Trade Post - Australian Rugby Cards via Indonesia

One of the cool things that I love about this community is the people I get to meet.  Through my sumo blog, I met an Aussie collector (Karl) working down in Indonesia.  He has been helping me work on the Japanese Sumo Wrestling Trump (Playing Card) sets where I am trying to catalog all of them from 1975 to current.  We've traded a few items back and forth and the latest items I am the recipient of are 4 packs of 2018 National Rugby League Traders.  I know very little about rugby, but am excited to have these cards and am hoping to learn more.  I have since come to learn that there are two types of rule sets for Rugby: League and Union.  With respect to this set, there are a whole host of inserts in these 10-card packs.  A quick search of eBay also shows a cool album I may have to snag.  I'm going to open two packs, and keep the other two sealed for the future.  Let's see what I get:

Pack #1:

8 Base Cards: 36, 53, 62, 71, 86, 94, 116, 127
Pearl Special (1 per pack): #86 Michael Morgan
Faces of the Game (1 per 3 packs): #37 Daniel Alvaro

I scanned the two inserts, the knights checklist, and the Robbie Farah card.  Robbie is 34 years old...hard to believe in rugby at least from my perspective.

Pack #2:

8 Base Cards: 19, 24, 50, 108, 111, 138, 143, 160
Pearl Special (1 per pack): #63 Jesse Bromwich
Startoons (1 per 18 packs): #7 Dylan Walker

The Startoons is a clear card with only the image of Dylan opaque although the scan doesn't do it justice!

Thanks so much Karl!

Does anyone else collect rugby cards?

Favorite Card of 2016

Fuji over at The Chronicles of Fuji pointed me to a contest P-Town Tom was running through 9 January 2017.  The basic premise is to post your favorite card of 2016 and you are entered into a contest to win a 2017 Topps S1 blaster.  I have too many sumo cards to choose from, but one "other" card that I do consider to be one of my favorite is this 2016 BBM Masterpiece of Sunao Takizawa who is the captain of the Japanese NEC Green Hornets rugby team.

There are three reasons this card is my favorite:

1. Takizawa-san's legs are bigger than my waist...look at those things.  Plus, his hair is flying up because he is lowering his head to ruin someone's day.  This is one of the most menacing cards I have ever seen.

2. I owned exactly one autographed card before this one.  It is a Laura Prepon 2015 Panini Americana that I picked up cheap at the Chantilly Card Show.  Other than that, this is it (Actually, this card is on its way over from Japan, but this is the auction photo of it).  Takizawa-san's signature is a really beauty and when I saw this card, I knew I needed to have it.

3. This card would not have been possible without the help of Raz over at The Raz Card Blog.  I shot him a small care package a few weeks ago and he unexpectedly dropped a little extra in my PayPal account to say thanks.  A huge gesture and this card represents the great folks I have met over the past year of blogging.  Thanks Raz!

Thanks to P-Town Tom as well for running your contest.  Cheers everyone!