"You're tearing me apart, Lisa!"

It seems like every year, there are a few subjects in the Topps Allen & Ginter checklist whose autographs and/or relics I just have to have. This year was no different, with Biz Markie, Champ Pederson, Christopher McDonald, Jon Lovitz, and Tommy Wiseau all appearing in the product. I've already tracked down a Biz Markie redemption and a Champ Pederson signature, but I haven't yet nabbed Christopher McDonald or Jon Lovitz.

I did finally manage to get autograph and relic cards featuring actor/director Tommy Wiseau, whose film 'The Room' is famous for being incredibly bad. The film is such a wreck and the filming went so poorly that it was the subject of a book that became a movie called 'The Disaster Artist.' Cult classics and pop culture are right in my wheelhouse, so I had to get these into my collection. The relic card is your standard Ginter fare, and the autograph is actually one of the Black-framed parallels, numbered # 23 / 25. I got it for just a hair more than the regular unnumbered autographs were selling for, so I figured that was pretty good.

Here are the backs, for the sake of completeness. I don't know if I would recommend watching Wiseau's movie, but it might be entertaining to read up on it a little if you've got some time to kill. If nothing else, it's got a lot of one-liners in it that make for good inside jokes among friends.

A Big Box of Goodies from SumoMenkoMan

A few weeks ago a big surprise box showed up in my mail from SumoMenkoMan of the Japanese Sumo Wrestling Cards and Menko blog. It was packed to the brim with cardboard and sugary goodies. He is stationed in Europe and collects Japanese cards as a hobby, so this package was stuffed with stuff you don't see a lot here in the United States.

There were a whole bunch of duplo bars, a Schoko-Brownie, and some Hi-Chew candies from Japan. You can get Hi-Chew here in the U.S. now, but not in the cool packaging.

There were also some of these cola-flavored gummies. Haribo gummies always remind me of the trip I took to Europe with my sisters in 2003. On our way back to the airport to get home, we were nearly out of cash, and the only thing in the shop we could afford was a couple bags of gummies. So we bought them and spent part of the train ride divvying them up.

SumoMenkoMan said that the PX on the local military base had plenty of old retail packs on the shelves, so he sent me a selection of those as well as a couple packs of 2017 BBM Baseball Cards from Japan and some German Soccer card packs. 

In addition to the packs, he included a couple of BBM Sumo cards featuring Mitakeumi Hisashi. I don't know a lot about sumo, but I know a little more than I used to thanks to SumoMenkoMan's blog.

Here is one of the soccer cards. They are much smaller and more square than traditional trading cards. They have a player photo and facsimile signature on front and a little information about the player on the back.

The retail packs didn't yield a whole lot, but there were some interesting cards in the packs. I think that Grady Sizemore card is a Rainbow Foil parallel. I thought it was cool to pull a Kosuke Fukudome card. He's still playing professional baseball at age 41. The Steven Matz insert and base card came one after the other in the same pack. I've always liked those Bowman Scouts' Top 100 inserts. It's fun to have a prospect ranking list in trading card form.

Thanks for the awesome package SumoMenkoMan! It was a great surprise, and there was plenty of neat stuff in there!

Astros and an Abbott from ATBATT

I recently (well, within the last month or so) got a package of cards from Stealing Home of the All Trade Bait All the Time blog. I haven't exactly been active on my blog lately, so I Tweeted out a thank you shortly after the package arrived, but I am only now getting around to writing a blog post. I am still collecting cards, but I just have not had the urge to write about them much for the last few months.

First up in the package were a couple of shiny Bowman's Best Astros, Yulieski Gurriel and Jose Altuve. Bowman's Best isn't a product I see a lot of, so it was nice to get a look at a couple of cards from the set.

The next few cards feature some recent Astros cardboard, with a few Gypsy Queen examples and a Yulieski Gurriel insert from the flagship Topps set.

Some older cards also appeared in the shipment, with Hall of Famers Nolan Ryan and Jeff Bagwell making appearances. I don't have a lot of Bagwell cards in my collection, so it was nice to get a couple more of his cards into my collection. Dave Meads and Danny Darwin aren't Hall of Famers, but they are at least sporting some sweet rainbow uniforms. Jim Abbott's fame probably exceeds his stat line by a bit, but he's got quite a story, too.

This was a pretty fun group of cards to flip through, and I always love to get mail. I don't like to trade, but I do like sending cards back and forth with other bloggers. Thank you for the fun package!

June 2018 Loot Locker

I got my baseball Loot Locker for June a couple of days ago, so here's my monthly breakdown. As usual, I ordered the Triple Play locker instead of the All-Star. The Triple Play costs a little more, but also includes a couple more packs. There is also a high-end Grand Slam option, as well as similar options for the other major sports.

Loot Lockers ship in a 400-count card box with a locker-themed sticker on top to advertise for the company and their partner, collecting supply company Ultra-Pro.

Here is the line-up for June. I got the usual pack of Ultra-Pro top loaders and sleeves, a little bag of candy, 2 packs of 2018 Bowman, 3 packs of 2018 Topps Series 2, and 3 packs of 2018 Topps Pro Debut. Let's break down the estimated cost of the included packs, to see if $30 + $5 shipping is a good deal for this month's Loot Locker. My method is to take the hobby box price from major online retailers, divide by the number of packs in a box, and then multiply by the number of packs in the locker.

2018 Bowman: $152.95 / 24 packs = $6.37 x 2 packs = $12.75
2018 Topps Series 2: $64.95 / 36 = $1.80 x 3 packs = $5.41
2018 Topps Pro Debut: $69.95 / 24 = $2.91 x 3 packs = $8.74

$12.75 + $5.41 + $8.74 = $26.90

That number is on the low end of the values I've see over the 6 months I've been keeping track. It can probably be attributed largely to the drop in prices on boxes of Bowman recently. They went from $7.50 a pack in May to $6.37 per pack in June. If you go with the $7.50 value for Bowman, this box is right about where my calculated average Triple Play Loot Locker 'value' has been over the last few months.

The two Bowman packs yielded two 2018 RoY Favorites inserts and not much else. Rafael Devers is struggling a bit so far in 2018, and Francisco Mejia seems to be fighting with the Indians over playing anywhere but catcher, which seems to be delaying his move back to the MLB roster from AAA.

The Pro Debut packs gave me a couple of Pomo Night Uniforms inserts, a MiLB Leaps and Bounds insert of A.J. Puk, and a base card of Ronald Acuna. Nothing else from the packs really jumped out at me.

The 2018 Topps Series 2 gave me a short-printed Greg Maddux variation. This photo variation card is the type that falls approximately one per box. I also got an All-Star insert of Frank Thomas, a Gold parallel of Jonathan Lucroy, and a Topps Salute insert of Austin Hays.

That wasn't the greatest break ever, but busting packs is a lottery. I am tempted to skip July, but the pack lineup for July includes Allen & Ginter, Stadium Club, and Optic. That's a hard group to pass up. I guess we'll see.

Danica Patrick Rookie Tape Autograph

I have to work the weekend and it's already getting late, so this is going to be a quick post. Probably. Sometimes I get long-winded on quick posts.

I have pretty much given up on being a completist collector when it comes to my player collections. There are so many products and parallels and hits out there that it's pretty much impossible to get everything made for an individual. That goes double when you're trying to collect cardboard featuring a star whose cards drive whole product lines. Although I do try to get as many cards for my collections as possible, I don't chase everything with equal zeal. But every so often I find something unique or different that I have to have.

That was the case with this 2011 Press Pass Eclipse Signature Series Rookie Tape autograph card of Danica Patrick. For people who aren't sure what Rookie Tape is, it's a yellow tape stripe that is put on the back of a car to let other drivers know that a racer hasn't raced that track before. There are different conventions and rules about it, but it is basically a bright marker on a car to let people know you're new. So this card contains a strip of tape, probably from Danica Patrick's Nationwide Series car, as she hadn't raced at the top level of NASCAR yet when this card was produced. The card is numbered # 09 / 11, so this isn't an easy one to find.

I happened to stumble across this listing very soon after it was posted to eBay. The price was too good and the relic was too unique for me to pass it up. I hit the Buy It Now pretty quickly and soon it was in my hands.

This isn't a very good picture of it, but the relic window is pretty deep, so the authentication sticker had to make a pretty big dip to get from the card surface down to the signature on the tape. Usually autographs are on the surface of the card (or on a sticker on the card), so you don't get a stepped authentication sticker like this.

2010 SEGA Card Gen Lot

My 4th of July didn't go exactly as planned. We were going to take the kids to the water park, but I woke up with a headache, dizzy spells, and an upset stomach. So my wife and kids went to the water park and I mostly stayed in bed. I did manage to go out and get a handful of fireworks in the late afternoon, and after my family came home I went outside to set them off. It kind of stunk to be sick on the holiday, but I am feeling a little better this evening and should be able to make it in to work in the morning.

I have a full set of 2013 SEGA Card Gen cards and a pretty large number of cards from the 2012 set, but I don't have many from the earlier versions of the product out of Japan. A bunch of 2010 SEGA Card Gen cards came up on eBay recently, and I grabbed a fair number of them. For the most part I didn't bite on any of the higher-priced big names, but I got a lot of other guys from the set. Kendrys Morales' Wikipedia page says that MLB mistakenly called him 'Kendry' until May 2011, and you can see that on his card here.

I did wind up grabbing one big name in this lot, opting to pay a little more to get that Lance Berkman card into my collection. Other than that, this scan has a lot of relief pitchers and a couple of starters. And Nate McLouth.

Here are some card backs for you. I love all of the trading card game / video game imagery on these cards, with the star ratings and the power bars for different attributes. It seems odd to me that Lance Berkman has a relatively low total score of 75 and an 8-star rating, but I am guessing that certain attributes are worth more stars than others.

Here are the last eight cards from this lot. Carlos Gomez made the GIF and video circuit today for beating up a cooler with his bat. I hope he feels better now. I like that picture of Rod Barajas in his catching gear.

The seller also included a quartet of shiny bonus cards in the package. The highlight is probably that Jose Bautista in the upper left, but I also like that Refractory Dylan Bundy in the lower left.

Deadlift Lolita - It's SO Time - CD Single with Autographs

I've posted about Deadlift Lolita before. They are a kawaiicore (a blend of J-pop and heavy metal) band made up of professional wrestlers and bodybuilders Ladybeard and Reika Saiki. Their first cd single was called Muscle Cocktail, and I recently saw on Twitter that they'd released a second single entitled It's 躁タイム! I think that roughly translates to It's SO Time! I went ahead and placed an order on Ladybeard's website. I don't think the site mentioned this when I made my order, but now the item description says that the first 40 orders will include an autograph and an instant photo.

My copy of the single was autographed by Ladybeard and Reika Saiki. That makes this a pretty cool bit of swag.

The back of the cd sleeve has the track listing and pictures of the group, which I believe come from Japan Weekend Madrid, where the music video for It's SO Time! was filmed.

An instant photo with additional autographs was included in the package as well. Considering the price that Reika Saiki autographs from the BBM True Heart wrestling card sets go for, two autographs for the price of a cd (even with shipping that tripled the cost of the purchase) is a nice deal.

For anyone who is curious, here is the official music video for the song. It's not my favorite song by them, but it's decent. My favorites from them are Six-Pack Twins, Pump Up JAPAN, and Muscle Cocktail.