Here's this month's roundup of items that have recently caught my eye as a buyer ...

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TWO OF BLACKHEARTS
The Card: Shotzi Blackheart 2025 Panini Instant MLW Autographs Water parallel (/10)
The Price: $39.99 each via Panini
Why it’s Buzz-worthy: This former WWE star is taking over a prominent spot in indy wrestling with appearances downright everywhere these days but with only a handful of card appearances to show for it (at least for now). Panini's newer foray into cardboard for Major League Wrestling has so far spawned a trio of base cards with parallels and some with autographed versions. I've been lucky enough to be plugged in and online to land ink for a couple of those drop days and in this case landed a pair of these autos where only eight others exist. Generally speaking, I'm not that big of a fan of the elemental parallels used in Instant these days, but they are an upgrade over the previous year's parallels that merely colored in one of the stripes in a design similar to this instead of the border as it is here. Either way, this one I'm a fan of as she's arguably my top collecting target these days as WWE stuff has gotten too pricey to comfortably dabble/rip boxes and have fun with the typical returns. In this case, the only angst is battling bots -- cards like these vanish in seconds and end up on eBay with prices three (or more) times higher. At least when I plunk down the money for these I know what I'm getting. (For those curious, the auto stickers here are older when she was signing in higher volumes for WWE releases -- her auto is back to an every-letter sig now.)
Grab a box right here: Nothing for this ... but wrestling cards are here.

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Like many collectors, Buzz is a fan of grading ... so here's this month's grading diary.

SCENE FROM A CLASSIC
The Card: Brian O'Halloran, Jeff Anderson & Lisa Spoonauer (aka Dante Hicks, Randal Graves and Caitlin Bree) 2017 Skybox Clerks Triple Scene Autographs
The Reason Graded: Back when this one arrived, I picked off a lot of the autos over time -- at least while they were affordable -- with my sights set on some of the obscure names here and not the pricey Jay and Silent Bob (Jason Mewes and Kevin Smith) ink that any serious collector of the View Askew realm likely already had on something before this card set arrived. The character that I wanted to find was Caitlin Bree as that character's moments were hilariously twisted and this card's scene was the culminating moment in her story. Getting this on cardboard was hilarious to me. What's unfortunate here is real life -- Spoonauer died of a medication overdose at age 44 while fighting cancer just 10 days after this product arrived. Read director Kevin Smith's tribute to her here. Over time, I picked off all but one of her autographs -- one that had been pricey that's even moreso now still eludes me as it also includes Smith -- but I recently decided to slab a couple of the best ones form my stash when I revisited them and saw how clean they looked. 
The Grade: CGC 10 (Pristine)

Reality Check: Perfect grade works for me. Her auto just barely touches the border of the card but that's about its only potential issue and it's really not incomplete, so it still got a top mark. (Though auto grades are pretty meaningless to me.) This is a strong start and I should really slab more -- and find that last one I need.

Keep reading for more of this month's pick-ups and new slabs for Buzz.

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Like many collectors, Buzz is a fan of grading and knows that there are many reasons that collectors choose to slab cards. Sometimes it's to enhance the appeal and protect them when selling. Other times it's to protect an investment for the long-term or to protect for sentimental reasons. Or, it might be just for fun or curiosity about a potential grade.

Here's this month's grading diary here on The Buzz ...

THEY'RE BACK ... SOMETIME SOON
The Item: Stranger Things Season 1 Target-exclusive Blu-ray set (2016)
The Reason Bought: How many Netflix series these days get a physical DVD release of any kind? How many get chain store-exclusive variant versions? Not that much of anything TV gets a physical release, really, not at least anywhere near the volumes of the past and that thought, along with the fact that the final season of this franchise is finally dropping sometime this year, got me looking here. I really liked the feel of this DVD set that's made to look like an old 1980s VHS sleeve that's had plenty of wear and tear and I also liked the idea of a graded item with that feel -- one where its actual flaws can blend in well and not stand out as glaring reasons why an item didn't grade higher.
The Grade: CGC 9.4 (A+ seal)

Reality Check: There are definitely other* copies of this one graded, but a pop report doesn't yet appear to be live for CGC Home Video (or it was down when I prepped this) and my number didn't come up on the verification search, either. That's OK for me as slabbed movies and games aren't as high on my radar in slabs as cards and magazines in terms of a "commodity" ... these are more the kind of shelf item with maybe some longer-term potential substance to them. To me they're more of a name-your-price novelty -- and, as an aside, I do like CGC's cases a lot more than others in this realm. This was a relatively cheap addition as well -- less than a lot of retail card boxes -- and over time affordable items can build a collection. One scary part? This is not far away from being 10 years old ... time flies.

Keep reading for more of this month's pick-ups and new slabs for Buzz.

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