Work Trip to Dayton, Ohio: The Hobby Stuff

Now that my work trip to Ohio is about over, I figured I'd show off the hobby-related stuff I picked up while I was there. When I first flew in, I stopped to get something to eat and then I went to Wal-Mart to pick up some stuff I needed, like a razor, some soda, and some baseball cards.

I don't think I've posted the previous Gypsy Queen blasters I bought yet, but they weren't all that great. I'd heard rumors that 2017 Topps Gypsy Queen retail was hot stuff, but in my experience that hasn't been the case. But I thought maybe it was just a problem with the blasters in Idaho. I picked up an Ohio blaster as a test, and also because there wasn't a whole lot of other stuff on the shelves.

I got a decent array of base cards. Derek Jeter was my short-printed base card. I got a Charlie Blackmon Green Back parallel. There are supposedly only 50 copies of each Green Back, as opposed to the Green Front parallels that come in value packs. There are a couple of inserts, too.

After three blasters, I finally pulled a hit out of Gypsy Queen. I should have just bought 2/3 of a Hobby box with that money, but I didn't, and now I have this Aaron Judge autograph card. He's been playing pretty well lately, so this card has actually kind of taken off in the two weeks since I pulled it. I should put it up on eBay or something.

I made a stop at TCI Sports Fan, a card shop that I stopped at on my last trip to Ohio. There were a few things I looked at while I was there, but they had this box of 2016 Topps Star Wars Rogue One: Mission Briefing cards on the discount shelf and I bought it. I probably should have purchased something else.

The base cards are about the same as every other faux-vintage Star Wars set that has come out recently. They have red borders and feature scenes from the films.

The Death Star insert set shows different important locations on the space station.

I got a few of these Comic Strips inserts in the box. Although the backs of The Death Star inserts actually have text, most of the other inserts have some variation of the 'COLLECT ALL [NUMBER] CARDS!' text on the back. 

These Villains of the Galactic Empire and Heroes of the Rebel Alliance cards are pretty cool.

The two cards in the upper left are Character Stickers. They are printed on thin stock and I believe they are actually stickers, although I haven't tried peeling one. The two cards in the upper right are part of a Darth Vader continuity set, so I guess there will be more of them in other releases. Maybe those other releases are already out. I don't know. There are so many sets being released that I don't even keep up anymore. The three cards on the left of the bottom row are Character Foil cards, and the card on the bottom right is probably part of the Montages set, which probably interconnects with other cards to create a panoramic scene.

I pulled quite a few Death Star Black, Green, and Blue parallels. Those are the more common ones. I didn't pull any of the scarce Gray, Gold, or Orange parallels, which are serially-numbered # / 100, # / 50, and # 1 / 1.

My two promised hits were a manu-patch of Captain Cassian Andor and a base autograph of Corey Dee Williams as Klaatu. Klaatu is one of the folks who hangs out in Jabba's palace, and he gets killed during the sail barge escape scene.

Here are the backs of the hit cards. That box was kind of underwhelming, but buying the low-cost stuff bring high odds that your hits are going to be low-end hits. The regular cards are more of the same stuff we've been seeing, reprints of earlier designs with many of the same film stills that have been in circulation for the last forty or so years.

Later, I made a second trip to TCI Sports Fan. They were having a die-cast sale, and I wanted to pick up something for my NASCAR collection. I eventually settled on this 2011 Danica Patrick Honoring Our Heroes car. She drove this car in the Nationwide race on September 11th, 2011.

There were 1,209 of these die-cast cars produced. This one was on sale for $25, which is a better price than I can get online, especially when you take shipping into account. There were a couple of other cars I was interested in, but I decided on just purchasing the one.

Here's what it looks like out of the box. It's a pretty cool paint scheme. Each of the stars represents one victim of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. I think the mixture of sports and patriotism is kind of weird, but I know baseball really played a big healing role after the 9/11 attacks and after the Boston Marathon bombing in 2013.

They had also moved these boxes of 2011 WWE Champions onto the sale shelf. For $12 apiece, I thought it might be fun to bust some WWE wax. This set is pretty basic, and I think it is the predecessor to the current WWE Road to WrestleMania product line.

The base set is all about the photographs, and recounts the WWE storyline between WrestleManias. The set isn't that big, so you'll complete it in one box with a fair number of doubles and maybe some triples.

There are no parallels, and only one insert set. There are also autographs, but they only fall 1:150 packs, so you'll only see one every 6 boxes or so. I wasn't lucky enough to pull an autograph. The Foil inserts are a 1:3 packs pull, so you get eight per box. It's a 10-card set, and I completed the set out of two boxes, with 6 doubles. I don't know what the selection criteria were for the checklist, but there are some cool names in the set.

Finally, I made a trip to the Dayton Visual Arts Center to put some money in the Art-o-mat machine. The gallery was between exhibits, so there wasn't much art on the walls and I had to dodge ladders and stuff to get to the machine, but the staff didn't kick me out and even gave me change because the machine wouldn't take my bill. They didn't have Raz Card Blog favorite artist John Soukup stocked in the machine, so I had to try some new artists. The first was Andy Brzeczek, an artist out of Colorado. He doesn't seem to have much of a web presence, but I found a Facebook page and a profile on an art organization's page. Based on his Facebook feed, it looks like he does batches of Art-o-mat paintings with a similar theme, often centered around UFOs. The art block I got features a cow about to have a Close Encounter of some kind; maybe of the Fourth or Sixth Kind, depending on how things go.

Next, I pulled the lever for a piece of art from Jack Hernon. He has a web page and some profiles on various art pages, but none of them seem to have a lot of activity. I wasn't sure which way to orient the picture, so I went with the way that felt right to me. I've read that part of the fun of abstract art is seeing which way people choose to hang it.

It was a pretty successful trip from a hobby standpoint. I'd probably like to take back the Star Wars purchase and get something else or save that money, but I am pretty happy overall. There were a couple of comic book stores I meant to get to, but I never got around to it.

The Start of a P★League Bowler Collection

I got in an order of cards from Japan a couple of weeks ago, mostly in an effort to track down 2017 BBM True Heart Wrestling autographs I 'needed' for various wrestler collections. But since overseas shipping is a huge component of the cost of doing business with Japanese buying services, I added a few extra things to take advantage of the opportunity to consolidate. A couple of those extras came from various BBM P★League bowling card sets. I broke down box sets of the 2016 and 2014 bowling cards in previous posts, as well as the DVD set of the tournament that I think the 2016 card set is based on.

When I first opened up the 2016 card set, I didn't take a whole lot of notice of Sanae Mori, but when I watched the DVD I found her pretty entertaining whenever she was on camera. Just like that, a bowler collection was started. In my recent order, I picked up this autograph from the 2015 P★League set. She has a pretty distinctive signature, with a big 'M' arching over the whole thing with the 'ori' of 'Mori' in the middle. Below the 'ori' she spells out Sanae with the 'e' continuing on into a heart shape. Beneath that, she puts her professional bowling license number. I have a 2015 boxed set, but I haven't posted about it yet. As you can see by the snowflakes and the 'Very Merry Xmas' across the bottom of the card, the set has a holiday theme. Bowlers have two kinds of autographs, one in regular clothes and one dressed up in holiday costumes. I think both types also have special ink variations, but I can't remember. Anyway, this is Sanae Mori's regular clothes / regular ink version, and it's numbered # 38 / 90.

I also picked up an insert from the 2014 set. I think the main idea of this set is those word bubbles on the back of the card. In the center-top of the card back, there is a blurb about lucky objects and lucky colors. As near as I can tell, Sanae Mori's lucky object is a bear collectible or bear toy, maybe a stuffed animal or something similar? Aki Suzuki's word bubble seems to describe a lucky color, maybe red or orange. I'm not very good at this, and my phone app doesn't like translating from this photo on my screen.

I'll probably try to add a Sanae Mori card or two in my future orders through the Buyee service. They aren't extremely tough to find, but once you add buying fees and shipping to the base price they can get a little costly. Hopefully she remains with the P★League for a while longer, so she'll keep getting new releases in the (approximately) annual trading card set. I'm looking forward to the 2017 set already!

How Much is This in Imperial Credits?

Over a year ago, I posted about some painted dollar bills I'd gotten from artist John Soukup. Those ones were superhero-themed. A couple (few?) months ago, I picked up another handful of them from his eBay store, with this batch focusing on Star Wars characters. It took me a while to scan them and get them to the front of the posting queue.

First up are a couple of Star Wars heroines, Leia and Rey. In the typical Soukup fashion, both are holding pickles in their hands. I haven't thought to ask him, "Why pickles?' but I imagine he has his reasons. The Leia card is what drew me in to bidding on these, but I usually check out his auctions anyway, just to see what cool stuff he's come up with. 

I also got a few other characters, including cantina patron Momaw Nadon, bounty hunter Greedo, and Darth Vader. At the time these were up for auction, there was also a Boba Fett bill listed that I lost out on when I got distracted as the bidding closed. That was disappointing, but I've become a lot better about not getting worked up when I lose an auction. There will always be another cool thing out there for me to add to my collection, and most of the painted bills on offer wound up coming to me anyway. I really ought to stop by the Art-o-mat machine here in Dayton while I'm in the area. I'm in a different hotel this year, so the gallery is pretty far out of my way. It still might be worth the trip, though, to see what they've got in the machine this time.

A Game and a (Big) Show

Sunday was a pretty awesome day for me, aside from spending Easter a couple thousand miles away from home. I already had tickets for the evening's WWE Live event in Cincinnati, but I decided to make a full day of it and attend another baseball game next door at the Great American Ballpark. My sunburn from the day prior left the top of my head a little too sensitive to be sitting out in the open, so after about three innings I retreated into the concourses and watched the rest of the game on screens while charging my phone.

I like to park across the river and walk across the bridge to get to the ballpark. The WWE show was in U.S. Bank Arena, right next door to the ballpark. My nose is pretty big, so it likes to act as a solar panel and absorb plenty of sunshine. I really should have planned better and worn sunscreen or gotten out of the sun a bit on Saturday. I got several compliments on my Macho Man Randy Savage t-shirt, which I appreciated.

The Reds couldn't muster a lot of offense, and wound up losing 4-2 to the Brewers. Luckily for me, some of the guys on my fantasy baseball teams figured into the scoring, Travis Shaw hit a 1-run homer for the Brewers, Adam Duvall scored once for the Reds, and Eugenio Suarez hit a 2-run home run for the Reds. After the game was over, I ate some ice cream and then went back to the parking garage to read a book for around an hour while I waited for the WWE event to begin. I emerged from the garage to find that it was raining heavily, so I made the 15 to 20-minute walk in a downpour. The most exciting part was the lightning, as I saw a bolt of lightning hit the surface of the river not too far from where I was walking on the bridge, as well as others that were further from me. I didn't get struck by any lightning, so that was good.

I was totally soaked by the time I got to the entrance. My ticket was dripping with water. The lady who scanned it looked disgusted and held it by the very corner as she used her device to read the bar code. What are you gonna do? I found my seat pretty quickly, and it was a decent one. I wasn't on the floor, but I was pretty close and my head was right at about ring level. Elbow room was a little hard to come by, but at the intermission the people to the left of me left and I moved over a seat. I took a picture, but with my phone's potato camera and my unsteady hand, it didn't turn out that great.

The show itself was pretty awesome. If you drew up a perfect current-day wrestling show tailored to my interests, this probably would have been it. The show kicked off with a bang, a four-way tag team match between the Hardy Boyz, Luke Gallows / Karl Anderson, Enzo Amore / Big Cass, and Sheamus / Cesaro. The thing about WWE Live shows is that they don't really figure into the storylines for the WWE, so usually belts don't change hands or anything. The Hardy Boyz retained their belts with a Swanton Bomb finish, but everyone got some good moments in and the crowd was into it. Especially fun was when someone smacked the hair clean off the top of Enzo's head. I was happy to see all of those guys wrestle live, especially the Hardys, Enzo and Cass, and Sheamus.

It would be hard for anyone to follow that opener, but Sami Zayn and Curtis Axel did their best to keep the show rolling. Their matchup was pretty good, and there seemed to be a number of people in the crowd near me who were really excited about Zayn's appearance.

Next up was a Cruiserweight battle between Neville and Austin Aries. Their match was kind of a comedy match, with both wrestlers evading contact, then hitting with cheap strikes and hiding when the tables turned again. It was entertaining enough, and Neville eventually won, retaining his belt. The crowd got into this one pretty well, with battling chants for both wrestlers being thrown back and forth.

After that, some footage rolled of Roman Reigns getting beat up by Braun Strowman at a previous show. The ring announcer, JoJo, got up to say that sadly, Reigns would not be able to appear at the event due to his injuries. Then Braun Strowman's music came up, and he came out and took the microphone and challenged anyone in the back to come and fight him. No one came out, so he dropped the microphone and started heading back up the ramp. Of course, Roman's entrance music hit and he came out all wrapped in bandages and fought Strowman, eventually defeating him in spite of his extensive injuries. The crowd went totally nuts for this one.

After the intermission, there was a 4-way match for the Women's Championship between Bayley, Nia Jax, Sasha Banks, and Charlotte. I was pretty happy that I got to see Bayley and Nia Jax live at an event. The match followed the same basic blueprint as the Wrestlemania 4-way. Nia Jax beat everyone up until they teamed up on her, then the other three took turns doing their signature moves until Bayley hit a Bayley-to-Belly Suplex on Charlotte for the win. Nia Jax and Bayley both got big moments in this one, so I was pretty excited for this one. The token trading card in this post is the Topps WWE Now card of Bayley beating Charlotte at Fastlane 2017, with help from Sasha Banks. This one sold 153 copies.

The next fight pitted The Big Show against two opponents, Jinder Mahal and Titus O'Neil. I was really excited about getting to see Big Show live, and in that respect this match was awesome. The wrestlers also did a good job of making it entertaining, with Big Show eventually choke-slamming both opponents at the same time and pinning them each for the three-count with one hand. I don't know if I am reading into this too much, but it seemed a little awkward to me that a huge white guy was beating up the two darkest-skinned guys on the card, and Mahal and O'Neil were kind of playing bumbling roles, accidentally hitting each other or getting in the way. Mahal was getting a lot of guff from the crowd about giving a concussion (I think it was a real-life concussion, not a played-up injury) to Finn Balor a little while ago, so maybe the crowd atmosphere played into my impression of it. There were a couple of other incidents in the crowd, both good and bad, that had the topic on my mind anyway. Maybe I shouldn't even bring it up, but there was kind of a weird feel to the whole thing that might not have been there if Mahal or O'Neil had been paired with someone else against Big Show, or if they had won the match or presented as more of a legitimate threat to him. It could all be in my head, too. Either way, I was really excited to see The Big Show wrestle in a live event.

The Main Event was a tag team match. Kevin Owens came out and talked for a while about how the people in the crowd were bad parents, and that as the United States Champion, he would be the role model the kids in attendance needed. Then Samoa Joe was announced as his partner for a tag team match. After that, Chris Jericho and Seth Rollins came out as the opposing team. The crowd went absolutely bonkers for Jericho, probably about as nuts as they went for The Hardys and Roman Reigns. There were a bunch of tag-ins as Owens made it a point to avoid Jericho, but eventually the wrestlers got to fighting and they put on a pretty good show. Chris Jericho put the Walls of Jericho on Kevin Owens to close things out, then he addressed the crowd and thanked everyone for coming out, and after that he went ahead and put us all on The List. The guy really knows how to work a crowd, which is probably why they still pay him to wrestle.

I had a pretty good time all around, and a baseball game followed by the WWE event made for a great day. It didn't even rain much while I headed back to my car, although it was really coming down at points during the drive back to my hotel.

A Legendary Members Only Card - Jackie Robinson

I've been saving this card in my draft queue for a while now, so that I could post it today. As the back of the card notes, today was Jackie Robinson day, the anniversary of the date in 1947 when Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier and became the first black man to play in a Major League Baseball game.

The card itself comes from the wonderful 2014 Topps Stadium Club set. It's one of the Members Only parallels, which weren't serially-numbered, but are rumored to have a print run of around 7 copies each. I've been chasing down as many different Members Only cards as I can get from the 2014 set, but it's not often that I add one featuring a legitimate legend of the game. This one cost me a little more than my usual ceiling on these cards, but the price was good enough that I jumped on it right away.

I even got to spend Jackie Robinson Day at the ballpark. I am in Ohio again for training, so I went and watched the NL Central-leading Reds take on the Milwaukee Brewers, with all of the players wearing Jackie Robinson's #42 on their jerseys. My seat was right on the field, but it unfortunately it was also right behind the ball boy, so I couldn't really see the pitcher or much of the infield at all. That was kind of disappointing, but I guess that's how it goes sometimes. The game was a nice back-and-forth affair, with plenty of offense and a lot of pitchers coming in to the game. The Reds eventually came out on top, winning 7-5.

Notable highlights from the game were Eric Thames hitting two home runs for the Brewers and Jesse Winker getting his first MLB hit, a double that landed about 35 feet from me and brought home the go-ahead runs for the Reds. I can barely see myself in videos of the highlight, but not well enough to tell other people how to find me. I was sitting right out in the sun for the whole game, and I am definitely feeling it now. My arms and face have turned a very bright shade of red, and my skin is probably going to be on fire tomorrow. It's already started a little, and I can really feel it on my scalp. In spite of the obstructed view and the sunburn, it was still a pretty good day. I have a pretty full day lined up tomorrow as well, and hopefully I'll be able to recover enough to make it back to class on Monday.

Katie Cook Stormtrooper Sketch

It's time for another Star Wars sketch, but this time it's not a sketch of Princess Leia. I would love to get a Leia sketch from this artist, but her work is quite popular and I haven't seen one come up in my price range yet. When I can't get a sketch of my favorite characters from an artist on my wish list, I will usually just put bids in on auctions until I get one at a discounted rate. That's what happened here.

Katie Cook has a distinctive art style and is pretty famous, especially in the Star Wars and My Little Pony worlds. She has done a fair amount of licensed sketch card work, and Cryptozoic devoted an insert set to her work in the DC Comics: Women of Legend trading card product.

The sketch I picked up was one of her mini-paintings, which is her way of making sure the largest number of fans can get an example of her work at conventions. This is a Star Wars Stormtrooper, who has apparently seen something that causes concern. I'm guessing he's seen an enraged Wookiee. Someday I would like to get something a little more robust from Cook, but this is a nice placeholder until that day comes.

She's got a Facebook fan page and an Instagram feed that she is updating with regularity as of this writing. There is also an art agent who seems to represent most of the My Little Pony art talent, and Katie Cook's page has a few pieces of published art and some prices and examples for commissioned work. A couple of sketch commissions from her are on my wish list, for sure.

Some Singletons that Look Familiar

With all of the parallels out there in the cardboard world, it seems like a collector is bound to wind up purchasing a few cards that look familiar. That was the case with this lot of Jon Singleton cards from 2014 Topps Triple Threads. I picked them up from my usual haunt (eBay), and when they arrived I found myself saying, "I wonder if I already have those?"

So I did a quick search of my blog and found that I did indeed already have an Orange parallel in my collection, purchased at some point in early 2015. This copy is numbered # 103 / 125. It might help me out if I actually had my collection organized and uploaded into a collection-tracking utility like the Trading Card Database or the mostly-dead Zistle.

I didn't already have a copy of this Blue parallel, though, and it's the one with the lower print run. This one is numbered # 14 / 50. I like the blue color on this card.

Singleton is currently playing down at AA for the Corpus Christi Hooks, and his numbers have been pretty good at that level. It's hard to believe that he's still just 25 years old. I wonder if he'll ever be able to catch up to the MLB level and put together a few decent years on someone's roster? I guess time will tell.