Cyber Week Breaks: Day 5 - Uncle Creepy Makes an Appearance

I know that my UFC posts don't always get a lot of site visits, but I got a lot of UFC cards in my Cyber Week orders and there are going to be a fair number of posts with just fighting cards in them. These days the only sporting events I set time aside to watch are fights and baseball, so that's where my head is at when it comes to collecting. I'll try to mix in some other stuff from mail days when a break is slow. Today's breaks are 8 packs of 2017 Topps UFC Chrome and a box of 2016 Topps UFC High Impact.

The first 8 packs from the 2nd box of 2017 Topps UFC Chrome held quite a bit of good stuff. That Jose Aldo Museum Collection insert is the Refractor version, numbered # 94 / 99. The Green Refractor of Mickey Gall is numbered # 48 / 99. I almost flipped right past the Tyron Woodley card, but something about it looked a little different. You can see Refractors in this product from the side of a card stack, because they have white edges while the base cards have colored edges.

Those thick white lines are all Refractors. The Tyron Woodley card is a Black Refractor, numbered # 08 / 10. Black refractors fall only once per 7.5 boxes, so that's a pretty good pull. It will probably be the lowest-numbered Refractor I pull from this break. I also got another Demetrious Johnson autograph. This one is just a base autograph, though, unlike the insert autograph I pulled the other day.

The High Impact box had an autograph of Ian McCall and a Femme Fighters insert of Joanne Calderwood. You might notice that Ian McCall's signature doesn't say his name. His nickname is 'Uncle Creepy,' and it sure looks like that's the name he signed on his sticker. He hasn't fought since 2015, although he's been scheduled for several fights over the last couple of years. One fighter has always pulled out of all his scheduled bouts. He's now signed to the Rizin promotion out of Japan.

I needed the Femme Fighters insert of Calderwood for my set, too, so that's another one off the need list. I'm down to needing just two cards for that set. Hopefully the cards I need are somewhere in the stack of unopened High Impact boxes sitting on my desk.

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.

Just a Few UFC Autographs from eBay

I missed out on making a NASCAR post yesterday, as I spent the day traveling to some training I need for job certifications. I didn't feel much like doing anything after I got to my hotel. I guess I could make a NASCAR post anyway, but at the moment I am not inclined to do that. Danica Patrick finished the O'Reilly Auto Parts 500 at Texas Motor Speedway in 24th place. She was tied in the points standings with Michael McDowell going into the race, but he finished the race in 23rd place and moved ahead of her by one point. She's currently sitting in 29th place overall for the season.

In other news, UFC 210 happened on Saturday. I missed a lot of the event, as I was trying to get my bags packed for my trip. I did watch the weird ending of the Chris Weidman / Gegard Mousasi fight. Wow. Mousasi landed two knees that the referee decided were illegal, so he stopped the fight to probably warn Mousasi or take away a point. Then he discovered that the knees were legal, but told Weidman that he had 5 minutes to recover instead of returning the fighters to the original position they'd been in and restarting the clock. While that was going on, the doctors came in and called the fight off. The end result was a TKO victory by Mousasi, with both fighters angry about how the fight had ended. It appears that a rematch will be happening at some point.

Daniel Cormier also retained his belt against Anthony Johnson, who retired after the match was over. I always feel bad when a fighter retires after losing a fight, because it takes the spotlight away from the person who actually won the fight. In wrestling (like Undertaker retiring after WrestleMania) because wrestling is all about the story, but in fighting it just seems like a weak move. Hold a press conference or something.

I asked Topps on Twitter if they were planning on continuing the Topps Now line for the UFC after the low print runs on the cards for UFC 209, and here's what they said:

@chonk34 @ufc We are currently evaluating that.

— Topps Company (@Topps) April 11, 2017

So if you're waiting on news from Topps on the status of Topps Now for the UFC, there you go. That's not the most promising response in the world, but they responded pretty quickly and they are at least contemplating the continuation of the line.

These autographs don't have anything to do with UFC 210, but this was the oldest UFC draft in my post queue, so their turn is up. This Joanne Calderwood Archival Autographs card from 2016 Topps UFC Museum Collection was the original card I was chasing after in this lot. I went a little wild for the 2016 Museum Collection stuff, and I don't think I had a Calderwood autograph yet, so I bid on a few copies of this card and finally won this one. It's numbered # 11 / 99 and features a cool on-card signature with a heart in front of it.

I got a couple of other cards from the same seller, including this 2016 Topps UFC Top of the Class Autograph Relic card of Cat Zingano. It's not numbered or anything, and the relic swatch is relatively plain, but I have a small Zingano collection and this was a good addition.

Finally, I also got this Sarah Kaufman autograph from 2012 Topps UFC Bloodlines. It is marked as a 1st Autograph, so this is the first autographed card Kaufman had in a Topps product. It seems like fighters' first autographs always carry a premium for collectors, so I was happy to get this one for just a few dollars. This had kind of a high print run, as it is numbered # 406 / 449.

I went to an Antiques Mall today, looking for something to read or some kind of cool collectibles. I didn't find much, but I did get a nice Cincinnati Bengals jacket for my son and a 4-pack of Ginger Beer for me. I was planning on going to a card shop, but they weren't open today. Maybe tomorrow I'll go, if we get out of class early enough.