Shot Taken

The Orange Goblin..

Finally pulled the trigger on another trade with my most frequent trading partner, Shot Not Taken!  Lot to get to, so with relatively minimal textual commentary clutter and just pure card porn, here is what came my way.  Roll that beautiful bean footage:

Assorted Bowman and a couple Ernies..

This Kree-Skrull War puzzle was an unexpected surprise. 🙂

One Little Corner..

Space is the place…

Martial Mastery..

And of course, minis!

Triple Threat..

Best of WWE..

It is kinda hard to tell, but that Booker T base card is actually a bronze parallel.  The normal foil logo on the base cards is red.

According to my wantlist, I actually still needed this base card!

Hall of Famer & Superb Owl-winning QB, Roger Staubach!

Angelina Love-o-graph..

Roger & Angelina were consolation for a card I inquired about that wasn’t available.  I’ve been wanting an Angelina Love auto for awhile now though, & Staubach will be made available for trade.  He should net me a nice return and turn this into a technical three-way deal, if one comes along.

Very seriously considering adding Kane to Single Page Sensations..

Trouty Mays Lava Flow!

This card is so much more gorgeous in person.  So much so that I decided to acquire a full page of Panini’s Black Friday Lava Flow parallels.  This goes on the Trout page, but I’ve already acquired Bryce Harper and Kevin Durant for the Lava Flow page.  So just a heads up that I’m looking to trade for some more if anyone in the blogosphere has any.

What appears to be black on this is actually bronze-ish foil. Scanners are fickle mistresses..

I also picked up a Nomah RC shortly after this arrived.  Now if I could just trade for or find a good looking sub-$15 to buy (well, when I’m not completely broke again) for a possibly all-time record speed trifecta acquiring.

Finally got a Rizzo hit! 😀

Awesome way to close this post.  And that be that.  Even my attempt at sparse commentary turns out to be not all that sparse.  Thanks again for being a prime time trading partner, Ray!

Until our next…

Collection Transactions

It occurred to me the other day my collection needs some restructuring.  My tastes have been weighted more towards non-sport/multi-sport offerings/pro wrestling offerings of late.  I’ve also come to realize a fair number of my collections are of players I don’t really care about very much.  The expectational baggage of some of those collections are wearying and only serve to keep me from things I like better.  So some full-on collections are being reduced to Single Page Sensations, and some Single Page Sensations are being dropped entirely.  There will be a small number of new things will be added to the lists, however.

So here’s how it shakes down.

• Ernie Banks, Starlin Castro, Matt Forte, Brian Urlacher, Charles Tillman, LaDainian Tomlinson, Allen Iverson, Derrick Rose, Deron Williams, and AJ Lee are now Single Page Sensations.  Whatever I decide not to keep will be available, though that’d just be base and low-level inserts in most cases.

• Banks and Castro are governed by similar rules to Rod Carew.  Banks gets a page each for vintage and modern.  Starlin gets one each for his RC/Prospect years, later inserts/parallels, and hits from any year.

• Chris Carter, Jason Heyward, Dave Winfield, Robert Griffin III, Steven Jackson, Maurice Jones-Drew, Julius Peppers, Julius Erving, Danny Granger, Scottie Pippen, Tamina Snuka, and Kaitlyn are removed from the collection.  Though a Trifecta of any of them would still be welcome, virtually all of the few cards I have of each player/wrestler are available for sale or trade.

• Greg Maddux, Marian Hossa, Dustin Byfuglienis, Mia St. John, Michelle Baena, and Gina Torres are added to Single Page Sensations.

• As for sets, 1969 Topps Deckle Edge, 2009 Topps Unique Unique Unis, and  2011 Topps Lineage ’75 Minis are removed from the collection.

• BenchWarmer Kiss Cards are added to Single Page Sensations

• The stickers and Lawler sketches from 2012 WWE Heritage, and the mini master set of 2012 Panini Prizm baseball has been added to sets, though Prizm still needs filled in.

• I also attempted to organize the pages a bit better by breaking down baseball and football into Cubs/Bears and other players, and separating BenchWarmers from non-sport.  They are kinda their own (sexy) beast.

That’ll do it for now I guess.  Hopefully ratcheting down a few collections will have the added effect of quality over quantity in the long run as well.  Only having a single page to work with, and pressure to rush into completing it in a timely manner, might push me to try for nicer cards when they cross my radar, and reignite my love for some of these guys.

Oh, here’s a card on the way out.  Eve Torres autos finally fell into my price range after she ditched the WWE.

You gotta BeliEVE!

Until our next…

The Lonestarr Personal Collection: Wrestling Hits

Well, the posts are just slowly trickling in, but trickling in they still are.  Here are a few of my favorite pro graps cards from my collection for your approval.

2008 TNA iMPACT! Booker T Yellow Printing Plate..

Booker is my favorite wrestler of all-time, and this is my best card of him.  Despite having a lot of autographs (as wrestlers go anyway) out there, I’ve yet to come across one within my price range.  The 6 (should be more like 10-12) time World Champion and one of the single most decorated champions overall in the history of professional wrestling blew my mind as a kid with his heavy, but not really martial arts, kick-based offense that’s never really been duplicated, and agility.  He could fly a little too, with the Harlem/Houston Hangover, which is one of the coolest moves ever invented.  He’s also being inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame, which is pretty cool too.

2012 Topps WWE Eve Torres WrestleMania XXVIII Mat Relic

It’s sad Eve left right when she turned in an absolutely amazing heel run (oddly similar in to the Batista’s run, in every aspect).  I was down with Eve from her first televised match, which I just happened to catch even though I almost never get around to watching Smackdown!  I want to say she was teaming with Maria or someone like her that had been there for quite awhile yet never really even became competent in the ring.  Anyway, it was pretty amazing, because Eve was already immediately better than Maria or whoever it was that had been there so long from match one.  So, aside from her stunning beauty, which according to my #WrestlingBros homey Alex* is even more disarming in person, I was pretty enamored that she immediately had more skills than the average WWE eye candy from the start.  Her autographs are far, faaaaar more expensive than Booker’s, and the only one even close enough for me extend for got nabbed on COMC before I my money into paypal.

As a pretty nifty aside, Eve retweeted the tweet when I tweeted this card to the above mentioned ALo and it’s currently sitting at 17 total retweets and 19 favorites, which is, whoa…

Tara/Victoria WWE Heritage Chrome Autograph.

This was my very first autograph of my favorite Diva of the legendary Victoria/Trish Stratus/Molly Holly/Lita/Gail Kim era legit awesome wrestling.  Good times.  Her autos used to be a lot harder to come by before she made the jump to TNA and became Tara, and picked up several more in the $3-8 range in recent months, even a couple more WWE offerings.  That said, when I got this way back when I felt super lucky to pick it up for a hair under $15 (not counting shipping, which I’m guessing was about normal).  So why was she my favorite then and still remains high enough on the list to dedicate a binder page entirely comprised of hits to her?  She was easily the toughest and most underrated of the bunch (only two title reigns over like seven or eight years, if I recall correctly), and the second best wrestler after Molly (at the time; Gail didn’t really get many chances to shine until the Knockouts division started up in TNA).  I’m also way envious of my Chicago homies, because I want to go to her new restaurant!

I guess that’ll about do it for now.  Thanks for stopping by! 🙂

Until our next…