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.

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.

A Couple of UFC PSA's

Nope, not a Public Service Announcement, just a couple of Professional Sports Authenticator-graded cards. I didn't really care one way or the other about the grading and the holders, but these were a couple of cards I wanted. The grades on these two cards probably wound up hurting their sales prices, as they aren't those Gem Mint 10's that everyone wants. They are, however, listed as each fighter's 1st Autograph, which is a big thing among MMA collectors.

First up is this 2015 Topps UFC Knockout autograph of Julianna Pena. She is fighting Valentina Shevchenko tonight in the headliner for a UFC Fight Night event, with the winner probably getting a title shot against Amanda Nunes. I started a Pena collection recently, as the main fighters I've been collecting (Neil Magny and Randa Markos) haven't been showing up in many sets lately. Pena has been in most sets lately, so it gives me something to chase. She's a pretty decent fighter, too, and she is also relatively local. I went to school in Moscow, Idaho, for a while, which is just down the road from her hometown of Spokane, Washington. I now live a few hours south of there, but it's still considered pretty close in Western U.S. terms.

The second card I picked up in this lot is this 2013 Topps UFC Finest autograph of Liz Carmouche. She's a veteran, and that puts her on my list of folks who I will chase cards for. She also has a pretty cool signature, with the first part of it being "Liz" written in Kanji followed by her last initial. It was pretty nice to add her 1st Autograph to my collection.

I missed the first few fights in tonight's event, but I was able to start watching around the time the Main Card kicked off. I am hoping for a Julianna Pena victory, but my endorsement of her has probably guaranteed a loss. I guess I should have kept quiet. Hopefully she can overcome my unintentional hex and get the victory.

Pack of the Day 148: 2 Boxes of 2016 Topps UFC High Impact

I got home yesterday after two weeks in Utah for job training. The drive wasn't too bad. It rained and snowed most of the way through the 4-1/2 hour drive, but the roads weren't bad until I got to Boise. I didn't see any wrecks or anything until I got within 40 miles of home, and in those 40 miles I saw 5 or 6 wrecks, with 2 or 3 of those looking pretty serious. I didn't get tied up in any of it, though, and made it home without incident.

I was greeted by a giant pile of mail on and around my desk. I should have taken a picture of it, but I didn't get around to it. There were eBay winnings, trade packages, surprises, group break cards, commissioned artwork, and Black Friday purchases among the pile. I am still working on sorting and scanning it all so that I can post about it. I also have some packages to build and send out over the next few days. In the meantime, I picked up a couple boxes of 2016 Topps UFC High Impact from the Topps website a while back, and here is what I pulled from them.

High Impact is an online-exclusive set that was released in early 2016. The base checklist has 50 cards. There are parallels of the base set, one insert set, and autographs. Each box has 20 cards, with the breakdown being 16 base cards, 2 parallels, 1 insert, and 1 autograph.

The base cards are pretty standard stuff. Picture, name, and weight class on the front, biographical info on the back. The cards in the box I opened several months ago were miscut and hard to align on the scanner. This batch of cards was better. In the post on that first box I mentioned that I probably ought to quit while I was ahead. After this break was finished I found myself wishing that I had listened to me from the past.

Here are some of the horizontal base cards. With such a small checklist, Topps mostly focused on the bigger names in the UFC. I read somewhere that the UFC is going to open up another women's division at the 145 lb. Featherweight level, probably to help keep Cris Cyborg around. That's a pretty cool development.

Each box has two parallels. The unnumbered Blue parallel is the most common, but Red (# / 8) and Gold (1 / 1) are possible. All of my parallels in this batch were of the Blue variety, with Claudia Gadelha showing up in each box.

Femme Fighters is the only insert set in High Impact, with a 20-card checklist of female fighters. I pulled the first and last cards in the set, Julianna Pena and Liz Carmouche. It was disappointing that both of these inserts came out of the box with damaged corners, especially the Pena card. The top two corners were just mangled. I was pretty disappointed by that.

I saw this autograph and I was like, "Who?" Erik Perez is a Bantamweight fighter. I've seen him fight a few times, but I didn't remember it. What is interesting about this card is that he signed it with his nickname, 'Goyito.'

My second autograph was another guy whose name didn't ring a bell for me, James Vick. His most recent fight was a first-round knockout loss against Beneil Dariush at UFC 199 in June.

I guess not every break can be a winner. I already have a base set, but it would be cool to collect the Femme Fighters insert set. At one per box, though, it's not a very cost-effective pursuit. Singles are available out there, but the price tags attached to the big names are pretty high. I don't know if it's worth chasing.

UFC 206 is tonight. It will be interesting to see which fights Topps decides to commemorate with Topps NOW cards. My guess is that Max Holloway - Anthony Pettis and Donald Cerrone - Matt Brown get cards, but I don't know if any of the other fights on the card warrant a NOW release. I would say that the December 17th Fight Night has a better hobby lineup than UFC 206, but I really don't want Topps to start making NOW cards for Fight Nights.

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.