PWE From Portland

Today is just a brief post to post a quick thank you for a recent PWE I received from Gavin over at the popular Baseball Card Breakdown blog. We did a small swap as I sent him a Benchwarmer card that didn't fit my collection and a few extras I had. In return, he sent over a fun PWE.

The PWE he sent over was only a handful of cards but they're cards that definitely fit my collecting interests. First up, this foursome of Sasha Banks cards. I really enjoy the run she and Bayley have been having as a tag team in the Women's Tag Team division. It's too bad they lost the Women's Tag Titles already to the Iiconics in the four corners match at WretleMania recently.

There were also a few Reds cards included. The Cueto and Wilson Valdez cards are obviously parallels. I'd honestly forgotten completely about Wilson Valdez as a backup infielder on the Reds. Taylor Sparks is currently a Reds farmhand stationed with the AAA club in Louisville and is not a part of the 40-man roster. Last year in 126 games with both Louisville and AA Pensacola, he hit .206/.279/.383 with 14 HRs and 47 RBIs.

Finally, as is tradition in Gavin's trade packs, he always includes a custom card. This is a mini he made of Ken Griffey Jr in the Moeller High School uniform. Pretty neat if you ask me. Moeller High School also happens to hold a very large card show twice a year which I'm hopeful to get to at some point.

Thanks for the impromptu trade Gavin! Let's do it again sometime.

A 2016 Topps WWE Blaster

I bought this on a whim during a Target run where the family and I had to some household items and a few odds and ends. This was the only blaster box of WWE cards they had on the shelf. It was sitting by itself in the dark, shunned away by the other baseball and basketball boxes because of what it contained. Like a lost puppy, I rescued it and brought it home.

I normally shy away from blasters as I've been burnt way too many times, but in my experience WWE ones usually have a good return on investment and provide a little more bang for your buck than a baseball blaster would. This particular one has 10 packs with 7 cards per pack and a bonus pack featuring a mystery relic card and a Triple H tribute card. Seeing as SummerSlam is coming up this weekend, I felt it was appropriate to rip into this. As you'll soon see, I got more than my money's worth out of this.

First up, some current stars. All of these will go in my wrestling binder but the four people I primarily collect in this group are Kevin Owens, Sasha Banks, Cesaro, and Paige.

The nice thing about the WWE sets is that they contain a good number of past stars and this blaster was no exception going from the mainstream of Ultimate Warrior and Randy Savage to lesser known (at least to WWF fans) Barry Windham and Kevin Von Erich.

Of the 10 packs, I got six NXT insert cards. I'll admit, this crop isn't anywhere as great as last years group with Finn Balor but at least I got Samoa Joe and Sami Zayn.

It took me a bit to figure out what these were but after doing a quick bit of research, I found out they are bronze parallels. I got what amounted to one in every other pack in this box. 

In every pack there was either an "Anti-Authority Ring Report" or "Authority Database" insert card. I'm not sure what the difference is but seeing as it's the only Sting card I got out of the whole box, I'll take it.

The box also comes with two tribute cards, one to the Rock and another to Triple H. These are fine I guess if you're into collecting the whole tribute set of these. At least they have somewhat of a different look and feel to them from the mainstream and regular insert sets.

Bonus pack time ... you're guaranteed one memorabilia card per blaster. Let's see who it'll be, will it be a scrub or a superstar. It's ...

Samoa Joe! Holy crap! That's definitely not who I was expecting to be staring back at me in the bonus pack! I had this feeling that I'd get some lower card dude like Tyler Breeze or Stardust, not this! Joe is one of my favorites going back to his Ring of Honor days with his no-nonsense hard hitting style. Without a doubt, this is the best think I've ever pulled out of a WWE blaster box.

For picking this up on a whim, I'd say this was a success. If you're into wrestling cards, I'd strongly suggest getting a blaster of this (or any WWE product). It gives you a good sampling with some pretty fun cards plus each box guarantees a relic card. You can't really go wrong with this.