30 Day Baseball Card Challenge

Wednesday, June 21, 2023

A Slow Roll

This isn't a poker post.  It's about a new autographed card for my collection... and I'm posting it on Go Skate(boarding) Day because it features a 14 year old Japanese skater who won a bronze medal at the 2020 Summer Olympics:

2021 Upper Deck Goodwin Champions Autographs #A-SB

I first heard about Sky Brown a few years ago when I watched a YouTube video of her and her brother skating and surfing down in Venice.  It was one of those viral videos of the day... and I didn't think much of it until a year or two later when her named popped up for the Olympics.


Although she represented Great Britain at the 2020 Summer Olympics, she was born in Miyazaki, Japan and is half-Japanese.  In addition to winning a bronze medal at the Olympics, she also won back to back gold medals at the 2021 and 2022 X Games.

Next month Southern California will host the 2023 California X Games, but haven't heard if she'll be competing or not.  If she does, I'm sure a lot of skateboarding fans will be rooting her on.

While we're focusing on new additions to my Japanese Athlete PC, I figured I'd show off another autograph I recently picked up:

2020 Topps Chrome WWE Autograph #A-IS

I don't really follow wrestling these days, but I'll periodically check in on Asuka by looking her up on YouTube.  Back in March, I saw a video featuring her and Io Shirai... which inspired me to purchase this card on COMC.

Well that's it for today.  This wasn't exactly a planned post, which is a shame because John over at Johnny's Trading Spot sent me at least two... maybe three hundred cards for the Japanese PC.  But the most interesting item in his care package was this mystery box:


I'm not exactly sure what this is... but it's a 2 5/8" x 2 5/8" x 1" box made out of metal.  I tried to use Google Translate to figure out what the writing says, but it came back with no translation.

My friend thinks it could be a puzzle box of some sort... but your guess is as good as mine.  Feel free to comment your thoughts on this box or either of the cards down below.

Oh... I almost forgot.  If you're wondering if I got out there and skated today.  Indeed I did.  At 50 years of age... I wasn't dropping in on any ramps or carving up any hills in San Francisco.


Nope... I just took a slow roll with my wallet card around the park across the street from my house.

Happy Wednesday and sayonara!

10 comments:

  1. Can't wait to find out what that box is. My uncle had it and I know it is old. There was nothing on the inside. I wonder if he got it from the same person who gave him that flag. I hope your Asian binder was expanded with the package. I guess what, You won last night I your cards are already in the mail....I think you will be pleased.

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  2. Keep it at a slow roll Fuji, don't want you getting hurt. I have a childs snow ski we put trucks on a long time ago, might be time again to bust it out for a slow roll down the street. Can't let the wife know though, she'll nix that idea fast (I'm 59 now).

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  3. A 14-year old Olympian? That's amazing! (I honestly thought there was an age minimum for the Olympics, but I guess I'm either wrong or that minimum is much younger than I thought).

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  4. Some cool stuff, thanks for the post.

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  5. Have you seen the documentary from a few years ago called "Pretending I'm a Superman: The Tony Hawk Video Game Story"? It showed up on Amazon Prime recently. It covers a brief history of skateboarding, but mainly gets into how "Tony Hawk's Pro Skater" impacted the sport and how the game and the X-Games led to a boom in popularity for skateboarding.

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  6. I would imagine that there's a lot of 50+ year-old skaters out there these days, so I don't see why you shouldn't be out there as well :)

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  7. Cool stuff!

    I can't read that box top either, its in a very stylized calligraphic script and uses some old school kanji (the two on the right are chuujitsu, which means "faithful" but I can't make out the rest). Looks cool though!

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  8. johnny trading spot - thanks again john for the care package. there were so many new cards for the japanese binder. i'll show off some of the highlights eventually. by the way, were you able to open the metal box?

    angels in order - oh man... wheels on skis? that sounds much scarier than riding a skateboard. if you ever bust them out, i hope you take photos

    matt - looks like there is an age requirement and each country has their own guideline. based on the list, it looks like most countries (including the united states) require their athletes to be 13 years or older. i didn't see anything younger, but there were a few countries with older requirements.

    john sharp - thanks for reading my stuff

    billy kingsley & the lost collector - simple and straight to the point. one of the things i assign my 8th graders is creating a signature as they're getting ready to enter the real world. and i've gotta admit, some of them were pretty creative... while others had simple, but nice looking autographs like sky's

    jason presley - haven't seen it, but i'm not curious. i'll have to add it to my playlist. thanks

    jon - guys like tony hawk and steve caballero still ride ramps. i'm more of a old guy who cruises around the neighborhood to get to kaiser or the local farmer's market.

    sean - thank you for trying to translate the image. hopefully someone will be able to. i have a friend who's aunt is from japan. the next time i see her, i'll see if she can translate it.

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