Some Box Breaks and Other Things

A while back I wanted to bust some packs, so I ordered some boxes of my favorite products of the last year or so from Blowout Cards. It feels a little weird that I don't have any baseball product in this order, but I've sort of moved into only buying singles and sets for that sport. I collect a relatively small number of baseball players, so the likelihood of pulling something that fits into my collection is slim. I tend to enjoy all kinds of stuff from racing, wrestling, and UFC, so the randomness of box busting is a little more collection-friendly for me.

There's the lineup of boxes. For wrestling I got a blaster of 2017 Topps WWE Women's Division, a hobby box of 2018 Topps WWE Women's Division, and a hobby box of 2019 Topps WWE Road to WrestleMania. For racing I got a box of 2018 Panini Victory Lane and a box of 2018 Panini Certified. I also got a box of 2018 Topps UFC Chrome. The pictures below are not really in order, so anyone who can't handle chaos should probably take off, eh.

Here are a couple of card from the Victory Lane box, an insert parallel of Alex Bowman and a Engineered to Perfection triple relic of Denny Hamlin. I guess this is as good a place as any to repeat that I have a mild interest in Hamlin cards because I worked for his sponsor, FedEx, for a couple of years.

The blaster of 2017 Topps WWE Women's Division turned out to be a pretty good one, with a Blue parallel of Lana and an autograph of Nikki Bella.

These breaks were pretty heavy on the Alex Bowman cards. These cards all came from 2018 Panini Certified. I got that Red Certified Signatures Alex Bowman autograph with two relic swatches, a Gold All-Certified Team insert of Kyle Larson, and two different versions of Bowman's Skills insert.

Here are some Red and Gold parallels and hits from the Certified box. I bought the Certified stuff hoping to get a Hailie Deegan autograph, but that didn't happen for me.

Here are the last couple cards from the Certified box, a couple of basic relic inserts featuring Jamie McMurray and Chase Elliott.

Here are the hits from the 2018 Topps WWE Women's Division box. I got a Silver parallel of Rusev kicking Elias in the face, which kind of makes up for the fact that there aren't any Women's Division wrestlers on the card. That Carmella autograph is a testament to the fact that female athletes don't always have great penmanship. I am always happy to get another Naomi card, even if this is just a manufactured relic.

I got a # / 25 parallel, a Kofi Kingston autograph, and a Titus O'Neil manufactured relic out of the 2019 Topps WWE Road to WrestleMania set. You may recognize Kofi Kingston as the current WWE World Heavyweight Champion.

The UFC Chrome box was a fun break, as usual for this particular product. These insert Refractors are of the # / 50 variety.

These are some of the more colorful Refractors in the box, an Orange # / 25 of Lyoto Machida and a Green # / 99 of Chuck Liddell. 

The box was a hot box, meaning that every pack contained one of those Refractors with the crazy patterned background shown on the Rose Namajunas and Holly Holm cards. X-Fractors and Blue Wave Refractors both come one per box, but X-Fractors are unnumbered while the Blue Waves are # / 75.

Each box of UFC Chrome has two autographs (unless you get a hot box with an OctoFractor), and I did pretty well here. The Claudia Gadelha signature is a base autograph, while the Amanda Nunes is an Orange # / 25.

Back to racing with some more Victory Lane stuff, including a Justin Haley autograph, a nice Chase Elliott auto-relic, and a dual relic of Justin Allgaier.

I pulled two # 1 / 1 cards in this break, and they both came from the Victory Lane box. One is a Yellow printing plate featuring none other than Dale Earnhardt Jr. The other is a Prime Patches card of Jamie McMurray, featuring the series sponsor patch from his firesuit.

Here's a bunch of other stuff I've picked up over the last couple of months. These two autographs were fun finds for me. The Josh Reddick comes from 2012 Topps Mini. It was hard to find autographs in these Mini products, so it was cool to see one in the wild. The R.A. Dickey card is a wrapper redemption autograph from 2013. I don't recall seeing many of these out there, either.

I was glad to add another Jake Butt card to my collection. I believe this one comes from 2017 Panini Unparalleled. The Charlotte Flair signature is a Silver parallel from 2019 Topps Road to WrestleMania. I like the design of that set's autographs, so I was happy to get one of the Queen.

Here are a couple of redemptions that came in from Topps. One is a UFC Museum Collection autograph of Maryna Moroz, which I believe is the first Moroz signature in my collection. The other is a Vanessa Borne card from the 2018 Topps WWE Women's Division set. Again, I think that might be my first autograph from her.

These cards were COMC purchases. Up first is an Octane Autographs card of Bubba Wallace from 2018 Panini Victory Lane. The other is a Green autograph of Naomi from 2018 Topps WWE Undisputed. The parallel coloring bleeds into the photographs on this set, leading to some weird situations, but in this case the green matches well with Naomi's gear.

This year's Topps Heritage set included box toppers featuring Topps staffers. I had to chase this one down on eBay because it pictures Sooz, one member of the A Cardboard Problem blog team and an active member of card Twitter.

I was one of the people who ordered one of the tablecloth relic cards from Manny Machado's press conference. The backlash against this card was so furious that I had to get one for my collection. I love things that other people hate, and the laugh I get from seeing this card in my collection is well worth the price.

The Alex Bregman card is a replacement for a damaged Bregman relic I got in the mail after buying a 2018 Topps Holiday box that was missing a hit. Attached to the card was a sort of passive-aggressive note reminding me that the damaged card was not folded in half when it was shipped. That was kind of the point. I was disappointed in the packaging. Poor packaging tends to lead to shipping damage. The other card is a replacement for a damaged Sandy Alcantara card I pulled from a rack pack of 2018 Topps Fire.

I was chasing a Ricky "The Dragon" Steamboat card from 2018 Topps WWE Legends set, and I was pretty happy to get this Bronze autographed relic. I also picked up a Diamond Dallas Page autograph.

I also got this cool Alundra Blayze Hall of Fame Ring relic autograph card. This is the Gold version of the card, so it is limited to 10 copies. In the same group of auctions I picked up this Paige VanZant signature from Leaf.

That about does it for this bunch. Although my production of blog posts has slowed to a crawl, I am still actively collecting. I am trying to get back into the swing of my hobbies, but there are a lot of things competing for my attention right now and I spend most of my time feeling worn out.

Cyber Week Breaks: Day 18 - Lounging Around

I still haven't seen the new Star Wars movie, but at least I have Star Wars cards to open and look at. I feel like a bad fan, but I just have a hard time getting out of the house to see a movie. Maybe I'll try to go next Tuesday after work, when they have the $5.00 tickets. Other than that, today has been a pretty lazy day for me. I did some cleaning and some napping, and that's about it. Today's break is a pack of 2016 Topps Star Wars Masterwork and a pack of 2016 Topps UFC High Impact.

Here are the base and inserts from the Star Wars pack. I got some pretty decent base cards in here, with Luke Skywalker, Ahsoka Tano, and a Blue parallel of C-3PO. The Momaw Nadon card is an Alien Identification Guide insert, and my copy is a Canvas parallel, numbered # 64 / 99.

My hit from the box is another autograph, this time a Rainbow Foil parallel of Keisha Castle-Hughes as Queen Apallana, numbered # 44 / 50. She didn't actually sign any base autographs for the set, so this is her most numerous card in the autograph set. I don't recognize her as an actress, but she's apparently been nominated for or won quite a few awards.

I got a decent Femme Fighters insert out of the High Impact box, but then I pulled yet another Al Iaquinta autograph. That's the 4th one from this break. It would be really nice to have a little more variety in my High Impact autograph pulls. I wonder if this will be the last one, or if I still have a couple more tucked away in the remaining 3 packs?

Amanda Nunes Upper Deck National Cards

Back at the end of July, Corky from the Pack War blog let me know in a comment on one of my posts that UFC fighter Amanda Nunes had autographs in Upper Deck's card packs from The National Sports Collectors Convention. I had to go check that out, as it's fun to get things outside of the usual Topps UFC offerings.

Each autograph in the set only has one version, but the subjects have different print runs. The Nunes card has one of the larger print runs, and my copy is hand-numbered # 40 / 75. The autograph is on a sticker, but the sticker isn't too conspicuous. Upper deck doesn't have a UFC license, so Nunes is shown in neutral or airbrushed ring gear and there is no mention of the UFC by name on the card.

In addition to the autograph, I picked up a base card from the set, which Upper Deck released under the Prominent Cuts name. The back of this card has a little more information about Nunes, including a brief description of her win over Miesha Tate at UFC 200, which gave her the Bantamweight belt and set up her huge victory over Ronda Rousey in Rousey's return to the UFC at UFC 207. Since that fight, she has defended the belt one more time, winning a split decision over Valentina Shevchenko at UFC 215. That was a close one that could have gone either way, but that's what happens when you leave it to the judges.

There were some decent fights this weekend, with a Friday-Saturday double-header featuring the The Ultimate Fighter 26 finale and UFC 218. I didn't watch all of the fights, but the ones I saw were mostly pretty entertaining, with the main card of UFC 218 featuring some pretty big stuff. Francis Ngannou knocked Alistair Overeem's block off in their fight. It was a ridiculous finish. It's a good thing Overeem is tough, because he just went to sleep for a few minutes. I probably would still be asleep if I took that punch. Max Holloway seemingly put the Jose Aldo era officially to bed in the main event, as the fight never really seemed close before he put Aldo away in the 3rd round.

2017 Topps UFC Chrome Hobby Box Break

The box containing my Gint-a-Cuffs box of Allen & Ginter arrived the other day, along with several other things I'd ordered. Most of the breaks were pretty good, but the Allen & Ginter box was pretty disappointing. I am having a hard time getting myself motivated to scan the cards and add up the points for the contest, but I will try to get it done by the deadline.

The product that held up the order (I placed the order in July) was 2017 Topps UFC Chrome, which got bumped back quite a bit from the original release date. I ordered a box of it, as Chrome is something that Topps hadn't done yet for UFC. The box has 24 packs in it, with 4 cards per pack and two autographs per box.

The pack design mirrors the box design, so there isn't much to talk about here.

Here are the odds from the back of a pack. Based on this, I am expecting 8 base Refractors, a Blue Wave Refractor, a Green Refractor, an X-Fractor, 4 each of the Top of the Class, Museum Collection, Tier One, and UFC Fire inserts, and the two promised autographs.

Here are the front and back of Neil Magny's base card. The design is pretty familiar to anyone who collected Topps Baseball this year. The backs feature social media handles and a paragraph about the fighter. The cards look pretty good overall, although I noticed a fair number of reused images.

I got 64 base cards total in the box with no doubles, so if collation is decent you could build a 100-card base set with two boxes. This is a selection of 8 base cards I chose to scan. Randa Markos and Jim Miller are two of my primary fighter collections. Jessica Andrade and Ovince Saint Preux put on quite a show in their fights last night. I kind of collect Liz Carmouche and Stipe Miocic's cards, although I don't usually chase them down specifically. Paige VanZant is popular and I thought the Derek Brunson card had a cool image, so I included them to fill up the scan.

I pulled the expected 8 Refractors from the box. The fighter selection on these is all right, with Rose Namajunas, Mickey Gall, Nate Diaz, and Amanda Nunes being the bigger names of the group, in my opinion.

I got the expected X-Fractor in Nate Diaz, a Green Refractor of Robbie Lawler, and a Bule Wave Refractor of Raquel Pennington. The extra parallel in the lower right is a Red Refractor parallel of Matt Hughes, numbered # 4 / 5. That's a 1:359 pack insert, so I did pretty well there. The Nate Diaz is not numbered, the Robbie Lawler is # 51 / 99, and the Raquel Pennington is # 44 / 75.

The UFC Fire inserts are based on an insert called Fired Up from a previous Topps UFC Fire internet-exclusive product, but they are given the Chrome treatment for this iteration. They are pretty cool. I especially like the way the American flag pops on that Frankie Edgar card.

Again, Mueseum Collection takes the design from this year's Museum Collection product and applies the Chrome treatment to it. These look all right, although that's a lot of silver on the front of them.

I pulled the expected four base inserts from the Tier One insert, and I also got a couple of extras in the form of parallels. The Cody Garbrandt card is a Refractor and numbered # 86 / 99. That's maybe a relatively high print run, but these are a 1:73 pack insert, so not extremely easy to pull. The Anderson Silva card is even harder, being essentially a 2 per case hit at 1:144 packs. That one is a Pulsar Refractor, numbered # 23 / 50.

Closing out the inserts are four Top of the Class cards, which again take a previous UFC product and make the design shiny. There was a lot of Arianny Celeste and Chuck Liddell in this box. I also pulled the insert of Conor McGregor, who may eventually return to the Octagon after his stint in boxing.

Finally, I got my two promised autographs. These are signed on-card. I guess I could have pulled better names, but at least my base autograph is a 1st Autograph of Thomas Almeida and I got a parallel autograph of a fighter from the Women's Division in Joanne Calderwood. Both fighters display some pretty good penmanship here.

I believe Green is the most common of the autograph parallels, seeded at 1:57 packs. The Joanne Calderwood card is numbered # 43 / 99, while the base autographs are not serially-numbered.

Overall, this was a pretty good break. The cards look really good, and I got some neat stuff like a Red Refractor and a 2 per case insert. If I had $800 to blow, I would totally love to bust a case of this stuff. I know there aren't a lot of UFC collectors on the card blogs, but if you're interested in a cool UFC product I would give Chrome a shot.