The Raz Card Blog

Panini's Black Friday, Father's Day, and National card show sets are pretty popular and you see quite a few cards from them posted and listed, but the Cyber Monday sets kind of fly under the radar. I guess there just aren't a lot of people spending Cyber Monday shopping in Panini's online store relative to the number of people who qualify to obtain packs of the other products. I picked up this 2016 Panini Cyber Monday base card of Danica Patrick at some point in the last few months. The background on the card has a circuit board motif, to emphasize that this is a product that celebrates e-commerce. It has the same photo, front and back. Unfortunately, Danica isn't wearing her America-themed shoes, which are pretty flashy. I heard her mention in a video that she thinks they are cool, and that having some neat shoes makes them better for donating to charity auctions and the like.

I only pulled one parallel from this blaster, and it's so subtle that you can hardly even tell without seeing the serial number on the back. I was watching a Bowman break yesterday, and the guy had to flip through every stack of base cards from the back to find the Silver parallels. Without much of a border, the light silvering effect on the corners of the card is barely discernible. The odds say that a Silver Prospects parallel is a 1:47 pull, and this one is numbered # 364 / 499.

Topps has rolled back the number of parallels available in many of their Bowman and Chrome offerings, and I kind of miss all the crazy colors from earlier years. That's how I remember it, at least. Maybe I'm just looking at the past with Refractor-colored glasses. 

I got five inserts in the box, with four of them being of the vertically-oriented variety. The Clayton Kershaw in the upper left is a 1951 Bowman Reproduction insert, a 1:16 pull. The Riley Pint card comes from my favorite recurring Bowman insert set, the Bowman Scouts Top 100, which is basically a ranked list of the top 100 prospects in baseball. I like ranked lists, and a list-based insert set is pretty awesome. With these being seeded at 1:8 packs, you can expect to find one per blaster. The Yoenis Cespedes card is a 1992 Bowman insert, seeded at 1:11 packs. The final insert in this scan is a Carson Fulmer ROY Favorites insert, which is seeded at 1:8 packs, or about one per blaster.

I did get one of the buyback cards, with the Bowman 70 foil stamp. These are seeded 1:12 packs, so you can expect one every 1.5 blasters. My buyback is a 2000 Bowman card of Junior Brignac, who never made it past AA ball.

I pulled a hit in this blaster, one of those paper autographs mentioned above. This is a Green parallel of Tanner Scott, who is working his way through the Orioles' minor league system. The odds say these Green autographs are pretty rare, falling 1:614 packs. This one is numbered # 89 / 99. It would be a pretty exciting hit, but it came out of the pack damaged. On the top edge it looks like it got pinched in something mechanical, leaving it with a substantial crease. Oh well, at least I didn't have to look too hard for the cloud around my silver lining.

The second sketch features the Fantastic Four's ever-lovin' blue-eyed Thing, again from an up-close perspective. It appears that he is about to announce that it's clobberin' time.

These sketches feature the characters that two of my sons are named after. If I knew who the artist was, I'd consider trying to commission sketches of my other two boys, although in my recollection Nightcrawler doesn't have much connection to the Fantastic Four. Thing is an original member of the team, while Hulk and Wolverine were members of The New Fantastic Four in the early 90's. Hulk and Thing also have a long-standing rivalry, as Thing is one of the few heroes who can go toe-to-toe with Hulk when he is rampaging uncontrollably.

First up is this autograph card from the 2015 5th Anniversary set featuring Haruka Kato. She has actually appeared in the True Heart card sets, probably because she has worked with several other promotions that are heavily featured in those sets. There seems to be some tension between some fans of Stardom and fans of other promotions, possibly because Stardom is seen as models who wrestle, while other promotions are more focused on wrestling, although some of them also model on the side. I don't know. I'm a fringe lurker when it comes to fandom, so I'm not as invested as some of these folks, Stardom does seem to be more focused on reaching out to the English-speaking crowd, though. They have an English website, a webstore on that site that ships to American addresses, and a video subscription service that uploads every event with English subtitles.

Stardom is also pretty active about bringing in guest wrestlers from outside of Japanese promotions. Kellie Skater is a wrestler out of Australia who has also wrestled in the United States and Canada, but did some wrestling with Stardom in Japan. She retired earlier this year. All of the base cards I picked up in this lot are from the 2017 set. You can tell because 2017 is in the set name on the front, while the 2015 cards don't list a year.

Kaitlin Diamond is a Canadian wrestler who wrestled for Stardom for about three months in 2016. It looks like she is back in Canada now, though, working for many wrestling promotions there.

I mentioned this card yesterday, as I picked up a Topps UFC autograph of Shayna Baszler recently. She's out of the UFC now, but had an MMA bout in early 2017 while she was in Japan wrestling for Stardom in early 2017. It looks like right now she is wrestling in the United States again. Most of these foreign wrestlers seem to do tours for three or four months with Stardom before returning to their home promotions. She also appeared during the Stardom USA tour a while back. I kind of wanted to go to one of those shows, but couldn't justify a trip to California at that time.

That's a quick intro to the Stardom trading cards. I'll have a couple more posts about them over the next month or so. Unfortunately, they aren't really available anymore, so if you want them you'll have to find singles on eBay or at a place like The Puro Central Shop.

I also got this Urijah Faber Atomic Refractor die-cut card from 2011 Topps UFC Finest, which lists some of his achievements on the back. It's too bad he never was able to get a belt in the UFC, although his understudy, Cody Garbrandt, managed the task against Faber's nemesis, Dominick Cruz. This card is numbered # 62 / 88.

I also have recently picked up a couple of 1st Autographs, including this Jessamyn Duke card from 2014 Topps UFC Champions. Part of the fun of my UFC collection is that I will pick up pretty much anything that is interesting to me, so there is plenty of variety. Autographs tend to be pretty cheap, too, outside of the really big stars.

The second autograph here is a Shayna Baszler signature from 2014 Topps UFC Bloodlines. This one is numbered # 036 / 225. Interestingly, Baszler also appears on a Japanese wrestling card I just picked up. She hasn't fought in the UFC since 2015, and has spent most of the time between then and now working for professional wrestling promotions, although she did have an MMA bout in Japan earlier this year. Her nickname is 'The Queen of Spades,' and this autograph has a Spade doodled alongside her name.

Another UFC collection of mine is low-numbered parallels. I am especially partial to these Gold parallels from 2015 UFC Champions, but I'll take any # / 25 or lower parallels I can find. This Carla Esparza card is numbered # 07 / 25. Her most recent fight was a split decision loss to Randa Markos in February.

Finally, I chased down this 2017 Topps UFC Fire autograph for my Neil Magny collection. Then I ordered a box of UFC Fire and pulled another copy. I guess it could be worse. This one is numbered # 002 / 199. Magny's most recent fight was a unanimous decision victory over Johny Hendricks in December.

The Houston Astros have jumped out to an early lead in the AL West standings, and some of their best players haven't even started out well. That doesn't mean much, though, as there is a lot of baseball left to be played and it seems like there is always a team set to make a late season run that attempts to take advantage of a slump by the leaders. But I have moderately high hopes for the Astros this year.

Here is a rare Astros card that I was able to add to my collection for a song. The Members Only parallel kind of flies under the radar because it's not flashy and not serially-numbered, but these were a case hit in 2014 and the math says that there are only 5-10 copies of each one out there. I snagged this Altuve on eBay for my 2014 Topps Stadium Club Members Only collection. I am not ever going to have a complete set of these, but I am working on getting as many of these parallels from 2014 as I can.

I follow Hardy on Facebook, and every so often she'll post an eBay listing or something she's listed on her Etsy shop. Often they sell before I even see the post, but a while back she posted about this Leia personal sketch card that she'd made available, and I was the first person to click through and get it. I was really excited to get an Ingrid Hardy sketch card, and also excited that it featured Leia, the subject of my biggest sketch card collection. I was surprised at how thick the paint application on the card is. Hardy art has a lot of texture to it, and it is surprisingly detailed for how thick the paint looks.

She also included this autographed base card from Star Wars Galaxy that features her work on the front. This gives you a good feel for her Star Wars landscapes. I especially like some of the ones she's done that show action on the ice planet Hoth, with AT-ATs looming on the horizon. I also like the way she paints clouds.

She included a couple of business cards with some more art and her contact information and her website link on them.

I was pretty happy to get an example of Hardy's artwork for my collection, and especially happy that it featured Leia from Star Wars.