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 Now that the UFC has a robust set of weight classes for women, it seems a little weird and outdated to have the Octagon Girls parading around.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

Wasted Time

One of the biggest card days of the year for me is the day I get my first BBM True Heart Japanese Women's Wrestling cards. The product usually releases in the early part of the year, and it is torturous to wait for my shipment to arrive from across the ocean. Anyone whose hobby shop or big box store stocks Topps Series 1 late will be familiar with the feeling. For whatever reason, the USPS site said my cards were supposed to be delivered on Sunday, but that didn't happen. They delivered a couple of Amazon packages on Sunday, but not my cards. Usually someone has to sign for packages from Japan, so me or my wife has to be around when the mail comes. I pestered my wife to keep an eye out because I had to work the weekend, but the Amazon packages were all that showed up.

I didn't have work on Monday, so I woke up and set up camp on the couch to wait for the mail carrier. Our mail is almost always delivered before noon, usually by 10:30, so I made sure to be downstairs by about 9:00. Then I waited. And waited. Ten o'clock rolled past. I played on the XBox for a while, as the morning rolled into the afternoon. I kept losing races because I'd pause the game and look out the window every time I heard a sound. I paced around. My wife left to volunteer at our twins' Valentine's Day party at school. I decided that it was too late to still be in my pajamas, so I changed into some real clothes. I wouldn't want the mail carrier to think I was some kind of crazy person who sits around all day, waiting for the mail.

I was tired of playing XBox, so I took out the trash. I checked the mailbox, just to be sure. I went back into the house and looked out the window. I went upstairs and checked some other tracking numbers that showed as 'Out for Delivery' at around 8:00 in the morning. The afternoon school bus went by at around 4:00. My wife and the kids came home from the school around 4:30. I asked my wife if she'd seen the mail truck on the way through the neighborhood. She hadn't. My kids told me about their school day. I did some dishes. I opened the front door and saw a package on the step. It was my cards. They hadn't knocked or anything. After gathering the mail, I checked the tracking on the USPS site. It showed that I had signed for the package at 5:31 PM. They must have signed it for me, seeing that the route was running about 7 hours late.

I'll post my annual review of the product soon(ish). I didn't pull much in the way of wrestlers I collect, but I've got some of those cards coming from elsewhere. Although I am a little irritated that the post office signed my name for me, I am happy that they didn't just leave a delivery attempt notice and take my cards back to the office. Waiting another day would have been the end of me.

The cards in this post probably came from eBay. I saw that Takeya Mizugaki had a pretty cool signature, so I set out to get an autograph of his. I wound up with two, one from 2010 Leaf MMA and one from 2015 Topps UFC Champions. I'm not complaining about that.

The Michelle Waterson cards are Silver and Gold parallels from 2016 Topps UFC Knockout. There is an eBay seller who lists cards of the fighters who are fighting in each UFC event, so I probably got these a little while back when Waterson and Paige VanZant fought. I guess Mizugaki was on that fight card, too, so these probably came from the same place. The Silver is # 131 / 227 and the Gold is # 86 / 99.

Cat Zingano didn't fight on that card, so I am not sure why her card ended up here. Sometimes my stacks get a little disorderly before I scan them, so there is some mixing of lots, especially when it comes to my UFC collection. This card is a Black parallel from 2015 Topps UFC Champions, numbered # 115 / 188.

I'm a little disappointed in myself for wasting basically an entire day waiting for the mail to come, but I did get a few things done and I managed to get some recreation in. It was mostly wasted time, though. I don't think I've ever actually seen this music video before, but I listened to the album about a million times back when it came out. I'm a pretty big Kings of Leon fan, I guess.