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 Now that the UFC has a robust set of weight classes for women, it seems a little weird and outdated to have the Octagon Girls parading around.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.

UFC 207 Topps Now

It seems like ancient history now, but the end of 2016 featured the much-anticipated return of Ronda Rousey to the UFC Octagon. It was so anticipated that Topps released a Rousey Now card just based on the announcement that Rousey would come back. That early preview card had a print run of 331 copies.

It's a good thing Topps featured Rousey on a card when they did, because she got absolutely rocked by Amanda Nunes, who earned the TKO finish in 48 seconds. This card had 214 copies ordered by collectors.

Maybe the most entertaining fight of the night was Cody Garbrandt's masterful defeat of Dominick Cruz for the Bantamweight belt. This card had 213 copies printed.

Like the back of the card says, TJ Dillashaw set himself up for a future title shot against Garbrandt by beating John Lineker. This card wasn't as popular, pulling in only 115 orders.

As of now, these are the latest UFC Now cards put out by Topps. I wasn't sure if Topps would put out cards for UFC 208, as the two main fights on that card ended controversially. In the main event, Germaine de Randamie beat Holly Holm by decision, mostly on the strength of several late hits that some argued should have cost her points on the scorecards. In the other headlining fight, Anderson Silva won a decision over Derek Brunson. I think just about everyone who saw that fight had Brunson winning it, but the judges went with the name brand over the fighter who seemed better on the evening. So Topps just ignored that mess, probably rightly so.

Tonight's UFC 209 has produced some decent fights so far, but I don't know if there's a lot of big-name draw here. I will be interested to see if Topps puts out some more UFC Now cards, or if they just let this branch of the Now tree dry up and fall off.

2016 Topps UFC NOW - UFC 202

I've been picking up the Topps NOW UFC trading cards for each numbered UFC event, but each time one comes up I find myself wondering just how many fights Topps will choose to make cards for. I like the idea of having the complete set, but I just can't justify buying four or five NOW cards for each one.

So far they've done a pretty good job of at least alternating the number of cards per event, with 5 for the big UFC 200 event, 1 for UFC 201, 4 for UFC 202, 3 for UFC 203, and 2 for tonight's UFC 204. It's a tough balance, and I've been keeping an eye on the explosion in cards for the baseball version of Topps NOW as people on the forums drop out of the chase for that set under the onslaught of new cards being printed each day. There are people out there basically bankrupting themselves trying to keep up with the baseball set. I hope that Topps will keep the numbers down for the UFC cards, sticking with only the key fights in numbered UFC events. If they start digging down into Fight Nights or printing cards for every single main card fight on the numbered events, I will have to drop out. And based on the print runs for most of these things, that's like 1 percent of their revenue from the UFC cards gone!

Like I mentioned earlier, they made four cards for August's UFC 202. The big one was the Conor McGregor / Nate Diaz rematch, which McGregor won by split decision. This was by far the most-printed UFC NOW card at 636 copies, almost doubling the previous high of 320 set by the Brock Lesnar card from the UFC 200 group.

Anthony Johnson got the second card for UFC 202, and this one had a print run of 90 copies, which seems to be a little below average for these cards. If you count all 13 of the cards for UFC 200 through 203, the average print run is 168, but I think Lesnar and McGregor really skew those numbers. Taking out those two, the remaining 11 cards have an average print run of 112.

I kind of wondered why Cody Garbrandt's fight got included in Topps NOW, because it wasn't even on the Main Card. It was in the preliminaries. Someone at Topps must know that he has a hobby following, because this card had a print run of 214. Who knew?

The last card features Donald Cerrone's win over Rick Story. This one had a print run of 91 cards. It will be interesting to see what the print runs do for the two cards from UFC 204, because the ones from 203 really took a step down from the previous events. It kind of looks like someone who was buying in bulk for resale stepped out of the game after 202, because the print runs dropped by about 20 for 'regular' cards that don't feature big names (McGregor, Garbrandt), people with celebrity outside the UFC world (Lesnar), and female fighters (Nunes).

Not a whole lot to say about the card backs. They have a little write-up about the fight and that's about it. I enjoyed watching UFC 204 this evening. There were plenty of good fights. I was hoping that Bisping or Henderson would earn the finish in the last fight, but it went to a decision, with Bisping retaining his belt. As far as UFC Pick 'Em goes, I picked the first five fights wrong, then got the last six correct, ending up 6 / 11 on the night.