I Bought a Piece of Munenori Kawasaki's Ball on Buyee

Late last month I posted about a single wrestling card that I bought from Japan using the Buyee purchasing service. I hinted that I had also bought a single baseball card through Buyee, and today I am going to post about that card.

This is a Munenori Kawasaki baseball relic card from 2008 BBM Touch the Game. I was originally going to post about my Munenori Kawasaki collection for Collecting Cutch's Top 10 contest, but I realized that I didn't actually have ten decent Kawasaki cards to post about. I went looking on Yahoo! Auctions through Buyee and found this one, but by the time I got this card and a few from COMC it was too late and I went with R.A. Dickey for my contest entry instead. I don't know much about this set, but it's a cool card with a bit of baseball embedded in it. I don't think the baseball is game-used or anything, but who knows?

The card features Kawasaki as a member of the Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks. It is serially-numbered # 189 / 300, so it's not particularly rare, but you're probably also not going to find a whole bunch of them lying around. Even though I didn't get this card in time to post about it for the contest, I was happy to add a unique relic card to my Munenori Kawasaki collection. After spending most of last year with the Cubs' AAA team, Kawasaki is back in Japan this season as a member of the Hawks. I don't imagine we'll see him in Major League Baseball again.

Pack of the Day 167: Several Rack Packs of 2017 Bowman Platinum

I dusted off the scanner yesterday and processed some photos, so I've got some new stuff in my blog queue. That's pretty exciting for me.

On Monday I had an appointment 'in town' with my doctor. Although I live in the 3rd-largest city in Idaho (according to the 2010 census) and work in the largest city in the state, I still think of traveling outside my neighborhood as going into town. My doctor told me I'm tired all the time because I make bad decisions and go to bed too late, and that she can't help me if I don't put in some effort on my own. She also threatened to hit me when I told her my caffeine intake. She's a pretty good doctor, because she doesn't put up with my shenanigans.

Anyway, since I was in town, I decided to hit up the nearby Walmarts to see if I could scare up any of that 2017 Bowman Platinum stuff I've been hearing about. The first Wal-Mart had a display for Bowman Platinum, but the display was empty except for some clearance blasters of old Panini football products. I looked on the pegs and all around the shelves, but there weren't any loose packs or anything to be found.

I moved on to a second store, and found one rack pack on a peg and another couple of rack packs behind some blind-box collectible figurines. The Bowman Platinum display box was entirely empty, so again I didn't come away with a box of cards.

After that I stopped at a pharmacy to pick up a prescription, and it was close enough to a third Walmart that I decided to give it a shot. Similarly, the display box here was empty, but I found a handful of rack packs hidden behind other products here and there throughout the card aisle. I bought those, too. I really wanted to get a box of Platinum instead of rack packs, but they just aren't in stock in my area. There is a fourth Walmart down the road, but I haven't tried that one yet. I don't know if I will.

Each rack pack has 12 cards in it. Gleybar Torres and Dansby Swanson get the cover treatment. The rack packs contain special parallels of the prospect cards in the set.

Here are the pack odds and NPN information, for those who are into that kind of stuff.

The base cards are shiny, like you'd expect from a product called Platinum. I didn't get the Bellinger rookie card that people are going nuts for, but I did pull one Aaron Judge card. I won't be able to retire from selling it, but at least I got one. There was quite a bit of duplication between my packs, so I pulled a lot of the same players multiple times. Unfortunately, Judge wasn't one of them.

These cards come from the Prospects set. They've got a different card design, and the card numbers are based on the players initials rather than actual numerals. Those two Cubs guys were part of the trade for Jose Quintana a couple of days ago.

The blue cards on the left are the exclusive Prospect parallels. They came one per pack. On the right are some of the serially-numbered parallels I pulled from the packs. Jackie Bradley Jr., Blake Rutherford, and Rafael Devers are all Purple parallels numbered # / 250. Dinelson Lamet is a Green parallel numbered # / 99. I pulled one other Purple, but the corners of every card in that pack were heavily dinged, so I set them aside.

Since I didn't pull any autographs, this Orange parallel of Michael Fulmer was probably the hit of the break, outside of Aaron Judge. This one is numbered # 02 / 25.

I like the design of these Bowman's Next Generation inserts. They kind of look like 2016 Topps Bunt turned up to eleven.

I got another Aaron Judge card, this one from the Platinum Presence insert set. Again, the team logos play a big role in the design of these cards.

Finally, I pulled four of these Rookie Radar inserts. It was nice to get an Astro in Yulieski Gurriel, who has been coming on lately for the team. Hopefully they can carry this season's success all the way through to the postseason.

That's my rundown on my 2017 Bowman Platinum break. This is probably all of the Platinum I'll open for the year, mostly because all of the local stores have been cleared out. I was lucky to find the packs I got. It's a decent product, but like any prospect-based release I find that a lot of the names are unfamiliar.

The Card So Nice I Bought It Twice

Today's card has a story that dates back to November of last year. To recap, in November 2016 I purchased this 2014 Topps Supreme autograph of Jon Singleton on eBay. It is the Red parallel, numbered # 03 / 10. It took me about a month to get to scanning the card and processing it for a blog post. I was surprised to see that my scan was for an Orange parallel, numbered # 02 / 15. So I went back and looked at the card, searched my collection a bit, and eventually determined that the seller had sent the wrong card and I hadn't noticed when I opened the package and added it to the stack of cards to scan. I needed the Orange parallel anyway, so I didn't make a stink about it and kept the card.

A while later, I was browsing cards on COMC and I saw something familiar in the Jon Singleton listings. It was the Orange parallel, numbered # 03 / 10! The seller's COMC name matched the eBay handle from the original purchase. I sent the seller an offer for the amount I had won the original auction for, which he rejected. I then sent a message explaining what had happened and asked if he would be willing to cut me a deal. He relented and accepted my offer. Hooray! The card arrived with my next COMC shipment, and I finally have the card so nice I bought it twice nestled safely in my Jon Singleton player collection.

My wife's computer has been driving her crazy lately, as it was kind of a cheap stopgap machine to get her by for a while after her old laptop gave up the ghost. She ordered a new laptop early this week, which ought to be a nice upgrade for her. I was pretty jealous, as my laptop is three years old now, and the new models we looked at were shiny and fast. The problem was that my laptop was still in pretty good shape, so I couldn't justify the cost of a new machine. I settled for an upgrade from 8 to 16 GB of RAM, which seems to make a difference in my computer speed when I have a million internet browser tabs open at the same time. I also used my Ebates account to order her computer, because Ebates was offering 10% cash back on the Dell website. I have to wait until November to get the cash back payment, but at that time I'll have about $100 sent to my Paypal account that I can spend on cards or sketches.

Pack of the Day 166: Dustra Inceptions 2

Here is something a little new (to me). A person named Rachel Ahrendes has created a trading card set that centers around sketch artists drawing characters of their own design, rather than licensed properties. The card series is called Inceptions and the company that makes them is called Dustra Productions. The website is a little convoluted, but there have been two sets released so far.

I'd heard a little buzz about the set online, and the artist list contains a bunch of artists whose work I like, so I contacted Ahrendes on Facebook and ordered a pack of Inceptions 2. The pack arrived in a snap case, with 8 cards from the set, a promo card, and a sketch. To me, it looks like the base cards feature the original concept art for the characters on the front, with character names and artist information on the back. I got cards 16-23 in the pack. I'm not sure how many cards are in the full base set.

My sketch card was done by artist Lynne Anderson, and (I think) features Hanie Mohd's dark-haired archer character named Addilicia Halley. It's a nice-looking sketch. I especially like the way Anderson did the coloring on it. The character on the back of the sketch card stock is Dustra, who is Ahrendes' personal creation and the inspiration for this set.

I would probably pick up another one or two of these packs in the future. There are a lot of artists on the checklist whose work I'd like to pick up, and this is a good way to get a random chance at one of them.

Manute Bol Gala Relic

Although much of the hype in the card collecting world currently revolves around the All-Star Game and Aaron Judge's Home Run Derby exploits, today I am posting about a basketball card. I even have some Aaron Judge cards to post about, but they aren't scanned yet and there's like a 0% chance that they will get scanned this week.

I think I picked up this Manute Bol Main Attraction Memorabilia relic card from 2015-16 Panini Gala on eBay a while back. Bol's cards still command decent prices, especially low-numbered parallels, relics, and autographs. This one is numbered # 33 / 60, and I picked it up for just a few dollars. I don't add to my collection of Bol cards very often, and I am always happy when I get one. That 76ers uniform he's wearing on this card is pretty sweet, too.

My favorite NBA team, the Houston Rockets, recently completed a trade for point guard Chris Paul and also signed James Harden to a massive contract extension, basically betting on him as the guy to lead them to glory over the next few years. I don't know about that. I think they will continue to be a pretty good team and make regular playoff appearances, but those two guys plus whoever else they are able to add to the roster aren't going to beat the Warriors in a 7-game series.

Josh Wise Torque Auto Relic - Quaker State 400 Presented by Advance Auto Parts

It's been kind of a slow week for posting here on The Raz Card Blog. Most of the posts in my Draft queue are pretty old, and I guess I'm a little tired of looking at the titles and trying to pick one to finish out. I also don't really feel like scanning more cards or processing scans from the last couple of months. I am still collecting trading cards, and I enjoy that, but I am finding it difficult to sit down and do blog stuff. I am also focusing a little more on picking up original art in the form of sketch cards and larger sketches, either through eBay or commissions directly from artists.

For the 4th of July, MLB.tv had their service on sale for $17.76 for the rest of the season, and the military discount meant that I was able to get it for $13 and some change. I've watched a handful of Astros games since then, which has been pretty fun. I also watched most of the UFC fights last night, although a couple of good fights got pulled from the card, one of my favorite fighters (Jim Miller) lost, and a lot of the fights weren't all that exciting. That's how it is sometimes.

Yesterday there was also a NASCAR race, the Quaker State 400 Presented by Advance Auto Parts at Kentucky Speedway. Danica Patrick started in 20th place and moved up to finish in 15th, so it was a pretty good run for her.

The guy pictured on this card isn't Danica Patrick, though. This is Josh Wise, who I believe is retired from racing so he can focus on other stuff. This is the Red parallel of his Jumbo Firesuit Signatures card. It's got a sticker autograph, a big swatch of gray firesuit, and it is serially-numbered # 11 / 25.

Here is the back of the card. It's got a little write-up on Josh Wise's career. I think I got this card from COMC for a couple bucks, but it could have been an eBay purchase. I doubt Wise will have many cards in the future, so I am kind of running out of non-Danica Patrick drivers to collect. I'll need to go through the current NASCAR roster to see if there is anyone else whose personality or sponsors appeal to me. I like Kyle Busch's cars, but what I've seen of his personality rubs me a little wrong. I don't know.

Pack of the Day 165: 2017 Topps WWE Hanger Box

I am still working through drafts from April and May, so this is a purchase from at least a couple of months ago. I picked up a hanger box of 2017 Topps WWE trading cards shortly after the product arrived on store shelves.

The front of the box has the usual group shot of some superstars on the front, and a teaser that this product has autograph and relic cards available. 

Your typical box will have 42 cards in it, with 5 of them being roster update cards for wrestlers who switched from Smackdown to Raw. I scanned a couple of Smackdown cards from the box, but just realized that most of my scans feature Raw wrestlers. I guess that's my stable of choice.

The fronts borrow design elements from the 2017 Topps Baseball set, with logos and color-coding for the various branches of WWE. I was happy to get Bayley's card in this box.

The card backs feature height, weight, and hometown (if known) for male wrestlers, and height and hometown for female wrestlers, as well as branding and colors to match the card fronts. Each wrestler also gets a paragraph about their career.

Here are a few more cards from the box. I think I tried the WWE Slam app for a while, but ran out of space on my phone and deleted all of the Slam, Bunt, and other digital card trading apps.

I was also glad to get Asuka's card in this box. I'm not sure what's going on with Paige, but she's been suspended/injured for a long time now. A John Cena Tribute insert card kicks off the non-base portion of this box.

I guess the basic parallel in this product is Bronze. I got two of them in the box, as well as the matching base cards.

The rest of the inserts in the box feature various WWE TV shows. Kind of boring, to be honest, but I guess there is an audience out there for this stuff.

And that does it for the box. I got a couple of base cards and a John Cena insert that I liked, but for the most part this was a snoozer for me.