Cyber Week Breaks: Day 7 - Seeing Green

Today's break is kind of boring, at least for me. Maybe I should have scanned a recent mail day or something to go along with it. It's too late for that now, as I am tired and don't feel like doing anything extra now. I opened a box of 2016 Topps High Impact and 2 packs of 2015 Topps UFC Chronicles.

The Femme Fighters insert from High Impact was Liz Carmouche, whose card I already had. I collect her cards, so I guess I now have one for the PC and one for the set. The autograph is Al Iaquinta. I don't know much about Iaquinta. He's only had one fight since I started watching UFC events, and I don't remember if I watched it or not. A bunch of Green parallels came out of the Chronicles packs. They are numbered # / 288. Royce Gracie is a legend in MMA, but his heyday was well before I started watching. I saw his Bellator 'fight' with Ken Shamrock last year that was pretty sad. Julianna Pena is another fighter I collect, and I probably have a few copies of her Green parallel now.

Jessica Penne and Khabib Nurmagomedov are the other two Green parallels I pulled. I also pulled another of the hits from the Chronicles box, a base relic of Michael Bisping.

That's about all for today. Tomorrow's break is a box of 2017 Topps High Tek Baseball, so that should be a pretty exciting post.

A Big Batch of Random UFC Cards

There's a pretty big fight today, so I thought I'd post some UFC cards I picked up at some point over the last few months. Technically, today's fight is a boxing match, but it involves arguably the biggest UFC star since Ronda Rousey, Conor McGregor. Topps actually has made a trio of cards available for pre-order under their UFC Now banner, one for each fighter's weigh-in and one for the weigh-in generally. If you buy the individual weigh-in card of the fight winner, you will also get a bonus card of that fighter. I went ahead and ordered a copy of all three cards. As of the time I am posting this, there are still about six hours left on the pre-order window. If that interests you, click here. 

I don't have any new McGregor cards, and I don't think I've got any Mayweather cards at all, so I'll be showing off some other stuff. It's mostly a grab bag of parallels and hits, with these first couple cards being relic cards of UFC Hall of Famer Urijah Faber. The card above is a Fight Mat Relic card from 2014 Topps UFC Champions.

This one is a Fighter Relic card from 2012 UFC Bloodlines. It looks to be a piece of t-shirt or something similar. This one's serially-numbered # 169 / 188. I wish Topps would bring back a good comprehensive base set to the UFC line, but I can understand that there's probably not much money in that. They are releasing a Chrome set soon, which might be as close as we're going to get to that in 2017. The UFC needs some more big stars to carry the brand, especially maybe some stars who don't pop hot on drug tests.

This Cung Le relic card is another Topps UFC Bloodlines relic card, but it comes from the 2013 version of the product. It also looks like a bit of t-shirt, and is numbered # 011 / 198.

Going back to mat relics, here is a bit of the mat from UFC 76 on a card featuring Mauricio Rua. This card comes from 2010 Topps UFC. At UFC 76 he lost to Forrest Griffin due to a choke submission.

The last relic card in this batch of scans is an Alexis Davis card from 2014 Topps UFC Knockout. The relic swatch looks to be a two-color bit of shirt. She won her last fight, in April of this year.

Jumping ahead to 2015 Topps UFC Knockout, I have an Autograph Relic card of Francisco Rivera. His last fight was in 2016, and the UFC site lists him as a former fighter, so he might be done. That loss marked the end of a stretch where he lost 5 out of six fights over three years, so maybe he just didn't have it anymore.

I may already have a copy or two of this Jessica Penne autograph from 2015 Topps UFC Champions, but she has a cool signature and I am a sucker for cheap UFC hits, so I picked up another. She's lost three fights in a row now, with her latest being a loss by decision to Danielle Taylor in April 2017. Around the same time, she was also the first female UFC fighter to be flagged for a potential doping violation.

This Vitor Belfort card is a parallel of an insert card from 2011 Topps UFC Moment of Truth. This is the Onyx parallel of his Elite Skills insert, numbered # 13 / 88.

I am having a hard time pulling up a decent checklist for 2010 Topps Knockout, but I am assuming this parallel looks Green to me. It is numbered # 19 / 88.

I don't know why I like Gold parallels so much for UFC cards, but I pick them up when I can. This is a Bethe Correia parallel from 2015 Topps UFC Knockout. It is numbered # 55 / 99. Sorry for the lack of real content in parts of this post. There are some days when I am just not feeling it.

The final card in this group is a Gold parallel from 2015 Topps UFC Champions. Gold parallels from this set are some of my favorite cards to pick up, so I will always try to get them if I can. This one is numbered # 07 / 25.

I am not really pulling for McGregor or Mayweather. I guess the most entertaining thing would be for McGregor to win, as that would potentially throw the boxing world into disarray. I don't know much about boxing, but I am guessing that Mayweather's wealth of experience in the sport will make this a one-sided battle in his favor.

Combined Shipping Leads to Buying Stuff 10: Combined Shipping is a Powerful Drug

The first card in this post is the only card I meant to purchase, but things got a little out of hand when I saw that the seller offered free shipping with the purchase of  items. I am usually able to pass up on these offers because sellers often don't have enough cards I want. This time I did track down 10 items from the seller's inventory to purchase.

Here is the card that started me down this path. It popped up in my feed at a very low price for a low-numbered UFC card. It is the Gold parallel of Jessica Penne's 2015 Topps UFC Champions card, and it is numbered # 16 / 25. As a bonus, it features a cameo by one of my PC fighters, Randa Markos. Penne would win that fight by decision. I will pick up nearly any UFC parallel card that is # / 25 or less if the price is right.

The problem with my Randa Markos collection is that, to my knowledge, she doesn't have any relics or autographs out there. I am lucky if she gets into lower-tier products with a base card and some parallels or maybe an insert. She is absent from the checklists of most hit-driven products, so I have expanded my player collections to officially include Julianna Pena. As part of the combined shipping lot, I picked up this Fight Mat Relic Card from 2016 Topps UFC Knockout. It is numbered # 076 / 188, and you can see in tiny print under the disclaimer that this relic piece comes from the TUF 18 Finale, a tournament that Pena won.

Randa Markos' next opponent is Carla Esparza. They will fight at UFC Fight Night: Browne vs. Lewis in February. This card is Esparza's Gold parallel from 2016 Topps UFC Knockout, numbered # 44 / 99.

I also picked up this Green parallel of Leslie Smith from 2015 Topps UFC Chronicles. It is numbered # 088 / 288. Smith has had an up-and-down career in the UFC so far, last defeating Irene Aldana in December.

The last UFC card in this lot is this Silver parallel of Tecia Torres from 2016 Topps UFC Knockout. It is numbered # 022 / 227. Torres lost a fight to Rose Namajunas in April 2016, and has an upcoming fight against Bec Rawlings in February.

I closed out the order with a couple of Hakeem Olajuwon and Shannon Sharpe cards for those particular player collections. I think the top left Olajuwon is from 1999-00 Skybox E-X, and the top right Olajuwon is from 1997-98 Flair Showcase. On the bottom are a 1999 Topps Gold Label and a 1998 Flair Showcase card for Sharpe.

There are apparently only nine cards in this post. There is a 1997 Pinnacle Shannon Sharpe card that should be here, but I don't see the scan for it, and the Leslie Smith Green parallel was from another order and ought to be replaced by a Cat Zingano card that also isn't in the scans for this post. I was twisting my brain around trying to match the cards in that order to the cards in this post. That's what happens when you let cards pile up before you scan them. Either way, I originally went to buy the card at the top of the post and wound up ordering 9 more to go with it, including some of the cards pictured here.

Another Batch of Nifty UFC Hits

I've picked up a decent number of UFC cards over the last little bit. I am pretty open when it comes to the UFC, so I will snap up just about anything I come across that seems interesting. I do have a couple of specific fighters that I collect with a little more purpose, but for the most part I will bid on cardboard that is 1) cheap and 2) cool.

This Jessica Penne autograph got a bid from me largely because she's got a cool signature, with a lot of loops at the beginning and an interesting back and forth line for the rest of it. I also don't think I had a Penne autograph in my collection yet. I am not officially chasing an autograph of every fighter who has one, but I do like adding new ones to my collection.

I think Topps has moved away from this entirely, but on older products they often listed which UFC event the mat relics came from. This Martin Kampmann 2010 Topps UFC Knockout fight mat relic came from UFC 108, where he defeated Jacob Volkmann by submission. I believe this is the Green parallel of the card, numbered # 41 / 88.

Here's another one for the interesting penmanship category. Liz Carmouche has a very minimalistic signature, as displayed on this 2013 Topps UFC Bloodlines autograph card. I still think it's pretty cool, though, much better than Wil Myers' 'WM' autograph. She's riding a two-fight win streak, with a victory at the recent UFC 205. It seems like I've bid on a hundred Carmouche autographs and lost, but I finally landed this one. edit: Commenter R Laughton has informed me that Carmouche's signature is in Japanese. Running the symbols リーズ C. through the Japanese-English translation device returns the name Liz C.

Raquel Pennington also had a win at UFC 205, beating Miesha Tate by decision in the first fight of the Main Card, after which Tate announced her retirement. This is the first of a trio of autographs out of 2015 Topps UFC Champions that I picked up from the same seller.

Carla Esparza was the first UFC Women's Strawweight Champion. She lost the belt in her first defense of the title to Joanna Jędrzejczyk, who has gone on to defend the title 4 times, including at UFC 205. Esparza went on to win her next fight after losing the belt, but hasn't fought again since April 2016.

I had a couple of Cat Zingano relics in my collection, but I hadn't picked up an autograph yet. Zingano has fought once per year since 2011, with her 2016 bout coming in the much-hyped UFC 200, where she lost a decision to Julianna Pena.

Here's another fight mat relic card that goes all the way back to UFC 57, where Randy Couture lost a title fight to Chuck Liddell. This card comes from 2010 Topps UFC. Randy Couture retired (twice) long before I ever got into watching fights, so I don't know a lot about him.

These last two cards feature a fighter I collect specifically, Jim Miller. He fought at both UFC 200 and UFC 205, winning his bouts at both events. He'd been on a pretty rough streak lately, losing 4 out of 5 fights at one point, but he's currently on a three-fight win streak. I don't know if that makes him a contender in the Lightweight division, as there are about a million guys in that weight class and Conor McGregor just complicated things with his big UFC 205 victory. Miller seems to be game for just about any fight, though, and hopefully he's got a few more in the tank. This autograph comes from the 2011 Topps UFC Title Shot product, and is some parallel of the Contenders Autographs set. I missed out on the base version, but I got this parallel numbered # 60 / 88. 

From what I can gather, these UFC Poker Chips were inserted into blaster boxes of 2010 Topps UFC trading cards, sort of like the various manu-patches and medallions you get in some blasters of Topps' baseball products. I thought it was a pretty unique item to get for my Jim Miller collection.

I completely missed out on last night's Fight Night: Mousasi vs. Hall event, and I missed most of the preliminary fights for tonight's Fight Night: Bader vs. Nogueira. I did get to see the last seven fights though, with the last two bouts being particularly good. Most of the Main Card was pretty entertaining, although it got a little painful at the end of the Almeida vs. Morales fight, as the ref let the fight go about ten punches too long when it was clear that Morales was out of it. It's too bad that Ryan Bader won't get a Topps NOW card out of his victory, but I also really don't want Topps to start pumping out cards for Fight Nights. It's hard enough to keep up with the cards they put out for the numbered UFC events.