Chasing 'Rowdy' Ronda Rousey

I wish I could come up with a clever title for this blog post, but I'm drawing a blank. A few months ago I decided it was time to add a Ronda Rousey autograph to my collection. My initial plan was to go for a Topps Chrome autograph, but the ones I saw were all sticker autographs that lacked eye appeal.

I eventually settles on this 2016 Topps UFC Top of the Class autograph, numbered # 15 / 25. It's a sticker autograph, but the design of the card hides the sticker pretty well, and her signature is all on the sticker. I was pretty happy with that, and I was glad to finally add the autograph of one of the biggest names in MMA to my card boxes.

A little more recently, a Rousey collector listed a bunch of their collection on eBay, with some fairly reasonable prices. I added several to my watch list, but didn't really want to commit to buying another Rousey autograph. The seller reduced their prices at the same time an eBay Bucks promotion was going on, though, and I caved and bought an on-card Ronda Rousey signature. This one comes from 2013 Topps UFC Knockout, and is numbered # 78 / 99.

Later I got to thinking that it would be nice to have a Ronda Rousey WWE autograph card in my collection. There are rumors that she might not be with WWE for all that long, and I didn't really want to miss my chance to get one. She's got a few sticker autographs out there, but I noticed that I could get an on-card signature in the recently-released 2019 Topps WWE Transcendent Collection. I won this auction for about the cost of a group break spot, which I think is a pretty good deal for one of the bigger names in the product. This is the Purple parallel of her autograph, numbered # 09 / 10. 

The card does have a scratch on the surface on the left side, but I can live with that. It is funny to me how I am looking for things to complain about on an autograph card of one of the bigger names from one of the highest-end products, when as a teenager in collecting I would have gone absolutely nuts if I'd pulled a relic or autograph card of even a semi-star. Things have changed a lot over the last 20 years.

I may be done with Ronda Rousey autographs now, but we'll see what the future brings. I am pretty happy to have a couple of nice examples from her UFC career, as well as a pretty big card from her time in the WWE.

Just a Few UFC Autographs from eBay

I missed out on making a NASCAR post yesterday, as I spent the day traveling to some training I need for job certifications. I didn't feel much like doing anything after I got to my hotel. I guess I could make a NASCAR post anyway, but at the moment I am not inclined to do that. Danica Patrick finished the O'Reilly Auto Parts 500 at Texas Motor Speedway in 24th place. She was tied in the points standings with Michael McDowell going into the race, but he finished the race in 23rd place and moved ahead of her by one point. She's currently sitting in 29th place overall for the season.

In other news, UFC 210 happened on Saturday. I missed a lot of the event, as I was trying to get my bags packed for my trip. I did watch the weird ending of the Chris Weidman / Gegard Mousasi fight. Wow. Mousasi landed two knees that the referee decided were illegal, so he stopped the fight to probably warn Mousasi or take away a point. Then he discovered that the knees were legal, but told Weidman that he had 5 minutes to recover instead of returning the fighters to the original position they'd been in and restarting the clock. While that was going on, the doctors came in and called the fight off. The end result was a TKO victory by Mousasi, with both fighters angry about how the fight had ended. It appears that a rematch will be happening at some point.

Daniel Cormier also retained his belt against Anthony Johnson, who retired after the match was over. I always feel bad when a fighter retires after losing a fight, because it takes the spotlight away from the person who actually won the fight. In wrestling (like Undertaker retiring after WrestleMania) because wrestling is all about the story, but in fighting it just seems like a weak move. Hold a press conference or something.

I asked Topps on Twitter if they were planning on continuing the Topps Now line for the UFC after the low print runs on the cards for UFC 209, and here's what they said:

@chonk34 @ufc We are currently evaluating that.

— Topps Company (@Topps) April 11, 2017

So if you're waiting on news from Topps on the status of Topps Now for the UFC, there you go. That's not the most promising response in the world, but they responded pretty quickly and they are at least contemplating the continuation of the line.

These autographs don't have anything to do with UFC 210, but this was the oldest UFC draft in my post queue, so their turn is up. This Joanne Calderwood Archival Autographs card from 2016 Topps UFC Museum Collection was the original card I was chasing after in this lot. I went a little wild for the 2016 Museum Collection stuff, and I don't think I had a Calderwood autograph yet, so I bid on a few copies of this card and finally won this one. It's numbered # 11 / 99 and features a cool on-card signature with a heart in front of it.

I got a couple of other cards from the same seller, including this 2016 Topps UFC Top of the Class Autograph Relic card of Cat Zingano. It's not numbered or anything, and the relic swatch is relatively plain, but I have a small Zingano collection and this was a good addition.

Finally, I also got this Sarah Kaufman autograph from 2012 Topps UFC Bloodlines. It is marked as a 1st Autograph, so this is the first autographed card Kaufman had in a Topps product. It seems like fighters' first autographs always carry a premium for collectors, so I was happy to get this one for just a few dollars. This had kind of a high print run, as it is numbered # 406 / 449.

I went to an Antiques Mall today, looking for something to read or some kind of cool collectibles. I didn't find much, but I did get a nice Cincinnati Bengals jacket for my son and a 4-pack of Ginger Beer for me. I was planning on going to a card shop, but they weren't open today. Maybe tomorrow I'll go, if we get out of class early enough.

Some PC (FC?) Cards in a Random UFC Lot

I snagged some UFC stuff a while back. Judging by the names in this group of scans, I am guessing I won these auctions in mid-January. That's how far behind I am in my posting. I have scans in my Draft folder that will take me well into May. In theory, I could go over a month without buying a card and still have new stuff to post about. That's not likely to happen, though. I'll hit a slow spot at some point and get this queue reeled in.

The key pieces of this lot were a couple of Neil Magny autos for my PC (FC?)* of him. The most important was this autograph from 2015 Topps UFC Knockout, which has the 1st Autograph designation on the front.

I am torn as to what to call PC's of subjects who aren't ballplayers, like wrestlers, fighters, and NASCAR drivers. My understanding is that PC means Player Collection. I guess it could mean Personal Collection, but that doesn't sound right. If it's in my collection, it's automatically a Personal Collection piece. But a Player Collection refers to a subdivision of your collection made up of cards of that individual. So do I call my Magny collection a Player Collection? Or do I call it a Fighter Collection and use the abbreviated FC? Do I have PCs or DCs (Driver Collections) of Danica Patrick and Josh Wise? I guess my life is pretty good if I can sit here and consider these questions.

The other Magny card in this lot was a 2016 Topps UFC Top of the Class autograph relic card. Typically autographs and relics are serially-numbered in these products, but neither of these Magny cards have numbering that I can see in the scans. I could go look at the cards themselves, but it's been two months since I received them, and that means they are in a 5000-count box downstairs waiting for me to complete the sorting project I began a couple of years ago.

Even though the shine has come off her star a bit after losses in her last two fights, I'll still put in a bid on a Ronda Rousey parallel. There's no denying that she put Women's MMA on the map for most of the population. This Green parallel from 2015 Topps UFC Chronicles is numbered # 078 / 288.

I will also put in a bid on nearly any UFC parallel numbered to # / 25 or less. I especially like Gold ones. I lose a lot of them, but I win one every now and then. This Johny Hendricks card comes from 2014 Topps UFC Champions. I like these Predictor programs, but I have never won anything from one of them. They probably just make me feel some kind of nostalgia for the Collector's Choice brand from the mid-90's. This card is numbered # 22 / 25.

Urijah Faber prices have come down since his retirement. I've been able to grab some parallels and relics of his over the last couple of months. This Gold parallel from 2015 Topps UFC Chronicles is numbered # 52 / 88.

This Gold parallel from 2015 Topps UFC Champions is even better, as it's numbered # 13 / 25. I was pretty happy to get this one.

I have pretty much nothing to say about this card. I was scanning the other cards in the lot, so this one got scanned as well. I probably had the intent to at least put the pictures into the Trading Card Database. It looks like this is a 2011 Topps UFC Finest Gold parallel, and it is numbered # 57 / 88.

I also like picking up relic cards that featured relic swatches linked to a particular event. This swatch of green and black looks like it came from the Mickey's Fine Malt Liquor ad on the UFC 63 Octagon mat. It looks like the picture on the card actually comes from Lauzon's win against Jens Pulver at that event. The card come from 2010 Topps UFC. There were a couple of other cards in the lot, but nothing that was interesting enough for me to write about. I literally (not literally) fell asleep thinking about writing about them, so I just deleted the pictures from the post. It was freeing, in a way.

Black November, Act II - 2016 Topps UFC Top of the Class

I started this post series off yesterday with the product that spurred me to order from the Blowout Cards Black November sale, 20 blaster boxes of 2014 Press Pass Total Memorabilia racing cards. After adding that to my cart I mixed in a few other things, including a couple of lottery ticket breaks and something predictable that I was going to buy eventually anyway in one form or another.

The first lottery ticket was a box of 2016 Topps UFC Top of the Class cards, which is one of those premium hit-driven products with a bottom-heavy checklist. There is no base set, but there is a 25-card insert set with parallels that might as well be called the base set. In each 5-card box you get one insert, one insert parallel, two autographs, and one jumbo relic. I think there is something in the small print that says at least one of your hits will feature Johnny Case, Johny Hendricks, Travis Browne, or Jared Rosholt.

My Top of the Class insert card is Georges St-Pierre. He's a big name, but pretty much everyone in this checklist is a big name. You have to get down into the really rare parallels or the really big names if you want your base card to be considered a great pull.

My parallel is the basic unnumbered Black parallel of Daniel 'Anderson Silva's Warm Blanket' Cormier:

He did what he had to do to win, but man was that a boring fight to watch. It was so boring that it was memorable. That's hard to do. This was about the worst pull I could get as far as parallels are concerned, combining probably the least-popular guy on the checklist with the lowest level of rarity.

My Jumbo Relic card is the base variety, a Jessamyn Duke relic numbered # 104 / 199. I like the design on these relic cards. Duke won her first UFC fight, but went on to lose three in a row. She then dropped down to Invicta to get more fight experience and lost two more fights in a row. I am not sure if she plans on continuing as a fighter, but her hype arrow is pointing down right now.

My first autograph is the mandatory Case/Rosholt/Browne/Hendricks card of the bunch, an autograph card of Johny Hendricks. I do like the design of these cards, but this isn't a card that gets anyone excited.

My second autograph is an Autograph Relic card of Jake Collier, who is 2-2 (10-3 overall) in the UFC, against a bunch of guys I've never heard of. That makes this box a big dud. You'd be lucky to get a dollar out of each of these cards.

At this point I was feeling pretty bad about my Black November breaks. While the racing blasters weren't the worst ever, I probably wouldn't go back and spend that money on them again. This box of Top of the Class was about the worst box you could get from the product, though, from top to bottom. The one redeeming quality of this break was that I got a discounted price on the box, so I lost less money than I could have on it.

Workin' at the Card Shop 8: A Switcheroo at the Local Card Shop

note: This got kind of long, so here's the short version. I had a disappointing experience with my local shop's Father's Day event due to a faulty assumption. I bought a box of cards, too, and if you scroll down to the pictures you can read about that.

I mentioned a couple of posts ago that the local card shop was holding a Father's Day promotion this weekend, and I assumed that the promotion involved the 2016 Panini Father's Day packs that are available this weekend at card shops everywhere. I marked the date on the calendar and blocked out some time to go down there at lunchtime today (I'm working the weekend).

My assumption was based on the fact that it was labelled as a Father's Day event and the Panini Father's Day packs were released this weekend. I was wrong. When I was in the store looking around, he pulled out a bin of silver packs, but they were not the 2016 Panini Father's Day packs. They were assorted packs of other promotional cards from the last few years, mostly of the variety you might find in a bin marked 'Free - Limit 5 Per Person' on a dealer table somewhere. But I was in the store and I was committed at that point, so I spent 23% over the best online price on a box of 2016 Topps UFC Top of the Class cards, which I will show when I get done with my rant. I'm not going to even show the promotional packs I got, because they honestly aren't worth the effort. I wound up with a couple duplicates of some 5-card NBA promo and some 5-card NFL promo, both a few years old. When I got back to the office I looked at the details of the event and noticed that the shop owner never actually said it was a 2016 Panini Father's Day event. Instead the event listing said:

Everyone gets a FREE Silver Promo Pack just for stopping in on Satuday, June 18, for Father's Day! No purchase necessary. One FREE pack per person. Want more Silver Promo Packs? Get 1 additional pack for every $14 spent...

I guess it's bad on me for assuming that because Panini's Father's Day packs are released today and silver in color, the shop's Father's Day promotion featured those packs. He also had posted a Father's Day greeting on his shop's main page earlier in the day with pictures of Panini Father's Day cards, although they may have been cards from a different year. I had actually gone back and forth about whether I should attend the event at the LCS or just buy some Father's Day packs online. I know the LCS prices are inflated, so why spend $14 there to get a $5-6 (the going rate on eBay at the moment) pack of Father's Day cards? I bid on a couple lots of Father's Day cards with the reasoning that if I won them I would stay away from the card shop. I didn't win them, so I fell back on my original plan to get some Father's Day packs at the LCS. That plan backfired and now I'm irritated. I'll have to pick up some Father's Day packs online at some point to make my experience whole. I should have done that in the first place. I posted on the shop's Facebook event page that I had been expecting the Panini packs. The shop owner apologized and noted that the event description did not specifically mention this weekend's Panini promotion. Apparently there were some gems in that bin of packs as well, because the shop owner is posting pictures of hits that people have pulled from their free packs. Maybe my frustration at the mix-up is compounded by some bad luck in selecting my packs.

I read an article a while back about disappointment in relationships. The basic assertion was that disappointment in relationships is caused by unmet expectations, and that the best way to avoid disappointment in a relationship is to communicate your expectations to each other and also to consider the other person's point of view when you first feel disappointment. My expectation was that I would be opening up a few packs of Panini Father's Day packs, looking for the first Panini NASCAR cards. The shop owner may not have even thought about the Panini promotion and expected his customers to be happy about getting free promotional packs with their Father's Day gifts. I guess I am not mad at him specifically, but I am disappointed by the situation.

I feel like I want to support the local guy, but there are a lot of obstacles in the way and I don't get a lot of perceived value out of the relationship. What is the point of driving 20-40 minutes round-trip, paying more once I'm there for a limited selection of items, trying to make small talk with a guy who I find difficult to talk to, and often feeling a bit let down by the whole expedition? I've had some good moments at the shop, too, but for the most part I usually come away feeling like I am not getting enough back for it to be worth my while. I'll probably give it another try in a few months or sometime next year, but for now I'm going to stay away from the local shop. He's been around over 20 year, so there is a customer base there and he isn't likely to miss the couple hundred bucks I usually spend with him annually. I can get more for my money online and I usually get a better experience to boot, probably because online shopping makes it easier for me to manage expectations and outcomes.

I did pick up a box of cards while I was there, so at least I can close this thing out with some kind of cardboard, even if it's not necessarily the cardboard I wanted to show off today. Here's the box top:

This is a hit-driven product. You get 5 cards in the box, with 1 insert, 1 insert parallel, 2 autographs and 1 relic.

There aren't any base cards in the product, but this Top of the Class insert set might as well be a base set. In my mind it is the base set. My base insert card is Jon Jones, who is apparently a pretty good fighter, but can't stay out of trouble when it comes to drugs, the law, and the court of public opinion. I'm not a fan.

This is my promised parallel of the box. It's a Silver parallel of Dominick Cruz, numbered # 22 / 25. This is a 1:9 box pull, so not too bad. I am also not a Dominick Cruz fan, but he owned the recent fight to defend his title against Urijah Faber. I guess I have to give him props for that.

Every product has subjects who seem to pop up in every box, and Johny Hendricks is one of those guys in this one. He got beaten by Stephen Thompson in his last fight, and hasn't fared all that well since losing his belt to Robbie Lawler in December 2014. Stephen Thompson happens to be fighting tonight in the Fight Night headliner, while Hendricks has a fight coming up soon against Kelvin Gastelum. In short, this relic is a dull grey bit of shirt and I'm not too excited about it.

My first autograph is kind of another dud, a base autograph of Michael Chiesa. This is another $1 hit. Chiesa is riding a three-fight win streak, with another fight coming up in about 4 weeks against Tony Ferguson. I don't have any reason not to like him, except that I picked PC guy Jim Miller over him in their fight this past December, and Chiesa submitted Miller.

I don't know if it's a good thing to keep score this way, but so far I'm losing on this box. The two hits are $1-2 cards, and I could probably get about $5 total out of the Jones and Cruz cards. So I'm at $7-9 at the 80% mark of the box, or about 15% of the cost of the box.

The second autograph of the box is a pretty decent card. This is a base autograph of Joanna Jędrzejczyk, the current Women's Strawweight Champion. This is a pretty good pull, probably one of the better base autographs to get in this product. It doesn't quite save the box, as it's a $20-25 card, but it's nice to pull something from the top 10% or so of the checklist. Although I probably only got about 60% back on the sticker price (it would have been over 70% on the current internet low), this card made the box feel like a winner. It would have been nice to pull a couple of PC cards, but this box was okay.

In terms of cardboard collecting it was a bit of a roller-coaster day. My experience at the card shop left me feeling pretty negative, but I think I've worked my way through most of that. I probably won't go back there for a bit, but I'll get some Father's Day packs on eBay and everything will be okay. My box of cards was good enough, and it's been a pretty decent sports day for me. Evan Gattis hit a home run, the Astros beat the Reds, Randa Markos won her UFC fight, and my UFC Pick'Em luck so far has been better than usual. I've got plenty of reasons to be happy, and really in the big scheme of things none of these things are worth getting too worked up about.