Cyber Week Breaks: Day 2

So it's Day 2 of breaking stuff from my Cyber Week purchases. Today's breaks include a box of 2016 Panini National Treasures Racing, another 8 packs of 2017 Topps UFC Chrome, and a box of 2017 Topps UFC Fire that came in the mail yesterday. The box of UFC Fire also had an unexpected bonus card packed with it, so I'll show that as well.

National Treasures is a pretty high-end brand, so there's a lot of fancy packaging surrounding 7 fancy cards. The wooden chest has a cardboard liner around it.

Once you remove the plastic and the cardboard liner, you get to the sealed case. It's kind of like a cigar box, I suppose.

Inside the cigar box, there's some fancy foam padding, some branding in the lid, and the cardboard box that makes up the pack.

The ends of the pack also have seals on them. Once you cut into those, the lid lifts up to reveal the stack of cards. We're expecting a total of 7 cards: 1 base card or parallel, 2 memorabilia cards, 3 autograph or autograph/memorabilia cards, and 1 booklet card.

The top card in the box is a Century Silver parallel of Rusty Wallace. This card comes from the Legends subset and is numbered # 18 / 20. Base cards are numbered # / 25, and the Century Silver parallel is the most common parallel.

 The second card in the stack is a Dual Materials card of Ryan Newman and Paul Menard. This is the Gold parallel, and this copy is numbered # 02 / 10. Newman's relic looks like a piece of glove, while Menard's swatch is a bit of tire. I especially like the glove swatch.

The next card in the stack is a # 1 / 1 Yellow Printing Plate of Austin Dillon's Timelines insert card. It's got a nice thick patch of what appears to be his last name, maybe taken from the belt of his firesuit. It's kind of hard to see what the card should look like on this Yellow parallel, so I pulled an image of the base card from eBay for comparison:

It's still pretty cool to pull a # 1 / 1  from a high-end box, though. And Dillon seems to be a pretty popular driver. I guess that completes the expected base/parallel card and the 2 relic cards. Next up should be 3 autographs of some kind and a booklet.

The first autograph is a Cahmpionship Signatures card of drag racing legend John Force. This is the Silver parallel of the card, numbered # 40 / 45. I was pretty happy to pull this card, even though it's one of the more common cards in the box. I follow most of the Force racing family on social media, and you may recall that earlier this year I picked up a booklet card featuring the signatures of two of Force's daughters, Courtney and Brittany. It's nice to add another signature from the Force family to my collection.

The next card is a Rookie Signature Materials card of Brian Scott. This is the base version of the card, and it is numbered # 08 / 25. The 2016 season was his first full season, and his last full season. He announced his retirement after the year was up, with a final placing of 31st in the standings. It looks like he did a partial season in the Xfinity series in 2017.

Ryan Newman hot box! This is the Silver parallel of Newman's Jumbo Firesuit Signatures card. It's numbered # 13 / 15. I wish the fabric piece had a little more color to it, but it's still a pretty cool card. I like that this card shows his car on it, as this is the first time we've actually seen a race car in this box. That does it for the promised autographs, so the final thing remaining is a booklet card.

And here it is. This is a Jumbo Sheet Metal Signature booklet of Joey Logano. This card also shows his race car on it, and carries a big piece of sheet metal in the right side of the booklet. The left side has Logano's signature on it.

This is the base version of the booklet, and it is numbered # 15 / 50. I'm not a huge Logano fan, but I'm not yet jaded to the point where I'll turn up my nose at a booklet card with a signature and a big piece of memorabilia in it.

That was a pretty fun box to break. I wouldn't say I got my money back out of it, but I pulled some nice cards and I enjoyed the experience of opening it and revealing the cards one by one like a group breaker. I don't have the stomach to open high-end boxes all the time, but this one was fun.

There wasn't a lot of excitement in the next 8 packs of Topps UFC Chrome, so I scanned some of the inserts. I pulled 2 Top of the Class inserts, a Museum Collection card, 2 Tier One cards, and a Fire insert.

Here is what the card backs on the inserts look like. Each of these inserts is a replication of another Topps UFC product, with the Chrome treatment added.

Like the Blue Wave Refractors which are numbered # / 75, the X-Fractors fall one per box, but these do not have serial numbers.

This is an Orange Refractor of Luke Rockhold. These fall 1:3 boxes, and this one is numbered # 14 / 25. I am 2/3 of the way through the box and still haven't hit either of the promised autographs, so I should be showing off two UFC Chrome autographs tomorrow when I open another 8 packs.

I also had a box of UFC Fire come in from Topps. They had these on sale for 50% off over the weekend, so I grabbed one of them along with a pack of the Topps Mini Baseball cards they had available. I am kind of wishing I'd bought more packs of Mini Baseball, but they are off the market now. I wonder if Topps will sell the remainder of the stock off to people like Blowout and Dave & Adam's?

The cards of note from this box were a couple of Red parallels of Chuck Liddell and Frankie Edgar. They are numbered # / 142. The one Fired Up insert in the box shows Dominick Cruz, and the promised autograph is a base autograph of Eddie Alvarez, numbered # 065 / 199. This was an okay box, but it didn't blow me away. I don't think I had an Eddie Alvarez autograph yet, so that was cool. I also like that Topps numbered all of the parallels in this set. I think that adds some perceived value over the High Impact cards, where only some of the parallels are numbered.

The bonus card was this '17 Cyber Weekend card of Carlos Correa. I saw that Topps was offering these on orders, but I didn't know if my order qualified for the bonus. Apparently it did, and I am happy to add another Astro card to my collection.

Have I mentioned lately that the Astros won the World Series this year? I fear I'm becoming as obnoxious as a 2016 Cubs fan. I'll be back with more breaks tomorrow, unless I skip out for some reason.

Famous Last Words: "There's no way I'll win it for this price!"

I think this is something anyone who's been on eBay for a while has done at least once. You see a cool item and place a bid on it for more than you really want to spend at the time because, "There's no way I'll win it for this price! Someone will surely outbid me!" Then you get the notification that you've won and you have to jump through hoops to cover the unexpected expense. On a smaller item it may not be that bad, but this time I really did a number on myself.

I was feeling out the price level on this card from 2016 Panini National Treasures Racing, featuring signatures from six NASCAR drivers, including two favorites of mine, Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Danica Patrick. I went one bid too far and stopped, thinking that surely one more bid would come in and save me. No other bids came in, and I found that I was the new owner of this six-signature booklet. It was a good price for the card, but not a price I needed to be dropping on cardboard and ink at the time. Still, it's a sweet card and I like it quite a bit in spite of the sticker signatures all around. The autographs are Jimmie Johnson, Dale Earnhardt Jr., Kasey Kahne, Kevin Harvick, Danica Patrick, and Casey Mears.

The booklet is numbered # 07 / 25, and the card number is CHEVY, which is interesting since half of these drivers are now in Fords (Kevin Harvick and Danica Patrick drive Fords for Stewart-Haas in the Monster Energy Cup Series, while Casey Mears drives a Ford in the Xfinity Series).

This is a pretty cool card and now acts as one of the showpieces of my NASCAR collection, but it also acts as a reminder to only bid if you're willing to pay up.

Danica Patrick National Treasures Signature Quad Materials - Coke Zero 400

I am used to posting NASCAR stuff on Sundays, but every so often they flip the script on me and run a race on Saturday. That's the case this week, with the Coke Zero 400 being run at Daytona International Speedway this evening. Most of the publicity around the race has centered on Dale Earnhardt Jr. winning the pole for his last race at Daytona. It would be nice if he could pull off a win, but we'll see what happens. Danica Patrick qualified in the 10th spot, so if she runs a clean race she's got a good chance to finish in the Top 10 or Top 15, which would be a shot in the arm for her career at this point.

I picked up this Danica Patrick Signature Quad Materials card from 2016 Panini National Treasures a couple of months ago. It's a pretty nice card. The base version is # / 25, but this Black parallel is # 5 / 5. The autograph is on-card, so it's nice and big, using most of the blank space allocated for it.

The back is a pretty standard card back for a high-end set. At least there is a paragraph of write-up in addition to the legalese. This is a pretty nice card for my collection, and probably ranks up near the top of my list of favorite Danica Patrick cards in my collection. Hopefully she races well at Daytona tonight.

Danica Patrick National Treasures Quad Materials Gold - Food City 500

Today's Food City 500 at Bristol Motor Speedway was postponed until tomorrow due to rain, but I am still going to post a NASCAR card today. This is one of those cards that pops up in your eBay feed, and you know you have to have it. It's just a sharp-looking card, and the price felt about right for what it was.

This is a Danica Patrick Quad Materials relic card from 2016 Panini National Treasures Racing. It's a Gold parallel, numbered # 01 / 10. But the reason it jumped out at me was all of the colorful relic swatches. There's some firesuit here, some sheet metal, and some tire. It's just a nice-looking piece of cardboard. I probably wound up overpaying a little for it, as prices have been driven down by the large amount of Panini product hitting the market, but I don't think I overpaid by enough to really worry about. I'll be interested to see how long it takes for Panini products to reflect Danica's change in sponsorship after things fell apart with Nature's Bakery.

Here is the back of the card, which features a description of Danica's 13th-place finish in the AAA 400 Drive for Autism last season. I don't know if the relic swatches on the front are related to that race, but I am guessing that Panini isn't bothering to match relics to card-back descriptions. It is nice to find a card-back with something more than just the usual blurb regarding authenticity, though. Even though you can find any of these stats, quotes, or descriptions online within a few seconds, I am not ready yet to give up on finding trivia and statistics on the backs of my cards. It is refreshing to me when a sports card has more than the bare minimum on the back.

It looks like qualifying for the this weekend's race was cancelled due to the weather, so drivers are starting in order of the points standings. Danica's season has been a little underwhelming so far, so she'll be starting in 29th place when the race kicks off. Hopefully she can improve on that positioning during the run.

This Card is a National Treasure - STP 500

Here's a card that's been sitting in my queue for a little while. Since they acquired the NASCAR license, Panini has been pushing out racing versions of all the brands they are known for, including the high-end National Treasures. Boxes of this stuff are way out of my league, but I've picked up a few singles here and there from 2016 Panini National Treasures Racing.

This is one of the better Danica Patrick pick-ups I've made since National Treasures released. The card is the base version of her Jumbo Sheet Metal Signatures insert, and it is numbered # 21 / 25. The sheet metal piece is interesting enough, and the signature is on-card, which is pretty nice, especially in a high-end set. Panini also put pictures of both the driver and the car on these.

This week's race is the STP 500 at Martinsville Speedway. Danica has raced 8 times at the track, with an average start of 24.60 and an average finish of 22.75. She has placed as high as 7th place and as low as 40th, with two DNFs. So it could go either way. Qualifying was called off due to weather, so starting position will be based on series points, with Patrick lining up in the 29th starting position. She could really use a good race, as her season hasn't exactly had a stellar start.

Post-race update: It looks like Patrick finished the race in 23rd, after running in the Top 20 for much of the race. She stayed in 29th place in the overall standings, but is tied in points with the two drivers ahead of her. I'm assuming tie-breakers are involved there.

A High-End One of One for the Daytona 500

Today is the day of the Daytona 500, the big event that kicks off the NASCAR season. I figured I'd better roll out a big card to mark the event, and I think I've got just the thing.

This relic card comes from the 2016 Panini National Treasures Racing set, the first real high-end racing product to come out of Panini's acquisition of the NASCAR license. It's got a nice swatch featuring the Alpinestars logo, but just above that you can see some fancy 'One of One' script running along Danica Patrick's arms. This is the Blue # 1 / 1 parallel of her Firesuit Materials insert card, and it's the only one out there.

It popped up on eBay a couple of months ago with a tempting Buy It Now price, but it was still a lot of money for one piece of cardboard. I probably would have paid the full price, but I sent an offer for about 80% of the asking price, and after a few stressful hours the seller accepted it. It was still a lot to pay for a card, but I felt like it was probably the best price I was going to get on a legitimate non-printing plate # 1 / 1 for my Danica Patrick collection. I do wish that it was more apparent at a glance that this is the only one, as it doesn't have a Superfractory sheen or anything to it, and the script gets lost a little in the picture, but I guess you can't have everything. I'm pretty thrilled to have something like this in my driver collection. Now all I need is a patch/auto booklet and I'll be set (mostly set, you're never really done adding to this sort of collection).

As far as the race goes, NASCAR instituted some scoring changes for this season, where every race is divided into multiple stages, and the top ten drivers for each stage get points for the season. They also get end-of-race points. There's more to it, but you need like a math degree or an app or something to keep track of it, because there are also two different kinds of points, playoff points and season points.

Danica finished each of the first two stages in the Daytona 500 as part of the Top 10 drivers, so she got 1 point (10th place) for Stage 1 and 6 points (5th place) for Stage 2. Then she was involved in one of the many wrecks on the day and had to leave the race. It's looking like her final race position will be 33rd place, good for another 4 points. So by my math, she'll finish the race with 11 points total. We'll see where that leaves her overall at the end of the day, but her final position in the standings will be better than 33rd, as she will get credit for running among the leaders for the first two-thirds of the race. It was disappointing to see her get wrecked out, because it looked like she might be able to grab a Top 10 or even a Top 5 finish today.

edit: She got 5 points for her finish in the qualifying race, plus her 11 points for the Daytona 500 stages and finish. That puts her at 16 points total so far on the season, good for 24th in the standings.

Booking it Down the Track

I've followed a few drag racers to my social media feeds in the last month or two, just for something a little different. I don't know a lot about the sport aside from the premise: build a combination of car and driver that will get from one end of the track to the other as quickly as possible.

We have a drag strip within 30 minutes of my house, but I think I've only been to one event there. It was a long time ago, probably in middle school. I used to drive by plenty of times on my way to and from my hometown, though, so I would see fragments of runs or cars lined up waiting to race. I'd like to get out and see an event, but it's sometimes hard to justify the money and time to go. It would be weird to go alone, but I don't think my kids would be able to stick it out for more than a little while. They had a good time at Monster Jam last weekend, but even by the end of that the two youngest kids were asking if we could go home. I don't know if a few hours at the track would hold their interest.

There is a cardboard angle to all this drag racing talk, of course, given the nature of this blog. Panini's 2016 National Treasures NASCAR Racing product featured a few autographs from outside of NASCAR, including some NHRA drag racing signatures. I believe most/all of the NHRA autographs came from the John Force Racing team, including this booklet I picked up, featuring the signatures of John Force's drag racing daughters, Brittany and Courtney Force. Brittany drives a Top Fuel dragster, while Courtney drives a Funny Car. Part of the draw of racing is the sponsors, and Monster and Traxxas are two companies I happen to like quite a bit. I've looked at getting die-cast cars for both drivers, but haven't ever pulled the trigger on that.

This booklet is the Gold parallel, numbered # 04 / 49. The base version has a print run of 99 copies, and there are a couple of parallels with smaller print runs.

This weekend apparently marked the start of the 2017 NHRA Mello Yello Drag Racing Series season, with the Circle K Winternationals in Pomona, California. Brittany made it out of the first (of four) round, but lost in the second round. Courtney beat her dad and made it to the finals, but lost in the final to Matt Hagan. I'll probably try to track the race results throughout the season, but I don't know how much I will post about it on my blog. I've got a few other drag racing cards coming in at some point, but I haven't decided how crazy I'm going to go with this stuff. It looks like the main options that are readily available are the handful of 2016 National Treasures cards, some Upper Deck Goodwin Champions stuff, and die-cast.