Pack of the Day 148: 2 Boxes of 2016 Topps UFC High Impact

I got home yesterday after two weeks in Utah for job training. The drive wasn't too bad. It rained and snowed most of the way through the 4-1/2 hour drive, but the roads weren't bad until I got to Boise. I didn't see any wrecks or anything until I got within 40 miles of home, and in those 40 miles I saw 5 or 6 wrecks, with 2 or 3 of those looking pretty serious. I didn't get tied up in any of it, though, and made it home without incident.

I was greeted by a giant pile of mail on and around my desk. I should have taken a picture of it, but I didn't get around to it. There were eBay winnings, trade packages, surprises, group break cards, commissioned artwork, and Black Friday purchases among the pile. I am still working on sorting and scanning it all so that I can post about it. I also have some packages to build and send out over the next few days. In the meantime, I picked up a couple boxes of 2016 Topps UFC High Impact from the Topps website a while back, and here is what I pulled from them.

High Impact is an online-exclusive set that was released in early 2016. The base checklist has 50 cards. There are parallels of the base set, one insert set, and autographs. Each box has 20 cards, with the breakdown being 16 base cards, 2 parallels, 1 insert, and 1 autograph.

The base cards are pretty standard stuff. Picture, name, and weight class on the front, biographical info on the back. The cards in the box I opened several months ago were miscut and hard to align on the scanner. This batch of cards was better. In the post on that first box I mentioned that I probably ought to quit while I was ahead. After this break was finished I found myself wishing that I had listened to me from the past.

Here are some of the horizontal base cards. With such a small checklist, Topps mostly focused on the bigger names in the UFC. I read somewhere that the UFC is going to open up another women's division at the 145 lb. Featherweight level, probably to help keep Cris Cyborg around. That's a pretty cool development.

Each box has two parallels. The unnumbered Blue parallel is the most common, but Red (# / 8) and Gold (1 / 1) are possible. All of my parallels in this batch were of the Blue variety, with Claudia Gadelha showing up in each box.

Femme Fighters is the only insert set in High Impact, with a 20-card checklist of female fighters. I pulled the first and last cards in the set, Julianna Pena and Liz Carmouche. It was disappointing that both of these inserts came out of the box with damaged corners, especially the Pena card. The top two corners were just mangled. I was pretty disappointed by that.

I saw this autograph and I was like, "Who?" Erik Perez is a Bantamweight fighter. I've seen him fight a few times, but I didn't remember it. What is interesting about this card is that he signed it with his nickname, 'Goyito.'

My second autograph was another guy whose name didn't ring a bell for me, James Vick. His most recent fight was a first-round knockout loss against Beneil Dariush at UFC 199 in June.

I guess not every break can be a winner. I already have a base set, but it would be cool to collect the Femme Fighters insert set. At one per box, though, it's not a very cost-effective pursuit. Singles are available out there, but the price tags attached to the big names are pretty high. I don't know if it's worth chasing.

UFC 206 is tonight. It will be interesting to see which fights Topps decides to commemorate with Topps NOW cards. My guess is that Max Holloway - Anthony Pettis and Donald Cerrone - Matt Brown get cards, but I don't know if any of the other fights on the card warrant a NOW release. I would say that the December 17th Fight Night has a better hobby lineup than UFC 206, but I really don't want Topps to start making NOW cards for Fight Nights.