Blaster Break: 2009 WWE

I still haven’t gotten around to buying a hobby box of 2009 Topps WWE.  I’m so used to buying HTA jumbo boxes that I think that I’m holding out for them to suddenly appear.  These are great cards, but I just haven’t seen them at a price that makes me want to pick them up immediately.  I’m hoping that the box prices will drop a little bit more and then I’ll pick one up.

I was in Target the other day and saw that they had 2009 WWE blasters on the shelves.  I didn’t buy any blasters of 2009 Baseball since I bought a jumbo box of each series.  Since I hadn’t yet purchased a box of WWE, I decided to grab one of the blasters.  The good news is that they didn’t carry over the Target exclusive parallels from baseball.  The great news is that they did carry over the manufactured patches.

I’m not exactly sure what this set is comprised of, but I’m glad that I pulled the card that I did.  This is a nice looking patch from the most recent Wrestlemania.  It also looks like you can pull a Royal Rumble patch, The Bash patch, SummerSlam patch and at least one other.  The John Cena picture on the front is the same on all of the cards which is kind of lame.  I probably wasn’t going to purchase another blaster anyway, but that fact cements it.

Technorati Tags: WWE blaster break

Box Score: 2007 Topps WWE Heritage III

This is the first installment of something new that I want to start doing here on the blog.  Box Score will be a final review of a box of cards.  I’ll go over the cards from the box that are going into my collection, cards that I’ve sold online and what is available for trade if anyone is interested.  I’m a fan of letting the hits that I don’t want pay for the base cards whenever possible and this will show if that ever happens.

I paid $15 for this box during the BlowoutCards Black Friday promotion.  I got a complete set out of the box.  That’s going right into my collection.  This set sells for around $10 on eBay.

My favorite card from the box, Bobby “The Brain” Heenan Allen & Ginter is a welcome addition to my collection and was a card that I was trying to track down for a little while now at a reasonable price.  This individual card probably would have cost $5 - $6 delivered from eBay.  I’ll be holding into the other Ginter cards as well since they’re extremely cool.  I wish that Topps had done a whole WWE set in the Allen & Ginter style before giving up the retro theme for the wrestling sets.

Matt Hardy has been a favorite of mine for a while now so this card will be going into my collection as well.  This card probably would have only cost a buck or two plus shipping to acquire since I don’t think that wrestling jerseys go for that much on the secondary market.

The big hit from the box was the Jeff Hardy autograph.  Hardy was one of the top babyfaces in the WWE when he decided to take a leave of absence and made a huge return to TNA during their big Monday night special where Hulk Hogan debuted on TNA.  Since I’ve had the opportunity to meet Jeff in person and already have his autograph, I decided to throw this card up on eBay and twenty-one bids later the card sold for $22.50.

You can’t complain when you can sell a single card from a box for more than what the box itself cost.  So, it’s like I added all of the above cards to my collection for free.  There aren’t any other hits in these boxes other than the relic, auto and Ginter cards so the only thing left to trade are the extra base cards.  If anyone is interested, comment or send me an e-mail.

Technorati Tags: Mickie James,Bobby Heenan,Matt Hardy,Jeff Hardy,WWE Heritage 3

Blaster breaks: Beating the Blaster odds

A few weeks ago, I had won some money in my bowling league and decided to use it on some blasters from Target.  I picked up a box of 2009-10 Panini Basketball, 2009 Topps 206 and 2008 Stadium Basketball.  The Panini box was $10, the Stadium box was discounted to $10 and the 206 box was $20.

The flagship Panini set was the first set released by Panini this year that I liked the design of.  If it weren’t for the final releases from Topps and Upper Deck, I wouldn’t have spent any money on cards from my favorite sport.  Nice going NBA Properties.  You guys really boned that decision.

Upon opening the blaster, this looked like a fun set.  There were some inserts that reminded me of 90s Fleer.  These packs didn’t all have a sticker in them like the hobby packs do which is disappointing.  The stickers are one of my favorite things about this product.  The best card that I pulled was a Brandon Jennings Artist Proof numbered to 199.  Normally this card would be a great candidate to throw up on eBay, but the card had a crushed corner right out of the pack so I’m sending it back to Panini for a replacement.  With my luck, Jennings will be out with an injury or have hit the wall by the time the card comes back.

I beat the odds big time in the Topps 206 box by pulling a framed auto.  This is a card to hide away for a couple of years.  Zimmermann was once the top prospect in the Nationals organization, but he is currently recovering from Tommy John surgery.  He may come back just as good or even better and that’ll be the time to dig this card out of its hiding place.

I also pulled an Andrew McCutchen SP, Rogers Hornsby SP and George Kottaras Polar Bear mini.  The autograph makes this a great box even if Zimmermann is out with an injury.  The framed autos are beautiful cards and this one is no exception.

In retail form, 2008 Stadium Club is a great set.  It’s a shame that Topps ruined the brand by making it a ridiculous auto-per-pack hobby product.  The photography and set design for Stadium is still top notch.  For those who just want the base cards, it didn’t make sense to go anywhere near the hobby packs.  The half priced blasters at Target have led to many people purchasing their first packs of Stadium Club.

I didn’t yet have this card of Clay Buchholz.  Clay was rumored to be part of the package offered to bring Adrian Gonzalez to Boston.  I’ll keep collecting his cards.  He’ll be a good pitcher in Boston, but if he ever gets to pitch half of his games in mammoth Petco Park, he’s going to be amazing.

Here’s my second blaster auto from the bunch.  These stained glass window Beam Team cards look beautiful.  It’s a shame that the shiny stickers ruin it.  Imagine if the autograph window was clear acetate that the player signed on.  Those cards would look unbelievable.

It would be tough to do much better than this with blaster purchases.  I hadn’t ever pulled an autograph out of a retail box and I went and pulled two on the same day.  I got some more cards for my 206 set (check out my want list and we’ll work out a trade).  Definitely a good haul from Target.

Technorati Tags: Clay Buchholz,Carlos Delgado,Jordan Zimmermann,Brandon Jennings

Mail Day: Dribs and Drabs

My eBay purchases have been dwindling as of late.  These days it is just so easy to get cards that I want cheaper elsewhere.  I’ve been buying bunches of cards at .18¢ a pop on Sportlots and have been getting other singles on CheckOutMyCards.com for less money that you’d pay on eBay.  Still, there are still bargains to be found on eBay even with the $3 shipping fee that you’re going to pay most of the time.  Here are some of those bargains.

Dufex!  This 1995 Pinnacle Museum Collection card just had to become a part of my collection.  This is hands down the best parallel set ever.  I never minded getting common Dufex cards, but I’m not a big fan of getting common gold, mini or foil parallels.

Hopefully some card company brings back Dufex technology some day.  It’s much better looking than 99% of what the card companies are currently putting in packs.

Since I wasn’t all that happy with the kiss card that I got in my box of TNA Impact, I decided to see what some of the other ones are going for online.  I saw this one of Roxxi with a cheap price on it and jumped at it.  Roxxi is from this neck of the woods which is cool and I’ve always enjoyed watching her on TNA.  This is card 3 of 75 and is a fun card to add to my collection.

The only good thing about “Big Baby” Glen Davis getting injured is that there’s been a little less interest in his cards.  I won this for .99¢ and the shipping wasn’t bad.  I think it cost $2.50 delivered.  This isn’t the best looking card, but I like what they did with the sticker autograph.

Davis came back for 2 games before spraining his ankle and missing a game.  The Celtics on a whole are battling injuries at the moment.  Pierce will be out for a while, KG is going to miss a couple of games and reports state that Rajon Rondo will not be playing in Saturday’s game against the Raptors.  If this team is healthy once the playoffs start, they can bring championship #18 to Boston.  It looks like staying tough might be easier said than done though.

This is a very nice looking card and the auto is on-card.  The only problem is that Big Baby got a little carried away while signing this card.  It looks like it slipped or he was holding it crooked and he signed outside of the signing area.  It gives it a little bit of character.  Some day I may pick up a better version of this card, but this one is just fine for now.  I’ve got plenty of perfect Davis autographs.

I’m pretty sure that this is the only Ultimate Collection card that I own.  Those packs are way out of my budget and I’m not sure that I would buy them even if I could afford them.  I don’t see the difference between this card and something that you’d get out of the flagship set.  Every single card in packs that cost this much should be something special.  At least number the darn thing.

Here’s another set that I would never purchase any packs of, but there are some nice singles.  Topps refuses to get on-card signatures for its high end releases which can be annoying.  That’s one thing that Upper Deck really has going for them.  Most of the time, they have on-card autos on their high end releases.  Hopefully baseball isn’t full of nothing but sticker autos next year when Topps is the only game in town.

How many variations are there in this Sweet Spot Classic set?  I thought that I was actually getting close to having most of the versions out there, but then they started popping up in slightly faded gold ink.  I’ve also seen a red and blue stitched card that I missed out on.

Checking the Upper Deck site tells me that this was once black ink on this card.  I had forgotten about the fading issues with 2007 Sweet Spot.  Good thing I scanned this card because one day I may no longer be able to see the autograph.

Here’s a different card with faded black ink on a silver stitched baseball.  This one hasn’t bled badly, but the black ink has faded and looks gold.

To answer my previous questions, there are 16 different Dwight Evans autograph cards in the set including 4 1/1s, 4 bat barrels, and 4 glove.  I love the gold and silver ink cards that I have from this set, but these others leave a lot to be desired.  I may just have to forget that they exist and not pick them up for the Dewey player collection.

That’s it for now.  I’ve got a bunch of cards sitting in the CheckOutMyCards warehouse waiting to be shipped to me.  Once I get those shipped to me, there will be a nice sized mail day post for those.

Technorati Tags: Mail Day,Dwight Evans,Glen Davis,Big Baby,Mike Piazza

Box Break: 2009 Topps 206

The WWE Heritage box from my last post was the last break from the pile of boxes that I got during Blowout Cards’ Black Friday sale.  This box was one that I got around the same time, but this was from my local card shop, Kenmore Collectibles.  They were running a promotion similar to one that Blowout Cards had also run.  Blowout was offering $1.25 in cash or $1.75 in trade for baseball autograph and relic cards.  Kenmore was offering a dollar for autograph and relic cards from all four sports as well as any cards numbered to 25 or less.  The Blowout promotion had ended at this point, this offer didn’t require any packages sent through the mail and it allowed me to get something for a bunch of hockey, football and basketball cards that I didn’t want and couldn’t even get a dollar for on eBay.

I’m a big fan of the 206 set.  I wasn’t in the hobby in 2002 when they did this the first time around so it is all new to me.  This set combines a lot of the things that collectors look for in sets.  You’ve got short prints, a retro theme, minis, on-card autographs, serial numbered parallels and rainbows for player collectors.

The retro filter that they applied to the pictures on these cards works very well for the close-up portrait cards.  It doesn’t work that well for some of the cards where the player is further away.  There’s a Ken Griffey Jr. card in the set that comes to mind which is far to blotchy and blurry for my tastes.  The bad looking cards are by far the minority in the set.

I’m also a fan of the Allen & Ginter sets, but the short prints can make the set a bit of a chore at times.  While there are short printed variations in Topps 206 packs, I love the fact that they aren’t part of the regular set.  Master set and player collectors can track them down if they’d like, but in order to put together the regular set, you don’t have to chase down a single short print.  Another good thing that the short prints have going in favor of them is the fact that they have different pictures on them.  Check out the base and SP Lincecum cards here.  I would think that a master set displayed in a binder would look beautiful with all of the variants right next to their regular versions.  The two different Pujols here look great as well.

Even if you were to choose to pursue all of the short printed cards, there are only 50 of them which falls in line with what you normally see in a set this size.  The regular sized SP aren’t too tough to come by and you’ll get around 5 per box.  The mini SP are a lot tougher and you’ll only get one of those per box.  Since I’ve been pulling him in every other type of variation and parallel, I of course ended up pulling Rick Porcello.  If he continues to pitch well, I’ll have a nice little collection of his cards.

The mini SP cards have the variant picture on them, but you can also tell them apart by the fact that they are printed on a white card stock that is easily seen on the side if you’ve got a stack of minis in front of you.

One of the few negatives to this set are the bronze parallels.  While they seem to be doing a good job at thwarting would-be pack searchers, it can be annoying getting two different parallel sets in one pack.  The fact that there are 9 cards per pack keeps this from being too annoying.  If this were an Upper Deck product, there would only be 4 or 5 cards per pack and the parallels would get annoying.  Think of a Goodwin pack where you get two minis.  It’s a huge reason why I won’t touch that stuff in pack form.

There are different ad backs on the minis similar to the original T-206 set.  The Piedmont, Old Mill and Polar Bear variants aren’t numbered, but the Cycle backs are numbered to 99 and the Carolina Brights are 1/1.

My box contained a Cameron Cycle along with a Cunningham Old Mill, Burrell Polar Bear and Adrian Gonzalez Old Mill.  Unfortunately, it now looks like I’ll have to wait until the trade deadline to possibly see Gonzalez in a Red Sox jersey.  Could someone please tell Jed Hoyer that Clay Buchholz will be an absolute beast pitching in a weaker NL with half of his game in mammoth Petco.  Ellsbury’s no slouch either.

While this is just another bat card of A-Rod, is has an Old Mill frame which makes it a little rarer and a little more valuable.  This is definitely a card that’s not staying in my collection.  There was a time when I was rooting for A-Rod to be the guy to wipe out all of Bonds’ records, but then it was revealed that A-Rod was just as dirty as Bonds.  At least A-Rod has come clean and isn’t trying to pretend like he hasn’t done anything wrong.

One interesting thing about this card is that it is an uncorrected error.  The back reads that this is a Game-Worn Jersey Relic Card.  In this day and age, something like this is no big deal.  It’s not that rare to see relic cards with swapped jersey swatches or cards just completely manufactured wrong.

Personal feelings aside, this is a 1:105 relic card of one of the top players in the league so it’s a nice pull.  This card will eventually make someone else very happy.

I absolutely love these framed, on-card autograph.  These cards are mainly rookies and younger players who Topps could get to sign this year cheaply.  There are also full sized autograph cards with stickers on them.  This is where you’ll find most of the bigger stars, but since it is the same stars that you’ll find sticker autos of in almost every other set out there, are these cards really that desirable?

When it’s all said and done, I think this may be my favorite baseball set of the year.  Keeping the short prints out of the regular set gives it a slight edge over Ginter.  I also like the inserts a lot more than Ginter.  There’s not as much empty space in the frame and the frame isn’t something you might see on a Hawaiian shirt.  The set doesn’t try to do too much which Ginter seems to do with all of its insert sets.  Yes, some are great like the Mythical Creatures, but those don’t even fall one per box.

As far as grades go, I would give the Topps 206 set an A with some points off for the second parallel set.  I would give my box an A as well.  I got two very nice hits and no misses.  I pulled some nice short prints.  The only way that this box gets better is if my hits are of players that I collect.

Technorati Tags: box breaks,2009 Topps 206,A-Rod,Albert Pujols,Tim Lincecum

Box Break: WWE Heritage III

There weren’t a lot of baseball or basketball boxes available to me in the BlowoutCards Black Friday sale since I was working that day and couldn’t camp out at the computer.  I did take the opportunity to grab my fair share of wrestling boxes.

I thought the idea of WWE Heritage was an interesting one, but the boxes always seemed too expensive to me.  I’m not a huge fan of the hits that you get in wrestling boxes and that seems to be what you are mostly paying for.  I seem to remember the boxes not costing as much when Fleer was putting out the WWE sets, but I could be wrong.

The main design from this set draws from 1980 Topps as you can see here on John Morrison’s card.  The former Intercontinental and Tag Team Champion is one of the more exciting stars to watch.  He’s a less risky, more technical version of Jeff Hardy.  His finisher, Starship Pain (a split legged corkscrew moonsault in the corner), is one of the cooler finishers in the WWE at the moment.

Wow, these cards scanned really poorly.

The Million Dollar Man Ted DiBiase was one of the bigger stars when I watched wrestling as a kid.  He was known for his valet Virgil (who would eventually turn on him), the Million Dollar Championship, trying to buy the belt from Andre the Giant on Saturday Night Main Event and stuffing money into the mouth of his defeated opponents after putting them to sleep with his finisher, The Million Dollar Dream.  Ted’s son, also named Ted, is currently wrestling in the WWE as part of Legacy.

The designed used for the WWE Legends is the wood grain from 1987 Topps.

Last, but certainly not least, we have the WWE Divas who appear on cards using the 1982 Topps design.  Divas are all about looks first and wrestling ability 22nd.  If the match doesn’t involved Mickie James, Natalia Neidhart, Gail Kim, Melina or Beth Phoenix then you aren’t going to see much wrestling at all.  That’s why there’s a never-ending stream of pillow fights, bikini matches and other gimmick matches that try and hide the fact that most of these ladies just can’t wrestle.  They’ve got good looks and implants and that’s plenty for many of the WWE fans out there.  Me, I fast forward through most of the Diva matches that are on WWE programming.  I’d never, ever fast forward if Mickie James and Natty Neidhart ended up facing each other in the ring though.

To me, this was the hit of the box.  I absolutely love the Allen & Ginter WWE minis and this one here is the best of the bunch from Heritage III.  Bobby “The Brain” Heenan was by far the best thing about wrestling in the 80s and 90s.  His quick wit and sarcasm added so much to the matches that all kind of resembled each other back in those days.  He and Gorilla Monsoon were the main reason to watch Prime Time Wrestling which I would still watch over Raw, Smackdown, Nitro or Impact any day of the week.

Heenan has battled and beat throat cancer.  While it has limited his public appearances, when he does speak you can see that wit and humor is still there.  Here’s hoping that one day he’ll be healed up enough and has the desire to make a return to the wrestling world.

I also pulled Jake “The Snake” Roberts and Chief Jay Strongbow minis.  According to the odds, I should have gotten 4 minis, but one of them didn’t make it into the box.  I’ll forgive them for giving me The Brain because he’s easily worth two regular minis.

Jeff Hardy was at the height of his popularity when he decided to take a leave of absence from the WWE.  Unfortunately, soon after he got into some legal problems involving some drugs which led to all kinds of speculation and rumors.  Hopefully he’ll rest his body and mind for a year or so and return to the WWE.  While in the Hardy Boyz, Jeff did some ridiculous things especially during big pay per view events.  His matches were always worth watching because you didn’t know what insane spot he’d perform next.

I already have a Jeff Hardy autograph that I got in person so this card will most likely end up on eBay.  A thirteen year old, female wrestling fan with stockings on her arms and black nail polish will appreciate this a whole lot more than I will.

I’m posting this card last because it will be remaining in my collection and because I have a story to tell.  I made a trip to Wizard World Philly a while back to see Kevin Smith do one of his amazing Q & A sessions as well as get something signed by the man.  Matt Hardy was also making an appearance at the convention so I decided to bring something to have him sign as well.

What I decided upon was a Jakks Pacific wrestling figure in the package.  The figure came with a little boom box that played the wrestler’s theme music.  Matt loved the figure when he saw it.  He was playing with the boom box and having a great time.  I was surprised that he wasn’t sent any figures by Jakks.  He said that they sent him some of the first couple of figures that they did, but that was about it.  He was a great guy and it was a fun interaction.  Matt’s got a great autograph that you can actually read (unlike his brother) and the figure looks great.  That will definitely get posted once it is out of storage and on display in the room.

While this was a fun idea for a set, I’m glad that Topps has gone away from the Heritage theme and is now using the current year’s design for the WWE sets.  I got a complete set out of my box along with a stack of 20 or so extras.  I give the set itself a C+.  The legends are kind of weak in this set and I’m not a big fan of the design on the autographed cards.  I’ve got to give my box an A+.  I got two hits that are going to become great additions to my collection and one of the better autographs that can be pulled.

Technorati Tags: box breaks,Jeff Hardy,Matt Hardy,Mickie James,John Morrison,WWE,Bobby Heenan

My Collectibles Room – Assessing the Damages

My family has moved twice in the past 6 months.  Once was to a temporary place and now we are in the place that we will be living for a long time.  One of the positives of the new house is that the layout allowed for me to have a room to myself.  What’s even better is that the room is pretty much the whole third floor.  The bad news is that the room is in pretty bad shape and will need a lot of work to get it into usable condition.  It’s shaped weirdly and is almost all angled ceilings which presents challenges.  Hopefully I don’t get concussed up here by standing up in the wrong part of the room.

There’s the staircase up to the third floor.  Both railings are loose and need to be fixed.  There’s a small closet to the left of the stairs with an accordion door on the front of it.  That space could become handy, but it’s too out of the way to store anything that I’m going to use frequently.  I picture it as possibly a storage space for things like extra chairs and other stuff that would come in handy when people come to visit.

Ideally, this will be a room to showcase my collectibles as well as a place where I can have friends and family over for things like sporting events and wrestling pay per views.  If I get a better TV, I can also bring Rock Band or Guitar Hero up here when I don’t want to tie up the TV downstairs.

That ugly mirror has got to go.  That’s prime real estate for a framed picture.  I’ve got a ton of stuff that I want to put up on the walls and as you’ll see from these pictures, there isn’t a heck of a lot of space to hang the pictures unless they’re hung at a height appropriate for little children to look at.

There’s my tiny little TV.  It was a doorbuster special that I got back when I was working at Toys R Us in the late 90s.  It’s made for gaming and has multiple inputs.  (These days you just buy a switch and can easily add multiple consoles to one TV.)  There are doors that swing open which have speakers built into them and there’s also a big bass woofer on the back of the TV.  It’s still a great TV, but it’s a little small.  It’ll be used for my daughter to watch TV on and play her Leapfrog games on once I’m able to upgrade to a better TV.

This picture shows off some of the weirder parts of the room.  Keep in mind that the straight part of the wall is only 3’ 9” high.  From there', it’s all slanted ceiling.  There are two inset shelving areas in various locations.  They’re nice, but it isn’t nearly close to the amount of shelves that I’ll need.  To the left of the shelving area is a little door that leads into the attic-type space that is at the end of this room as well as around the side.  It’s dark and dirty in there and I don’t see myself ever using it for more than storage of stuff that I rarely ever use.  The attic space towards the end of the room is a lot more usable.  The weirdest part about this little door is the reflective metal on the front of it.  The middle tile has a design on it.  Luckily for me, the tiles have already started falling off of the door and I’ve only got 7 of them to get rid of once I get around to that.

Here’s the door to the attic space at the front of the house.  The roof is only seven and a half feet high at its apex so there’s no room for anything huge.  Luckily, I’ll be able to fit my 6’ IKEA Expedit bookcase in there with its 25 glorious compartments for the storage and display of my collection.

Check out the rug in front of the door that was left here by the previous owners.  They left a ton of junk in the house when it was sold and this was one of the few things that wasn’t absolute crap.  They had to pay for 1-800-GOT-JUNK to come and haul away the rest of the stuff, but I held onto the rugs for now.  The tile floor in the room is in terrible shape and will need to be replaced.  I’m thinking a nice parquet floor like you’d find in the Garden.  I want it to squeak if I were to make a hard cut in sneakers.

This picture doesn’t illustrate it all that well, but on this side of the room there are two inset areas that are about nine feet wide with a protruding section in the middle that is around 4 feet wide.  Those sections aren’t all that great as they are now, but they got my gears spinning and got me thinking of some ideas to improve the room.



Here’s a better picture of the protruding section that I mentioned.  The straight wall there is 6’ 4” tall and is something that I can live with.  It’s just a shame that wall isn’t larger.

In the background you can see the other nine foot section.  These would be nice places to store things, but as the room stands now it would just look like piles of stuff.  Even if I purchased shelving units, it still wouldn’t look at that great with everything exposed in piles and piles.

Here’s a wider view of the room.  What I forgot to take a picture of is the other inset shelving area.  It’s behind the protruding section and this one is a little larger with three shelves as opposed to the two in the other one.

Also in this picture is my IKEA Lack table and the beginnings of my Expedit desk that added another 8 display/storage cubes to the room.


One of the biggest challenges for this room will be what to do with the walls.  Most of the molding is already falling off so that will probably go.  I don’t know how much of a project getting rid of that horrible paneling is going to be or what I’ll find underneath.  I was thinking of painting the paneling, but I don’t know how well that would turn out.  It could be a disaster and I’m not really sure if I want a striped room.  In a dream world, I’d have a wall with the Green Monster painted on it.  I don’t think that is going to happen though.

Here’s a basic floor plan of how the attic is now that I whipped up in Google SketchUp.  It’s a great little program and I only used about 1% of its functionality.  The stairs are in the back, the two nine foot sections are on the right and you can see the door to the attic in the front.

I used this program to plan what I want to ideally have done with the room.  It’s fairly simple so it should end up happening.  What I want to do is have a wall built that basically extends the wall that protrudes in the middle creating two closed in areas with doors leading into them.  Within those closed in areas, I can build shelves to store things such as my finished sets and comic book storage boxes.  That way those things will be out of sight since I don’t need to access them often, but they will be easy to organize and access when I do want to get to them.  The new wall will give me somewhere to hang my pictures and stuff like that.

So, hopefully some of you out there found that interesting.  This first installment really didn’t mention any specific sports cards or collectibles, but as I get the room together and start to put things out, I’ll add them to the updates I’ll write about the room.  Thanks for reading and I’d love to hear any suggestions that you may have for the room.

Technorati Tags: collectibles room

Gonzalez, blasters and video games.

Posting from work again so there's no fancy pictures. On the edge of my seat for the Adrian Gonzalez trade rumors. I'd hate to see Buchholz leave and I think that Buchholz and Ellsbury is too much, but I really, really want to see Gonzalez in Boston.

Picked up a trio of blaster boxes the other day at Target and killed the odds. 2 autos in 3 blasters. I picked up Topps T206, 2008 Stadium and 09-10 Panini Basketball. Which blaster let me down? Stay tuned to find out.

Getting Guitar Hero delivered today. That combined with the holidays might lead to less posts and I was on a roll there. I've got two more box breaks to post along with the blasters. I also want to post some pictures of my collectibles room in the early stages before I start doing anything to it. The room has a lot of potential, but right now it's just an empty space.

Box Break: TNA Impact 2009 Edition & Maximum

I’ve been a wrestling fan for most of my life. World Wrestling Federation/Entertainment has been there all of those years, but for the most part I’ve never been a big fan of the main event stars that WWE likes to shove down your throats. I couldn't stand Hulk Hogan and his title reign that lasted for years. I’m not a big fan of HHH. The exceptions have been Don Muraco, Bret Hart, The Rock, Chris Jericho, Kurt Angle and John Cena. For the most part, those are all high charisma guys who made wrestling entertaining. the WWE likes to push the big brawlers whether they are entertaining or not. I guess that’s why I’ve always easily strayed to other wrestling federations.

What drew me to TNA was their X Division. They had a group of highly talented cruiserweight wrestlers (plus Samoa Joe) who did things in the ring that you’d never see in a WWE ring. AJ Styles, Christopher Daniels, Chris Saban, Alex Shelley, Jay Lethal and others drew people to TNA who wanted to see great action in the ring. It helps that TNA hasn’t tried to produce a G rated product like the WWE does these days. The WWE would never allow anything along the lines of a finisher called the Flying Firecrotch Guillotine. Heck, they changed the name of John Cena’s finisher from the F.U. to the Attitude Adjuster. Lame.

That’s it for the wrestling history. I’m sure that people aren’t coming here for that. You’re here for sports cards and here are some sports entertainment cards for your viewing pleasure. I had a bit of a brain fart on Black Friday and ended up ordering one of each type of TNA Impact box from BlowoutCards. That means that I’ve got a whopping 10 hits to present to you. Things will start off a little slow, but I promise that they’ll pick up at the end.

Each box contains one glitter parallel numbered to 20. I got Christopher Daniels and family. Daniels himself hadn’t appeared on TNA programming for a while after getting fired in a story line, but he wrestled as both Curry Man and Suicide during the time that he was away. When he came back, he was turned heel and is now feuding with longtime friend and TNA Champion AJ Styles.

I’m not sure what these numbered cards go for, but I’m willing to guess that this might be one of the cheapest low numbered paralleled sets to put together. No one is looking for these cards when they bust these boxes and I don’t think that the demand for them is very high.

Doug Williams autograph numbered to 60. Imagine if a sports card company came out with a set where you got three autographs per box and each one was numbered to 60 or less. That would be the most popular set ever don’t you think? Do the autographs on-card and collectors would flip. Scrub autographs wouldn’t look so bad if they were numbered to 60. Speaking of scrub autographs, I present to you this here Doug Williams card.

Daffney autograph numbered to 60. I’ve been a fan of Daffney’s ever since she was in WCW as David Flair’s girlfriend.

TriStar has made these sets fun. They’ve had the wrestlers put a lot of inscriptions on the cards. Again, this is something that’s a huge deal when it comes to mainstream sports cards. Heck, you have to pay more for inscriptions these days when you get an autograph at a card show. Daffney is known for the screams that she unleashes during matches and added the inscription “Scream Queen” to this card.

ODB/Cody Deaner dual autograph numbered to 60. Deaner was brought into TNA as the “winner” of a contest to go on a date with ODB. They were a couple for a while with Deaner managing ODB until they got into a feud over who was the true TNA Knockouts Champion. Yeah… It’s probably for the best that Deaner hasn’t been seen on TNA programming for a while now. Dual autographs. Something else that’s huge in mainstream cards.
Next up is what I pulled out of the Maximum box numbered 9/600 (The regular box was 1012/1800). My parallel card from this box was a little disappointing. It looks exactly like the base version of the card. Not that I’m a huge fan of the glitter that’s all over the inserts, but I want there to be something different if it is going to be a parallel.

This caricature of Mick Foley (Tweak) and Jeremy Borash (Tweet) came from a segment where Foley was talking about how he tweaked matches and Borash Tweeted about it. Yeah, the writing and backstage stuff in TNA isn’t all that great, but the in-ring action more than makes up for it.

Madison Rayne autograph numbered to 60. I now have autographs from two members of The Beautiful People (the other being Velvet Sky). This card shows one of the many bad things about sticker autographs. Stickers are small and autographs can run off of them. That happens at the bottom of this sticker, but don’t worry because at the top of the sticker you’ll find run-off from the sticker above. Another cool inscription can be found on this card.

Matt Morgan autograph numbered to 60. TNA has done a great job building up Matt Morgan into a main event superstar. He’s the type of wrestler that you’d expect to see Vince McMahon drooling over, but WWE passed up on him. If he decides to stick with TNA, “The Blue Print” will be one of their top stars for years to come. Again I’ll mention what if any mainstream sports set had this many inscriptions in it.

ODB Kiss Card numbered to 99. Maximum boxes guarantee one kiss card per box. There are plain kiss cards as well as cards with both lip prints and an autograph. I think there are also dual kiss cards. The card gods decided that this would be an ODB box break since I now have an autograph and lip print from her. ODB started off as more of a comical wrestler which made her popular with the fans. She’s a multiple time TNA Knockout Champion and is entertaining to watch.

Jeff Jarrett/Mick Foley dual autograph numbered to 25. Talent wise, this was the best card in the box. Both of these guys are wrestling legends. Jeff Jarrett was a star in both WWF/E and WCW before founding TNA. Foley and his various personalities have won titles all over the world and have made multiple appearances on the New York Times Best Sellers list. I don’t think there are many cards better than this one available to pull.

Danny Bonaduce autograph numbered to 10. I put this card last mostly due to the fact that it is numbered to just 10 copies. I’m not sure how much of a market there is out there for autographs of this former Partridge Family star. It looks like there were autographed buybacks included in Topps American Pie.

TriStar seems to have a bit of a problem with collation. While I did get a full set out of the regular box, I was 8 cards short of a set from the Maximum box. This is the second time in three boxes that I didn’t get a full set from a TriStar product. Good luck finding singles of stuff like this. Ripping open a box and ending up short of a set really can take the fun out of opening a box such as this due to the lack of available singles.

The design and quality of pictures on these cards are a huge improvement over the last TNA set that I opened, Cross The Line. One or two insert sets would break things up a little bit, but might increase the collation issues. It would be great if TriStar were able to get some on-card autos. It wouldn’t be difficult at all since TNA is headquartered at Universal Studios in Florida. Just send an employee or two there with some cards to be signed and get it done. These inscriptions were look even better if they weren’t crowded onto a small sticker along with the autograph. I don’t mind the absence of relic cards. I don’t feel like they add a whole lot to the WWE sets especially since they started putting a ton of mats pieces into cards. Yawn.

I would give this set a B overall. I would give my regular box a C and the Maximum box an A-.

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