Sunday, January 6, 2019

On Auto-pilot and Jazzed by RAZ

Before I get to the Portfolio pack today, I received a nice box from RAZ early this month. He had reached out as I had posted saying I was getting back into collecting wrestling cards again, and he put this together for me and sent it across.

I am going to have to get something back to him in return as, the box was pretty awesome and covered a lot of the 2018 Women's WWE Topps card set.

First up, was a complete set of the Women's Champion insert set:





I love how this set looks all together - really nice with the design.





Would have been great i they could do cards for all 30 of the women, but I suspect some were not contracted for such items, couldn't come to an agreement, or something of the like as this insert set is only 24 cards, but they are all here.

RAZ also sent along another of the insert sets - the Power Couples - all 22 cards here as well.





I appreciate the blend of real and kayfabe couples through the set, but in all cases, a decent write up on the back to discuss the relationship. None compare to Liz and Macho Man, for better or worse, on screen and off - that was the wrestling couple throughout my childhood.

Next insert set knocked off in one go....the Mixed Match Challenge insert set from the same Women's Division 2018 set...






This insert set is pretty Awe-ska...I mean, awesome. The Mixed Match Challenge was a success I expect given they have had a second, and it has shown some good interest, as well as given another outlet for talent to shine. Also been a great opportunity for something different and some memorable moments like Braun showing personality with Alexa, or this past season with the whole Dance Break thing getting R Truth and Carmella over.

Since we talked about the insert sets, might as well talk about the 2018 Women's Division base set...because yeah, RAZ sent a complete set of it along too.














The most notable is likely the Rousey rookie card, but so many nice rookies really (even though Topps will stick rookie on all the cards for a year) including Asuka and Ruby Riott.

RAZ wasn't done on the wrestling there, he threw in the 2017 women's base set as well (of which I had absolutely none before).














A great base set, and a lot of Bliss which isn't a bad thing. I also like a number of the legends they included for this set as some are much deserved like Miss Elizabeth and Leilani Kai.

Lastly, can't all be wrestling, so a couple baseball cards I didn't have as well for the Jays collection...



A couple of the base cards out of the 2018 Topps Holiday set...awwww...snowflakes....

I just want to say, here we are less than a week into the year and I am well on the way with one of my goals. I had mentioned wanting to complete 10 sets this year, and though I don't think I specified, I'd consider insert sets in that realm, so that said, here we have 6 sets done, all from one awesome box - can't thank you enough RAZ. I am going to have a look through and see if there is anything I can send you in return as a thanks. I am sure I can scrounge something together.

Didn't take long to get to the other promised hit in the box...



Well, if you are going to have a blue border, might as well get a St. Louis Blues player on it as well. This is a standard autograph - one every 53 packs. A decent signature, including jersey number, and a good player as well.



Amazing what just doing a close up of an action shot does in order to make the card that bit more epic - works well on both of these.



Boston hot pack!



Drew kinda looks like he just spit out that puck....

6 packs in, 46 cards, 206 points.

3 comments:

  1. I haven't been a wrestling fan for close to twenty years now, so I can't really comment to much on the cards themselves, but I can attest to how awesome of a person RAZ is. He's also very generous in a quiet sort of way, this package that he sent you was a perfect example of that.

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  2. I'm glad you liked the package. Putting it together gave me an excuse to sort and collate all of my cards from those two products, and I've carried the momentum into sorting some of my other piles of cards and entering them into TCDB. The two baseball cards were mostly just there to protect the ends of the stack of wrestling cards.

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    1. Good choice in card protection then! Many thanks, and do let me know what I can look through and send back your way that would fit into your collection.

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