pull anything particularly noteworthy.

There was a variety of stuff in there from three different sports. I decided that I wouldn't let these pack breaks go to waste, so let's take a look and see if I pulled anything of note.

Here are the most interesting (to me) cards from the Heritage stuff. Marwin Gonzalez was the only short print. It's surprising that I am showing off two Brewers, but I like Eric Sogard and Josh Hader is on three of my fantasy baseball teams this year. He's got 31 strikeouts in 15.1 innings so far this year, and 3 saves to boot! The Stanton and Lindor inserts are pretty cool, too. Gerrit Cole is an Astro now.

You know the Donruss Optic break was bad if the only card I have to show is a base card from one of my team's Divisional rivals. The Broncos were a train wreck last year. I hope they can find a few more wins in the coming season.

The WWE Women's Division packs are always fun, although I probably have about ten base sets by now. I've busted a lot of this product.

What I don't have a full set of is these rivalry inserts, which are exclusive to the rack packs. I picked a couple of the better ones I pulled to show off.

Road to WrestleMania isn't one of my favorite products, although I should like it more. The WWE is all about the story, and Road to WrestleMania tells the story of the promotion for each year. Maybe I should give the set another try. That Macho Man card is pretty sweet, with cameos by Jake 'The Snake' Roberts and Ricky 'The Dragon' Steamboat. 

Most of my favorite cards from the Rookies & Stars pack were inserts featuring retired players. In this case, it was Deion Sanders and Bo Jackson. I pulled a punter card, so I had to show that off, too. Kickers and punters don't get enough cardboard love.

I didn't find any new Bowman today, so I'll have to show off some old Bowman. Alex Bregman is manning 3rd base for the Astros, and Daz Cameron went to the Tigers in the Justin Verlander trade. Max Kepler is playing every day for the Twins. Half of his 20 hits on the year have gone for extra bases. Fernando Tatis Jr. is one of the value pack-exclusive parallels. He's only 19 years old right now, and is featured on most Top 10 Prospect lists.

There was also a value pack of Topps Chrome among the packs in my car. The Youth Impact insert of Blake Snell was the most colorful thing in the break. Carlos Gomez isn't my favorite player, but he was the only Astro among the cards. The other Pink value pack parallel of note was Wade Davis.

There were basketball cards in there, too. I tried a rack pack of 2017-18 Panini Status. It's a shiny and colorful product that picks up fingerprints easily. This pack should have gone to Cards on Cards, as both the inserts I pulled feature Trail Blazers. I guess I'll have to set them aside for the next package that goes his way.

That does it for the packs in my car's center console. There wasn't anything world-shattering in them, but I guess they weren't too awful. Hopefully I'll be able to find some 2018 Bowman in the next couple of weeks.

Care Package from Fuji

When I got home from New Jersey I had a veritable mountain of mail sitting on my desk. Among the mailers was a package from Fuji over at The Chronicles of Fuji. Inside I found a whole bunch of items that hit many of my different collections.

First up is a number of Hakeem Olajuwon cards. Those Upper Deck holograms were huge for me back in the day. These are the cards I coveted in the 90's. There's also a Manute Bol card hiding down there in the lower right.

I like lists, and those NBA Jam Session cards take a list and put it on cardboard. There's a lot of star power on those cards. The Trading Places insert at the bottom was new to me. I got out of collecting around the time that Olajuwon went to the Raptors, so I haven't seen most of his later cardboard.

Fuji also hit up my Nolan Ryan collection. I'm not a very good Ryan collector, but I like getting his cards when they show up. Out of this lot, I especially like the O-Pee-Chee in the upper right and the Starline card in the lower left. It's also nice to see a couple appearances by the Astros' rainbow uniforms.

There were plenty of Astros in the package, including the Killer B's, player collection guy Jon Singleton, and World Series hero George Springer.

Hologram technology makes another appearance here, with a Denny's oddball of Jeff Bagwell. I've probably eaten at Denny's three or four times in my life, so I wasn't ever exposed to these until I started reading card blogs. There's also a nice-looking Craig Biggio League Leaders card here.

My R.A. Dickey collection got a little boost, too, with a few different things, including two different Bowman Platinum parallels, a shiny foil Stadium Club card, a Little League card (from a Sports Illustrated for Kids magazine), and some Museum Collection and Ginter to round it out.

This slightly over-sized Kellogg's Raisin Bran card was one highlight of the package. I don't think I'd ever seen this one before, so it was a welcome addition to my Olajuwon hoard. It highlights his college career.

This 2017 Topps Series One Jackie Robinson Logo card of Alex Bregman is a solid chunk of cardboard. These were a one-per-blaster inclusion in the retail release of this product, so the card for a given team would be a pretty difficult find.

The last card in the package was this Jason Lane patch relic from 2002 Leaf Certified. This is the Mirror Blue parallel, numbered # 68 / 75. Lane played outfield in parts of 6 MLB seasons, with his only full season being 2005. That means he's played in four more World Series games than most of us have. He fell out of the MLB after 2007, but bounced around the minors and came back as a pitcher, throwing 10.1 innings for the Padres in 2014. I thought that was pretty wild, especially with the long gap in between. I believe he is currently a hitting coach in the Brewers organization.

Thanks for the package, Fuji! There was a lot of variety in here, and I enjoyed looking through all of the cards you sent!