2023 Panini Prizm UFC Undercard Box

I'm returning to the recent order I made from Blowout Cards, with a box of 2023 Panini Prizm UFC Undercard. This is a watered-down Hobby product, bypassing most of the exciting stuff but also adding a few Undercard-exclusive parallels. The draw for me here is that you're guaranteed an autograph and a large portion of the base set at a pretty significant discount from the regular Hobby boxes. Although I am kind of a scattershot singles collector, I do value being able to complete base sets, and I'm trying to collect on a limited budget. I just can't afford most Hobby wax these days. The value isn't there for me.

The last card in the set is a famous UFC fan, Hasbulla Magomedov. He's a social media personality with dwarfism who hangs out with the Dagestani contingent of UFC fighters.

Most of the non-base cards in the box are these Undercard Prizms, which have a disco-style background that is exclusive to Undercard boxes. Similar to the 2022 set I showed a couple of days ago, there are 100 horizontal and 100 vertical cards in the set. The Valentina "Bullet" Shevchenko card shown here is a special nickname variation that is again exclusive to Undercard boxes. 

Here are a couple of the vertically-oriented Undercard Prizms. The set is pretty comprehensive, with 200 cards featuring current and retired fighters.

This Silver Prizm of Saidyokub Kakhramonov was the only regular Prizm in the box. They are more common in other packaging configurations, but here they apparently take a back seat to the Undercard Prizms.

I was moderately surprised to find 2 numbered parallels in my box. The Alatengheili Red Undercard Prizm is #/99 and the Francis Ngannou Blue Undercard Prizm card is #/25. Ngannou is the more recognizable name for me here. He famously left the UFC during his time as Heavyweight champion when the two sides couldn't agree on the terms of a new contract. He is currently signed with the PFL and participated in an exhibition boxing match with Tyson Fury.

All of the insert cards in the box featured Undercard Prizm backgrounds, so someone trying to complete the inserts would have to choose between regular packs and Undercard packs. I guess you could try to build mixed sets, but what kind of collector mixes sets?

The Dominance insert set appears to feature champions, with Stipe Miocic and Henry Cejudo being the pulls from my box. Cejudo is mildly irritating, but he embraces being a villain and is undoubtedly good at fighting. I've mentioned before that I collect Miocic cards, so I was happy to pull an insert of him here.

The Fearless insert is a nice-looking colorful insert that I'd consider collecting if I had the bandwidth to pursue such a thing. Holly Holm is another fighter I collect, so it's nice to get another PC pull from the inserts. Brock Lesnar is a fearsome person, but over in the WWE world he's been tied to some pretty disgusting allegations along with Vince McMahon, who has been ousted from the company (again). Of course everyone is innocent until proven guilty legally, but in the court of public opinion there is certainly enough smoke for me to suspect some of the fire is real.

Hall Monitors showcases Hall of Fame-level fighters, and I pulled one of the best in Khabib Nurmagomedov, Dagestani friend of the previously-featured Hasbulla.

Finally, the autograph in the box was Damon Jackson, who I am unfamiliar with. He had a stint in the UFC prior to the period when I was watching events heavily, and again after I stopped watching the UFC on a regular basis. He's fought a lot of fights, but they happen to coincide with times I wasn't paying attention.

This was a decent box break for the price. I could see myself buying a couple more boxes to chase the base set in this format. Although a lot of the big hits are off the table in this configuration, there is enough interesting and exclusive stuff to hold a little bit of value.

2018 Topps WWE Undisputed

Undisputed is the high-end wrestling offering from Topps. It comes on thick card stock and features 10 hits per 10-pack box, with 8 of those hits guaranteed to be autographs. I didn't buy a whole box, but I did snag some 2018 Topps Undisputed.

I found an online shop that was offering Undisputed by the pack at a reasonable price, so I ordered two packs. As I said before, each pack promises a hit among the five cards inside. Based on what I've seen, parallels are a little harder to come by this year, probably due to the fact that there aren't any parallels in the product that aren't serially-numbered.

Here are the pack odds. It's too late to send in a NPN request, as that expired at the end of September. I've been sitting on these photographs for quite a while apparently.

Most packs give you two or three base cards and one or two inserts. I like Sheamus, so that is a decent base card pull for me. I don't like Roman Reigns as much, but he seems to be pretty popular among wrestling fans. It is pretty nice to get an Andre the Giant appearance in this pack. He was one big dude.

Brock Lesnar irritates me, but I guess if a heel can get under your skin, that means they're doing their job well. The inserts I've seen all focus on 30 Years of Survivor Series and 30 Years of Royal Rumble. There may be other insert sets, but I doubt it. There's just not enough room in the checklist for much more.

The hit from this first pack is an Orange autograph of Jinder Mahal. He's not one of my favorite wrestlers, but he's a pretty big player on the current roster and I am happy to add his signature to my collection. I don't think I had previously acquired any of his signed cards.

I do kind of like his gimmick with the Singh Brothers. It's very much a video game set-up where the Singh Brothers are mini-bosses who pester you while you try to defeat the main boss, Jinder Mahal. They all play their roles very well. 

It's nice to get a Bayley card in the second pack, with a cameo appearance by Nia Jax. It is also fun to get a John Cena card in this pack. His new longer haircut kind of throws me for a loop, but that's just because it's different from what I'm used to seeing. Apparently I'm not the only person who was surprised to see it.

This pack also had a Royal Rumble card inside, with Lex Luger as the co-winner of the 1994 Royal Rumble.

I was pretty happy with the hit in this pack, a Green autograph of Charlotte Flair. This one is numbered # 02 / 50. The color splash on these parallels does some weird things to the wrestler photos sometimes, because it overlays the photos and changes their skin and clothing to that color.

This Nia Jax Blue parallel autograph was an eBay purchase. It is numbered # 22 / 25. I was also watching a Green autograph at the same time, but the Blue only went for a little more than the Green, despite having half the print run. It is a little bothersome that the blue ink of the marker blends in with the blue of the color splash, but I don't think it looks as bad on the actual card.

This last pack came from a group break I joined. It was a random pack box break, so there were 10 slots, and the packs from a box were randomly attached to a slot. I got some pretty decent base cards, with Alexa Bliss, Ruby Riott, and John Cena.

The hit of the pack would have been an awesome pull if it pictured a different wrestler. This is a Purple autograph of Dash Wilder, numbered # 4 / 5. I guess I shouldn't complain too much. I've had much worse results out of group breaks before.

Undisputed is a fun product, with a lot of on-card autographs and parallels to chase. I usually try to get a little of it each year, especially if my favorite wrestlers appear on the checklist.

Topps On-Demand Brock Lesnar Red Parallel

Last October I wrote about the 2017 Topps On-Demand WWE SummerSlam set. Not a lot of sets were ordered, so each set included several low-numbered parallels. Around the same time, I looked around a bit on eBay to see if I could pick up any of the parallels on the cheap.

I put in a few bids here and there, but the only one that stuck was for this Brock Lesnar Red parallel from the set. This one is numbered # 03 / 10. I am not a huge Lesnar fan, but I work with a guy who wrestled on the same high school team as he did, so I'll pick up a card of his here and there.

Topps WWE Slam Attax: TakeOver

Topps has a European division that offers some things we don't get here in the Unites States, or that were discontinued after short runs in the US One of these offerings is the 'Attax' line of trading cards. These have a game element to them, with the most popular product being the soccer-branded Match Attax cards. You can get them on the US Topps website, but I don't really know of any American collectors who collect them. A while back there was a baseball Attax set, but again, there didn't seem to be a lot of interest from American collectors and the brand went away. Other versions include Marvel Hero Attax, Top Gear Turbo Attax, and Star Wars Force Attax.

The wrestling version of the set is called WWE Slam Attax, and it looks like there have been nine iterations of the product released, with a set appearing approximately annually starting in 2009. Apparently the first couple of sets were available in America, but they stopped distributing them here after a couple of years. The sets are: 1st Series; Evolution; Mayhem; Rumble; Rebellion; Superstars; Rivals; Then, Now, Forever; and TakeOver. Although the soccer and wrestling cards are part of a game, it seems that most people are in it for the collecting aspect. Each release typically includes a starter pack with a basic 9-pocket album, and there are chase foils and other special cards with limited seeding.

I thought it would be fun and different to chase an overseas WWE set, so I found an eBay seller in the UK who would ship them here to the US. I watched a couple of box breaks online to get an idea for what to expect. The seller I found had three boxes of TakeOver (released in September 2016) in stock, and I also ordered a starter pack to get the binder and other promotional material. Shipping was pretty expensive, but the box prices weren't too high and it balanced out.

The boxes were pretty beat up by the time they arrived. Each box contains 36 packs, with 8 cards per pack. There is a foil card in each pack, with Limited Edition foils falling one per box and a Gold Metal Championship Belt relic falling very rarely. MSRP on the packs is pretty cheap, with this product being marketed at budget-conscious collectors and kids, probably the same marketplace that chases Panini's sticker offerings.

The package was inspected by Customs on the way to my house. They opened up one of the boxes of cards and taped it back up with their green 'Examined By' tape.

Within that box they also cut open one pack, which they helpfully sealed back up with their tape. There were eight cards in the pack still, so they didn't take any souvenirs that I am aware of.

Here is the starter pack inside of its polybag. It includes a collector binder, a pack of cards, a gift card for a store I can't buy anything from, and a couple of other items.

This big poster folds out and explains the rules of the game along with a playmat, it shows some of the cards you can pull, and also features a complete visual checklist of the set.

The binder is pretty basic. There are enough pages to hold the set if you double the cards up back-to-back in the pockets. The front and back covers are sheet protectors for the inserts that are included in the package.

I accidentally scanned the poster instead of the front cover for the first photo. If you replace the words 'Game Guide' with 'Collector Binder' it is basically the same picture. The back cover features some contest and festival information.

The inner covers feature another checklist. The set has 299 cards in the basic set, plus 5 limited edition cards and 1 metal belt relic.

Here are some of the other items in the starter pack. There is a gift card, a transparent pack of cards with the Limited Edition Brock Lesnar/Dean Ambrose card on front, and a Championship card stand. Apparently there are stands featuring other WWE belts available in other packaging, like collector tins and blister-packaged multi-packs. I didn't get any of the tins or multi-packs, so I don't have any other stands.

The final inclusion in this package is this Wyatt Family sheep mask, for people who are into that kind of thing. The instructions say to have an adult help me put it on, but I think I would be embarrassed to ask any of the adults I know for help with it.

There are three different pack designs, each with a selection of different WWE stars.

The back of the pack contains seeding information. The Red Foil cards are slightly more common than the Gold Foil cards. NXT Graduate/Title Belt cards are pretty common, and the Metal Belt relic is apparently so rare that it doesn't even get odds.

This may or may not be the contents of the first pack of cards I opened. You get to see most of the basic card types here. Each wrestler has a logo appropriate to their era. The NXT Graduate cards are foiled. There are Tag Team cards and Signature Move cards. The only things really missing here are some of the other foil types and an Objects card. Each card features numerical ratings for use in the game, as well as a number of stars for use as a quick reference as to the wrestler's quality.

The card backs repeat the logos from the fronts, as well as the star ratings. The game rules say you can use this to help decide which card to play against your opponent, as cards are played face-down.

The first 16 cards in the set are the Gold Champion Foil cards. Those same 16 cards are repeated for cards 17-32 as Red Champion Foils. You can see by the ratings on the bottom that the Gold Foils are better. I believe Gold John Cena is the only 100 - 100 card in the set. I pulled a fair number of doubles in my three boxes, and the only card I was missing from the basic set was the Finn Balor Gold Champion card. I was able to source one pretty easily, with the cheapest option being from an eBay seller in Germany.

The backs of the Champion Foils are the same as the backs on any other card, but they are more likely to have a 5-star rating.

Cards 33-48 make up the NXT Graduate set. These are printed on foilboard, and feature wrestlers who came up to the WWE through the NXT developmental promotion.

Cards 49-56 feature various title belts, which don't do anything in game terms. The rules say, though, that you can raise the stakes of a match by putting a belt on the line.

Cards 57-88 feature wrestlers' Signature Moves. The wrestler's name takes center stage, with the name of the move in the upper corner and the usual Defence - Attack and Star Ratings. In game terms, I think these are treated the same as a wrestler card. I am not too concerned with that, as I am more collector than gamer. There is a prescribed type of gameplay (Wrestlemania Rules) that mandates selecting only a certain number of cards from each subset, with Signature Moves being one of those.

Cards 89-177 make up the WWE subset, featuring current wrestlers. There are plenty of long-time favorites in this subset, along with other wrestlers that have come along more recently. I do like the card design on these, with a foreground posed photo and an action shot in the background. The cardstock on all of these cards is pretty thin, to the point where you might try to peel a corner back and see if they are stickers. This is a budget set, though, so that is to be expected.

Cards 178-208 are NXT wrestlers, with a fair number of names I am familiar with included. 209-216 are the NXT Rookies, who are the newest of the new wrestlers.

Cards 217-275 are the Legends subset, with wrestlers that people of my generation might be most familiar with. I know the Iron Sheik is pretty popular among bloggers, but there are many others here who you might feel some nostalgia for. The big notable exception is Hulk Hogan, who still hasn't been accepted back into WWE products after the racist comments from his sex tape went viral. I don't think Andre the Giant is in the set, either.

The Tag Teams subset fills out cards 276-295 in the set, and there are four Objects (Ladder, Steel Chair, Table, Trash Can) that fill out the end of the set with cards 296-299. There are five Limited Edition foils in the set. I had hoped to pull most of them between my starter kit and my boxes, but there was a double and so I only wound up with 3 of the 5 from my break. I was able to get the final two from a UK eBay seller without spending too much money. There is also an error in the base set. Some versions of Kalisto's card feature a picture of another masked wrestler, Sin Cara. I don't know how many of each version there are, but I got some of each in my break.

I also didn't get the Roman Reigns Commemorative Championship Plate card in my break, but I found a seller with one at a relatively reasonable price. That probably closes out my chase of this set. It would be cool to get the tins and remaining championship stands, but the cost of doing so outweighs the benefit. I have all of the cards that are available, and that's the main thing.

I will be interested to see if there is another set released for 2017. If I can find a good source for boxes, I might go ahead and try to put this product together every year.