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.

Jim Miller and Amanda Nunes UFC Stuff

My wife and I had a pretty busy Saturday, trying to fit as much tourist stuff as we could into the weekend before Monday, when she heads back home and I get back to my training. We kicked the day off by traveling to Old Town San Diego.

Our first stop was the Mormon Battalion Visitor's Center. I visited it a handful of times when I was a missionary here many years ago, but since then they've remade the building and the tour with a higher-tech interactive presentation. I thought it was pretty good, telling the story of how several hundred Mormons were enlisted into the Army during the Mexican-American War and eventually assigned to build a wagon road to California, winding up in San Diego and helping to build the city.

I even found a wagon to drive, although it was woefully short on livestock to pull it. We panned for gold in the courtyard and looked at some artifacts, and then it was time for lunch. We had some great food at The Tequila Factory. I opted for carnitas, while my wife ordered some shrimp fajitas. It was good. We ate way too much, but it was worth it. After that we wandered down the street a bit and looked at shops and booths.

After that we headed out to Petco Park to watch the Padres take on the Pirates. We had some excitement on the way there, though. A car changed lanes into the side of my car, breaking my mirror and scraping/denting panels along the left side of my car. He looked over at me, then slowed down and pulled over as if to exchange information with us. We started to pull in behind him when he took off again, trying to execute a hit-and-run. We followed him, as did a couple of other cars. Eventually he got caught in traffic and we caught up to him in the left turn lane. He made a U-turn and then a quick right, and my wife got a picture of his license plate. After his next turn we were headed toward a couple of police cars with their lights on for another accident, so he flipped around again and took off. I decided not to chase him anymore, and we pulled up to the police and told them what had happened. We filed a report with them, and he got pulled over somewhere else while we were talking to the police. They couldn't arrest him for the accident because they didn't witness it, but hopefully with the license plate number and the police report we won't have too much trouble with our insurance company. It does stink to have my new car wrecked, though. I've only had it for about six months. Without anything else to do with the car, we continued on to the ballpark. 

It was free hat night, so we got Padres hats as we entered the gates. I posted this selfie on Twitter, and we saw it on the big scoreboard a few times during the game. I tried to take a picture of us on the scoreboard, but it was too bright and it washed out on my camera. It was a pretty good game, and the Padres beat the Pirates 4-2. That makes the Padres 2-0 when I am in attendance.

In addition to free hats, they had fireworks after the game. It was a good show, and between the game and the fireworks it was well worth the price of admission. We had to get one more picture on the way out. We packed a lot into one day, and it was a lot of fun. It stinks that some d-bag pulled a hit-and-run on us and smashed up my car, but I'm glad that neither of us was hurt. Hopefully my insurance company will take care of us. I haven't been extremely impressed with them lately, and if we have too much trouble on this claim I will definitely be switching companies.

There was a pretty big UFC event on Saturday night, but I totally missed it. It sounds like it was an okay event, unless you're a Daniel Cormier fan. I picked up a lot of cards that don't have anything to do with any of the fighters who fought in UFC 214 this weekend, but I can't make everything match current events. These first ones are a trio of Jim Miller autographs along with one Travis Browne signature. One of the Jim Miller cards is an auto-relic from 2017 Topps UFC Knockout. I also have a Miller autograph from 2011 Topps Finest, and the bottom two signatures come from 2014 Topps UFC Bloodlines. Another copy of that Jim Miller Bloodlines autograph appears in a post from a couple of days ago. I guess I am just a sucker for cheap UFC hits and parallels.

Additionally, I grabbed a trio of Jim Miller relic cards. The top one is a Finest Threads relic from 2011 Topps UFC Finest, while the mat relics hail from 2011 Topps UFC Finest and 2012 Topps UFC Finest. The 2011 mat piece comes from UFC 108, where Miller defeated Duane Ludwig. The 2012 mat relic comes from UFC on FX 1, where Miller defeated Melvin Guillard in the main event.

In addition to a bunch of Jim Miller cards, I also got four different parallel cards featuring Amanda Nunes. The biggest grab was the card in the upper left, a Blue Flame parallel from the online-only 2017 Topps UFC Fire product. That one is numbered # 11 / 25. The next two come from 2014 Topps UFC Champions. In the upper right is a Purple parallel numbered # 73 / 88, which was apparently a retail-only parallel. There was also a Hobby parallel numbered to # / 88, but it had blue borders. The card in the lower left is a Black parallel, numbered # 054 / 188. The card in the lower right comes from the next year's Champions release. It's a Black parallel, numbered # 091 / 188.

Recent UFC Pickups of All Kinds

I haven't watched the last couple of UFC events, just because I've been busy when they were on. I'll definitely be tuning in to the upcoming UFC 211, though, as there are some good names on the card, like Stipe Miocic, Joanna Jędrzejczyk, and Demian Maia. There are also some folks I like to watch lower on the card, like Jason Knight. I hope he wins his fight, so he gets some time on the microphone. This post is just a bunch of random UFC cards I've picked up recently, if you define recently pretty loosely.

Urijah Faber cards saw a little bit of a spike when he retired a few months ago, but you can get most of them now without spending much. I like this mat relic card from 2011 Topps UFC Finest because it lists the event the mat was used for. I think I may have looked up pictures from WEC 52 at some point to identify where in the mat this piece came from, but that was a long time ago and I'm not doing that right now.

I also got this Urijah Faber Atomic Refractor die-cut card from 2011 Topps UFC Finest, which lists some of his achievements on the back. It's too bad he never was able to get a belt in the UFC, although his understudy, Cody Garbrandt, managed the task against Faber's nemesis, Dominick Cruz. This card is numbered # 62 / 88.

I also have recently picked up a couple of 1st Autographs, including this Jessamyn Duke card from 2014 Topps UFC Champions. Part of the fun of my UFC collection is that I will pick up pretty much anything that is interesting to me, so there is plenty of variety. Autographs tend to be pretty cheap, too, outside of the really big stars.

The second autograph here is a Shayna Baszler signature from 2014 Topps UFC Bloodlines. This one is numbered # 036 / 225. Interestingly, Baszler also appears on a Japanese wrestling card I just picked up. She hasn't fought in the UFC since 2015, and has spent most of the time between then and now working for professional wrestling promotions, although she did have an MMA bout in Japan earlier this year. Her nickname is 'The Queen of Spades,' and this autograph has a Spade doodled alongside her name.

Another UFC collection of mine is low-numbered parallels. I am especially partial to these Gold parallels from 2015 UFC Champions, but I'll take any # / 25 or lower parallels I can find. This Carla Esparza card is numbered # 07 / 25. Her most recent fight was a split decision loss to Randa Markos in February.

Finally, I chased down this 2017 Topps UFC Fire autograph for my Neil Magny collection. Then I ordered a box of UFC Fire and pulled another copy. I guess it could be worse. This one is numbered # 002 / 199. Magny's most recent fight was a unanimous decision victory over Johny Hendricks in December.

Pack of the Day 158: A Box of 2017 Topps UFC Fire

The online-only releases from Topps are pretty much irresistible for me. I really try not to buy them because the MSRP plus shipping makes them a little more expensive than my impulse-buy threshold. Really, a hanger pack or discount blaster is about the limit of my impulse-buy threshold, and these online only things run $24.99 plus $7-8 in shipping (for the slowest shipping you can imagine. Seriously, it takes well over a week to get from them to me. This one took 10 days, shipping out on 22 MAR and arriving on 01 APR.). But I'm a sucker, so I'm usually good for at least one box of whatever UFC or WWE products they put out there.

In this case, it was 2017 Topps UFC Fire. Topps has partnered with an artist named Tyson Beck on the Fire concept, which has been used for sets and inserts across several sports. The UFC Fire product comes in the form of a 50-card base set with parallels, a 20-card Fired Up insert set, and autographs of 39 different UFC personalities. The autographs also have parallels.

Each pack/box has 20 cards in it, which I think are universally broken out as 16 base cards, 2 parallels, 1 insert, and 1 autograph. The more common parallel in the set isn't listed in the odds up there, but it is called Red Hot and numbered # / 142.

Here's a look at some of the base cards. It looks like there are three different base card designs. Some of the photo editing looks a little weird. I purchased a full base set on eBay, and Holly Holm in particular looked like she had a nasty skin infection. Many of the other fighters look weird, too. Octagon girl Arianny Celeste gets a card in the set, as well as a spot on the autograph checklist. Now that the UFC has a robust set of weight classes for women, it seems a little weird and outdated to have the Octagon Girls parading around. I guess it is tradition and a hallmark of fighting, but I think it's weird. Also, my wife or my sons seem to look over at the screen every time I'm watching fights and the cameras pan across the Octagon Girls. The UFC probably isn't going to hire Octagon Guys to hold the round cards when females are fighting, so they should probably just do away with the eye candy between rounds thing (in my opinion).

The base checklist has pretty much all the people you'd expect to see in a checklist like this. With Conor McGregor and Ronda Rousey both being away from the sport for a while, it's hard to see who the UFC has on the roster with mass appeal that will get eyes on their product. People who are already fans will have a deeper roster of fighters or matchups that they want to see, but that won't grow the popularity of the sport much. A lot of the current belt-holders aren't exactly dynamite on the microphone, or dominant enough to catch the interest of Joe Public.

My two parallels were both of the most basic Red Hot variety. That Dominick Cruz card wouldn't stay in place on the scanner bed. He was probably protesting against being right next to the guy who took his belt at UFC 207. I'm not really a fan of either guy. Garbrandt is numbered # 032 / 142 and Cruz is # 038 / 142. Neil Magny is a guy I collect, and his autograph would probably be pretty exciting if I hadn't already purchased a copy of it on eBay. Now I have two of them. This one is numbered # 104 / 199. My Fired Up insert features Tyron Woodley, the guy who has just barely retained his belt in two straight fights against Stephen Thompson.

This is a pretty cool product. I don't know if it's worth the asking price (to me). There are some pretty big names on the autograph checklist, but in all likelihood my box is pretty typical of what you're going to get. I may or may not grab another box at some point. Every so often, Topps will hold a holiday sale and blow out their online products at 40-50% off. If you can beat the re-sellers to the punch, that's probably the way to go. Getting two boxes of this or a box of this and a box of NXT for the asking price feels like a more reasonable deal for what you're likely to pull.