Cyber Week Breaks: Day 22 - An Appropriate Sponsor for An Old Racer

Today I feel like crud. I stayed up too late last night, but I think the real thing getting me down is that I have to go to work in the morning after ten straight days away from the office. I know I have some stuff I have to get pushed out this week, and I am already dreading getting back to the grind. I also woke up to the sound of one of my 6 year-olds pitching a fit about something. That always puts me in a sour mood.

Today I finish up the last 2 packs of 2016 Panini Certified Racing, the last 2 packs of 2015 Topps UFC Chronicles, and the last pack of 2017 Topps UFC Knockout. Tomorrow is the last day of Cyber Week Breaks, so then I'll have to start blogging about other stuff.

Here are the two big pulls from the Certified Racing packs. The Kahne die-cut is the base version of his Skills insert card. It's numbered # 055 / 199. That Mark Martin relic is the base version of his Famed Fabrics insert. It's numbered # 142 / 199. How appropriate is it that Mark Martin is sporting a Viagra sponsorship on his firesuit? On most of the pictures I've seen of him, it looks like he stepped right out of one of those ads. I guess it's a good move on Viagra's part to aim right at their target demographic.

The Chronicles packs weren't all that exciting. I like the idea of a set with a comprehensive checklist, but sometimes that makes for a bland break. I think we as collectors always clamor for a low-cost, big-checklist set, but I don't know how well they actually sell for the card companies. For better or worse, collectors are kind of conditioned to expect a certain number of hits or inserts in their breaks. This Georges St-Pierre Gold parallel is numbered # 83 / 88.

Joe Lauzon is kind of known for showing up as a token hit in a lot of products. It seems like he signed about a million stickers for Topps, and he tends to show up a lot in breaks. I guess that's good if you're a J-Lo collector, but otherwise it's less fun. That's the last hit from this box.

The Topps UFC Knockout pack gave me this Red parallel of Tony Ferguson, numbered # 15 / 25. I pulled a lot of Green and Blue parallels from the Knockout packs, so it was nice to get at least one Red out of the break.

The autograph hit from this pack was Pack War favorite, Ryan Bader, on the base Tier One Autograph design. This one is numbered # 167 / 199.

The final Knockout hit of these breaks is a Blue Jumbo Fight Mat Relic Card of Chuck Liddell. This one is relatively low-numbered at # 18 / 25. It also bears the caption on the front that this piece of mat is 'fighter-worn,' which seems kind of funny. I like to track down approximately where on the mat these relics come from if they've got a little bit of color to them. This one came from UFC 57, and in looking at pictures of the mat during the event, the swatch appears to be taken from the Amp'd Mobile logo on the fighting surface.

That's all for today. Tomorrow I'm taking my eldest son to see the new Star Wars movie, and I'll probably be finishing up the Cyber Week Breaks.