Pink Press Pass Patrick Parallel

I keep expecting that I will run out of NASCAR cards to post about, but I keep finding cards in my price range to post about on Sundays, my customary day for posting racing cards. This time I've got a Magenta Proof parallel of Danica Patrick from 2013 Press Pass Racing. I believe these were a retail-only parallel and are unnumbered. The seller had two other Magenta Danica cards from this set up for sale, but other buyers bid more than the opening bid on them and I wound up winning just the one with my initial bid.

NASCAR doesn't start back up for another couple of weeks, so my focus lately has been on other things. The Super Bowl is the main thing right now, and I am just hoping against hope that the Broncos don't put up another game like their terrible showing a couple of years ago versus the Seahawks. I would like them to win, of course, but even a good competitive game would (kinda) be okay.

I've been watching the Houston Rockets fumble their way through the NBA season. They will probably make the playoffs as a 7 or 8 seed, but I can't see them winning a series against any of the teams ahead of them in the standings. The re-acquisition of Josh Smith shows that they are trying, but I just don't think the James Harden - Dwight Howard pairing is enough to compete with the big dogs in the Western Conference.

Yahoo! recently opened up their Fantasy Baseball game for registration, so I am looking forward to setting up some teams and studying projections for the upcoming baseball season. The Astros signed Doug Fister to a deal, news which will be a couple of weeks in the past by the time this post goes live. I hope he can be 2011-2014 Doug Fister more than 2015 Doug Fister. All of the free agency news and the anticipation of a new season have had me toying with the idea of re-opening up my copy of Out of the Park 16, the super-detailed baseball front office simulator. I am hesitant to do so, though, because that game sucks me in for weeks at a time. Last year I created a league based in the Pacific Northwest that randomly added historical MLB players to the drafts, then I played through many many seasons, chasing those elusive playoff spots and championship trophies. I would recommend against playing OOTP if you have anything else going on in your life, because the quest for just one more winning season will cause you to neglect school, work, sleep, family, and basic personal hygiene routines. With that being said I am sure that OOTP 17 will be releasing fairly soon, and I can't wait to see what it has in store!

Breaking It Down 28: 2015 Topps UFC Champions

I've had sort of a standing appointment to sit and watch the breaks over at TeamBreaks.com each week. Since they do smaller breaks the spots are pretty cheap and I usually buy in to at least one or two of them. He does giveaways after most of the weekly breaks, and I've been lucky enough to win some break credit a couple of weeks in a row. It's certainly more fun when you're playing with house money instead of your own bankroll. I think the cards in this post all came from a random weight class break where I wound up with the Lightweight division.

I got a pile of base cards and unnumbered Silver parallels but I didn't scan them. We're here just for the hits. These first few cards come from the lower end of the parallel spectrum, Black and Blue (how appropriate for the UFC!). The Black parallels are # / 188 and the Blue are # / 88. These cards become more interesting to me as I watch more fights and develop rooting interests. You kind of have to keep a wide range of fighters as favorites because any given fighter might only have a couple of fights per year. I think the only guy here who I've seen in action is Michael Chiesa in his victory over Jim Miller in December 2015. I was rooting for Jim Miller in that one, but it was still a good match that won Fight of the Night honors.

Khabib Nurmagomedov has a 22-0 record but has missed his last few scheduled fights due to injury. He's still ranked pretty highly in the Lightweight rankings, though, and presumably will be a top contender when he comes back from his injuries. Rafael Dos Anjos came out and just blasted Donald Cerrone in their December 2015 fight, and now he's scheduled to fight the infamous Conor McGregor, who is changing weight classes for the fight after blasting Jose Aldo a few seconds into their UFC 194 fight to claim the Featherweight title. I don't really like McGregor's mouth or his antics, but he is making money and gathering fans with his gimmick so I can't really blame the guy for living the high life and having an ego about it. Anyway, I hope Dos Anjos can stand in there and win their UFC 196 fight in March.

Speaking of Khabib Nurmagomedov, I also pulled the autographed version of his Fighting Futures insert. This is die-cut, serially-numbered # 46 / 50, and features a sticker autograph of the highly-ranked fighter. This card probably got me back the cost of the slot or maybe more, but I don't know how to time the selling of MMA cards. I might hold onto it until he gets a fight and then gamble on a triumphant return.

2010 BBM True Heart Women's Pro Wrestling

I picked up this set quite a while ago, like maybe in early 2015, but I never got around to posting about it. The 2010 BBM True Heart Japanese Women's Pro Wrestling cards were distributed as a boxed set, with a 96-card base checklist and 3 insert cards (I believe there may have been inserts and autographs, but I am not sure). My boxed set was advertised as complete, but upon opening it I found that the three extra cards were missing. I worked out a partial refund with the seller. This top photo is a scan of the box lid.

The bottom of the box contains a checklist for the base set. This checklist is broken down by promotion, so you can see that each section has a header like JWP, LLPW, and NEO, which are all different wrestling leagues. The last portion of the checklist is made up of the freelance wrestlers who might wrestle for several different promotions in a given year. There aren't any subsets for Hall of Fame or retired wrestlers in the 2010 edition. Maybe they were included among the inserts? I don't really know.

The inside of the box lid has a few casual pictures of popular wrestlers, which for the most part I believe are taken from the backs of their cards. It also contains the set serial number, with this being box # 1542 / 3000. Later sets would move from the box set format to random pack-based distribution. The 2016 set just released and some of the cards have hit eBay already. I have been anxiously awaiting my three boxes, which left Tokyo the day I wrote this post. I am working a little ahead on my blog posts, so I will hopefully have them in-hand by the time this goes live.

I picked a few of my favorite wrestlers to show what the base cards look like. They are color-coded by promotion, so looking at the stack of cards from the side produces a nice stratified rainbow effect. Command Bolshoi is probably my favorite wrestler, which means she will probably retire soon and leave me to look for some other favorite. She is also a bodybuilder and musician, so she's got quite a bit going on.

Command Bolshoi & Makoto vs Kyoko Kimura & Hanako Nakamori

Posted by Makoto - Fan Page on Sunday, January 31, 2016

Makoto actually posted some photos of a tag team match the other day where she teamed up with Command Bolshoi to wrestle Kyoko Kimura and Hanako Nakamori. Most of the wrestlers' affiliations with a specific promotion don't necessarily tie them down from working with other promotions or making guest appearances all over the place.

While the card fronts are largely anglicized, the backs are in Japanese. You can parse out some of the biographical data pretty easily, but I haven't taken the time to try translating the blocks of text at the bottom. If I'm going to keep buying stuff from Japan I really need to take a few years to learn to navigate the language. I get by online with lots of guesswork and online translators, but there is a lot of contextual stuff that just passes me by.

I thought that Dash Chisako's shirt was interesting, as it commemorates Super Bowl XXIX between the San Diego Chargers and San Francisco 49ers. It's just an interesting choice of ring gear, especially as it is appearing in a wrestling card set released 15 years after that Super Bowl was played.

While the front of Haru Miyako's card is relatively boring, the back is anything but. I don't know why she is wearing football gear and flanked by a Sasquatch and a Yeti, but it makes for an interesting photo. Kana is now with the WWE as Asuka, which I imagine is a career path that many wrestlers hope for. Some of the other Japanese wrestlers posted photos mocking the move, stuffing their bras and strutting around like the stereotypical WWE Divas that come to mind when you mention the women's division of the WWE. There's probably a bit of jealousy there as well as a sense of betrayal.

Toshie Uematsu took her hairstyle straight out of There's Something About Mary. She and Dump Matsumoto represent earlier generations of wrestler. Someone in one of the Facebook groups was lamenting that there aren't a lot of heels in the current Japanese promotions. I think a lot of the heels from the past, like Dump Matsumoto and Toshie Uematsu have retired and no one wants to step up and fill that role. I don't know enough or watch enough matches to know if there really is a heel void that needs filled, but I think it would be hard to run a story line where everyone is a hero and no one is the villain.

That's all I scanned for the 2010 BBM True Heart Women's Pro Wrestling Set. I still have a few years that I haven't covered, as well as a few years that I don't have sets for. I'll probably be getting to 2011, 2012, and 2016 in the relatively near future. I'm still missing sets from 2000 and earlier, 2002-2005, and 2008-2009. I'll keep filling them in when I can, but the older stuff just doesn't pop up that often from sources available to the US.

Wrapped in Plastic, It's Fantastic! 2

While searching for my Jim Abbott card from 2015 Topps Archives Signature Series I came across a couple of other cards from the product that interested me for various reasons. I am still chasing one of them, but I was able to get the other a little while ago after some stress caused by a postal delay. The package got stuck in Pennsylvania around the time of the big winter storm and even after other mail stuck in PA got moving again this package stayed still. After it had sat for six days I opened a help ticket on the USPS website and within a few hours of that the package was scanned in to my local processing center for delivery the next day. Here is the card I waited so long for:

It's a copy of John Kruk's 1989 Topps Traded card. I wanted the card mostly because this card is not flattering at all. Topps did a bad enough job selecting this photo and messing up the airbrushing, but then they came back 26 years later and asked him to autograph 54 copies of the thing. I guess maybe this picture of Kruk engaging in a little mouth-breathing against a stark white wall was the Topps airbrusher's easiest one to work with? That's the only reason I can think of to choose this photo outside of having some sort of personal agenda against the player. It's almost enough to make me start a John Kruk super-collection. Beckett has graded one copy of Kruk's 1989 Topps Traded card, a card that came away with a relatively average 8.5 final score.

Actually, in looking at his stats and reading about his career, I just might start myself a little John Kruk PC. *goes and adds all 100+ John Kruk cards in JustCommons.com's inventory to cart* Well, that was fun. I like picking up instant player collections on that website. Most of the cards were between 10 and 15 cent apiece, so it was like a virtual John Kruk dime box. There were a few higher-priced items, though, so the final average per card was around 20 cents. Still not too bad. I'm looking forward to a nice cardboard retrospective spanning his career, assuming I actually go back and close out the order. It looks like he's got some good stuff on Sportlots and eBay too, but I should probably start with just the one lot and build from there. He's got some nice relics, oddballs, promos, and autographs out there so it should be a pretty fun PC to work on.

Here's the back of the card. It hasn't been altered at all from the original appearance. I guess I could mention that this copy is # 45 / 54, which is a nice palindromic serial number. I didn't buy this card for that reason, though, I just bought it because it was the first one to fall to me at my bid price. Everything about this card makes me happy and I am glad that it has spurred me into starting a new player collection.

Just last night I won an auction for the third and final card I was seeking from the 2015 Topps Archives Signature Edition set, so look forward to reading about that in the next couple of weeks. I have my post queue built almost all the way through February, so it may take some time before I can fit that next one into the rotation.

Konami Kawasaki

Way back in early 2015 I grabbed a copy of Munenori Kawasaki's 2009 Konami Baseball Heroes WBC card. A couple of weeks ago his 2008 Konami Baseball Heroes card popped up in my eBay feed with an extremely reasonable Buy It Now price. I nearly strained my clicking finger as I added it to my cart and completed the transaction before anyone else could get it out from under me.

While the 2009 card features him in his World Baseball Classic uniform, this card shows him in his Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks garb. He's also sporting a much more serious face in his photo on the back of this card.

These cards were used in some sort of arcade game which, according to Zippy Zappy, inspired the creation of the SEGA Card-Gen arcade game and the trading cards associated with it. The card is a little rough around the edges, so maybe it spent some time actually being used in the arcade. I can't read most of what's on the card, but based on Kawasaki's scores I think he was a fairly valuable player in the game.

I mentioned this recently, but Kawasaki was signed to a minor league deal with the Cubs and might have a hard time getting playing time on the Major League roster. I do really hope that the change in teams is enough to get him a few cards in 2016 sets, as I like gathering cardboard with him on it. It'll be a sad day for me when there are no more Kawasaki cards, although there are plenty out there that I haven't been able to pick up yet, especially among card sets released in Japan.

Pack of the Day 122: The First Cards of the Year - 2016 Topps Series 1 Hanger Box

Some of my posts recently have had a pretty negative tone, discussing my problems with eBay transactions and my ongoing bad experience with the Topps redemption replacement program. Now it's time for something a little more positive; the first new cards of 2016! I stopped at Target on the way home today and they had the new 2016 Topps Baseball Series 1 cards on the card shelves. I selected a hanger box from the pegs and brought it home with me. And the first card of 2016 is:

Matt Kemp of the San Diego Padres! I guess it could be worse. The picture is all right. I am still warming up to the design. I think I would prefer that the photographs look a little more natural. I like the look of the team logos in the lower corner. I'm glad that the card fronts feature both team names and player positions. The card numbers look a little better in person, but I like them to be darker than they are. Those are my initial impressions of the set. 

I didn't scan all of the cards in the box. I have to leave some surprises for other people to find. Noah Syndergaard's card just about got pulled off the scanner by that heavy trophy at the bottom of his card and all that foil at the top. Jayson Werth had a run-in with the law last year, but his beard game is on point. I'll pretty much always scan a Max Scherzer card, I didn't realize that Jarrod Saltalamacchia had moved to Arizona. Maybe I knew it at some point last year, but as of today I didn't remember it.

That Kris Bryant guy is pretty popular, or so I've heard. He gets a little trophy and some foil across the top of his card, too. Gattis remains among my favorite Astros. They won't be catching many people by surprise this year, so hopefully Houston can live up to last year's promise.

There are celebration shots in this year's set, with this hanger box producing a photo of Huston Street getting an involuntary shower.

There are some decent horizontal cards in the set, with Melvin Upton Jr. and Jay Bruce standing out among the cards I got. I like seeing two Astros on that League Leaders card. The inserts in the pack kick off with that Rusney Castillo card, which I believe comes from the Perspectives set.

The other inserts I got are a Yu Darvish MLB Debut card, a Warren Spahn Amazing Milestones card, a Garrett Jones card from the Pressed Into Service set which highlights position players who have been called on to pitch in games, an Addison Russell from the 100 Years at Wrigley insert, a Roger Clemens from the Berger's Best checklist, and a Rainbow Foil parallel of Adam LaRoche. I was mildly disappointed that I didn't get a First Pitch insert, but there will be plenty of opportunity to get some of those this year. So far the inserts that interest me most are First Pitch and Pressed Into Service. The others I probably won't bother too much with.

That does it for this Pack of the Day post. I imagine there will be plenty of 2016 Topps up on the blogosphere over the next week. I like the cards well enough, and this hanger box made a nice start to the new collecting year.

Seeking Redemption 15: The Replacement

edit 3/5/2016: Topps has resolved this issue to my satisfaction. You can read about it here.

Way back in 2013 or maybe early 2014 I pulled a redemption card from 2013 Topps Archives for a Real Heavy Metal Autograph of Winger/Whitesnake guitarist Reb Beach. These were different from the regular Heavy Metal autographs in that the cards were to be made of metal and limited to a print run of 25 copies. So, a pretty cool card. After a couple of years of waiting I decided that the card probably wasn't going to be made, so I requested a replacement from Topps through their customer service e-mail address. That led to a ticket being opened and they came back with a valuation of $20-25 on the card. They won't tell you which card they are sending as a replacement, just that it will come from the same sport as the original redemption. I accepted the $20-25 value and this is what I got in my envelope from Topps:

It's a 2013 Topps Archives Fan Favorite autograph of Bob Welch. I don't have anything against Mr. Welch, but since November this card has sold 8 times on eBay for an average of about $10.80. That is significantly less than the value Topps quoted me, and this card just plain doesn't match up. Topps made it pretty easy for me to compare the two cards because they both hail from the same product. Going back to the pack odds in 2013 Archives, the Fan Favorites Autographs were a 1:14 pack pull while the Real Heavy Metal Autographs fell at 1:2,250 pack odds.

In the end it is just cardboard and ink (or Real Heavy Metal and ink), but I can't help being disappointed that Topps replaced a pretty rare and cool hit with the most basic hit in the product. I wasn't expecting the moon, but I was hoping for something in the same realm of rarity as the card I pulled the redemption for.