Rainbow in the Dark 39: Neil Magny 2017 Topps Chrome

I haven't posted any UFC cards in over a month, so I thought I'd share a bit of a rainbow I worked on from 2017 Topps UFC Chrome. This is a product I liked a lot, and I opened several boxes of it. I also bought into a few group breaks for specific fighters and picked up quite a few cards on the secondary market.

One of the fighters I follow is Neil Magny. I like him because he fights frequently and is a pretty good all-rounder. He is also in the National Guard, which is something I identify with, as I will reach 18 years in the Army National Guard this month. I was able to gather most of Magny's cards from Chrome. I don't have scans of the base card or the base Refractor, but I have many, many copies of them both. This first one is the Diamond Refractor, which comes one per pack in a Hot Box, which falls one per case.

Next up is the X-fractor, which is a 1:24 pack pull, or one per box. Chrome is coming back for 2018, and I really should get some boxes on order. The release date is in mi-July for that.

The next tier of rarity is the Green Refractor, which is limited to 99 copies. The one I've scanned here is numbered  # 98 / 99. I think I've got a handful of these, but maybe only a couple.

Next up is the Blue Wave Refractor, which is limited to 75 copies apiece. This one is # 10 / 75. Around the time the 2018 set releases, the UFC will be coming to Boise for a Fight Night event. I am going to try to get tickets for that, as I've never been to a live UFC event. Two fighters whose cards I collect, Cat Zingano and Liz Carmouche, have already been announced for that card.

I love me some Gold parallels, and 2017 Chrome had them. This Magny Gold Refractor is numbered # 25 / 50.

The Orange Refractors are twice as rare as the Golds, with 25 copies printed of each card. My copy is  # 21 / 25. After the Orange Refractors come the Black Refractors, with a print run of only 10 copies apiece. I haven't found one for Magny yet, and for all I know they are all still sitting out there in packs somewhere. The Black Refractors can be easy to miss, because most of the cards have a dark background anyway. I pulled one in a box and almost missed it until I checked the back of the cards.

The Red Refractors are nearly indistinguishable from the Orange ones, except for the serial numbering on the back. My copy is # 3 / 5.

The Superfractor is the # 1 / 1 card that you really want from a Chrome product, but so far I have to settle for the Black Printing Plate. It would be nice to pick up the Superfractor and the other printing plates, but we'll see if they pop up for sale. With the low-numbered cards in a rainbow, you are at the mercy of the market. Someone has to pull the card and list it for sale, or you will never see it.

Blog Bat-Around: What I Collect

I don't think I've ever participated in a Blog Bat-Around before. I tend to do things on my own schedule, and by the time I am ready to participate in something like this, everyone else has moved on. I think most people have already moved on from this one, too, but I'm posting about it anyway. I think credit goes to Night Owl for starting/inspiring this one, entitled 'What I Collect.' It's basically an excuse to list your various projects and collecting interests. Some people listed theirs in order of preference, but my collecting habits are too random for me to do that.

I'll start off with baseball. I mainly focus on player collections, although there are some other things I chase. I would say the primary player I collect is R.A. Dickey, but Jon Singleton is up there and I also have tried to put together a decent Josh Reddick collection. Evan Gattis is a guy I've tried to start an accumulation for, but I get distracted from that one too easily. He's probably one of my favorite players to watch, though, outside of Jose Altuve. Singleton's available cardboard seems to be drying up, as it doesn't look like he's going to pan out anytime soon. Maybe I'll change my focus to Gattis or someone else once I feel like I'm done getting Singleton cards. I also pick up Munenori Kawasaki cards when I can, but I think he announced his retirement in the last few days, and he doesn't really have a lot of cardboard out there anyhow.

Because I can't reasonably expect to get all of the cards of any given player, I just try to get the ones I like best, and the ones that are available at a reasonable price. I will grab random hits and cards featuring other players I like, such as Max Scherzer, but when it comes to single cards I am usually pretty focused on a handful of guys. I did pick up a whole lot of Topps Now cards from last season, mostly the ones featuring Astros. I also like to get some of the oddball cards that Topps prints for the Now program, like the card that talked about the Royals' Rally Mantis. I will generally grab any that include a donation to charity. A couple that come to mind are one Topps did for Hurricane Harvey relief and another donating to veteran's charities for Memorial Day.

I usually buy a factory set of Topps and a set of Update from eBay. In most years I collect the blue foil parallel set out of Opening Day. Sometimes I buy a set of Heritage after busting enough of it to realize that I can't possibly build a set without spending a whole lot of money on packs full of doubles. I typically buy a box of Allen & Ginter for Gint-a-Cuffs. Usually I find one other product that I buy a bunch of. Last year it was Bowman Platinum. There are other collections that I sometimes add to, like Wally Moon, Rollie Fingers, Nolan Ryan, Randy Johnson, vintage sets, Fan Favorites autographs from Topps Archives, and oddball releases.

One big focus of mine has been sketch cards and full-size artwork. I have a few main character collections. The primary ones are DC Comics' Power Girl and Leia from Star Wars. I also have small collections of Marvel characters She-Hulk, Squirrel Girl, and Scarlet Witch. I've accumulated quite a few Captain America sketches, as well as a small number of M.O.D.O.K. sketch cards. I will pick up sketches of other subjects, too, if they catch my eye.

I also collect Star Wars cards, but not all that obsessively. I just get what interests me. Topps puts out a lot of Star Wars products, and keeping up with them all would be a full-time collection. I don't have that kind of focus. I gather cards featuring Leia, interesting relics, and autographs from other characters that I like.

I like wrestling cards. They are a lot of fun. Again, I collect just about anything that catches my eye. I don't try to get all of the Topps Now WWE cards, but I get one or two every few months if a wrestler I like is featured. I like autographs of classic guys like Sergeant Slaughter. I also have collections for Nia Jax and Bayley. I started a Charlotte Flair collection after I met her last year at a book signing, but I don't have an autographed card from her yet. John Cena is too popular for me to collect, but I should really track down an autograph of his.

I've gathered a couple of Iron Sheik hits over time, and I went out and got that Trish Stratus autograph recently. Most of my collections are grab bags of single cards that I pick up on eBay, with the occasional box break or group break thrown in.

I also collect trading cards of Japanese women wrestlers. BBM puts out an annual set that covers a wide range of promotions, and the Stardom promotion puts out their own card set every so often. The Stardom packs are really hard to get, so usually I am limited to whatever singles pop up on eBay. I have a pretty good source for unopened BBM True Heart cards, though, and between eBay and Yahoo! Auctions in Japan I am able to get most of the cards I want. I have a full run of Command Bolshoi (the masked wrestler up top) autographs dating back to 2003. That's my best Japanese wrestler collection, but there are several other wrestlers that I collect. I am currently waiting on a large shipment out of Japan, which includes the complete 2004 set, which almost never comes up for sale. A couple of high-level Japanese wrestlers have transferred to the WWE recently, and that has driven up interest a little bit in these cards. 

I collect UFC cards, too. I have a couple of fighter collections. Neil Magny is one of the primary ones, and Randa Markos is one of the others. I really just like to collect a little of everything, though. I will usually grab just about any relic or autograph if it is cheap enough, and especially if I don't already have something featuring that fighter. I gather up low-numbered parallels if I can, from just about any product. It seems like every year I go pretty hard on at least one product. Last year it was Museum Collection and Chrome. This year I might go after those same products.

I chase NASCAR cards, mostly focusing on a handful of drivers. Most of my favorite drivers have retired, so I am looking for new people to collect. I haven't settled on anyone yet. In reality most of my racing card money goes to Danica Patrick cards and the occasional box break. I am thinking about starting a Darrell 'Bubba' Wallace collection, or maybe collecting one of the Busch brothers. Other racers I collect are Tony Stewart, Jeff Gordon, Dale Earnhardt Jr., and Josh Wise. I also have a small collection of drag racing stuff, with the main focus of that collection being the Force family (John, Courtney, and Brittany). 

I guess this scan represents pop culture celebrities and other sports. I gather autographs, relics, and other cards featuring people that I've heard of from outside of mainstream sports. Goodwin Champions is a good source for those, as are Panini's various celebrity offerings. I've got a fair number of cards featuring Olympic gymnasts, a decent Felicia Day collection, some singers, some authors, and some people who are mostly famous for being famous or being related to someone famous.

Basketball cards were the main thing I collected during my teen years in the 90's. It is mostly a fringe collection now, but I still gather cards for my main player collections (Hakeem Olajuwon, Gheorghe Muresan, Manute Bol). I will also pick up any Houston Rockets cards I can find, but I don't often go out of my way to track them down. 

Football cards are pretty far down my list, but I still have a couple of NFL collections. Most of the cards I add picture former Broncos' tight end Shannon Sharpe. I like getting Terrell Davis and John Elway cards. I will collect just about anything with Tim Tebow on it. I also recently started a Jake Butt collection, because how often does someone named Butt play for your favorite team? I've picked up one or two Von Miller cards over the last couple of years, too, but I have a hard time focusing on football. The careers are so short, and the sport just hasn't been as exciting for me as it was previously.

That's a quick rundown of my collecting world. I am not a very focused guy, so I bounce around from thing to thing as new products release and my interests change.

Neil Magny from Topps Vault

I've been in a bit of a funk the last couple of days. I don't really feel like writing about the older stuff in my draft queue, and I don't really feel like blogging about new stuff that's come in more recently. I think it probably has more to do with me than it does the material I have on tap.

Here's an eBay pickup from a while back. I think I got it directly from the Topps Vault page, as they ran a discount on a bunch of stuff. This is the blank-back 1 / 1 of Neil Magny's 2017 Topps UFC Knockout card. I know the blank-backs are kind of a gimmicky thing, but I can't help picking one up every now and then.

On the Heels of 23 Days of Pack Breaks, a Case Against Breaking Packs

I just completed posting about 23 days of pack-busting, based mostly on Cyber Week orders I made from Blowout Cards and Topps. I pulled some good cards from the break and I had a lot of fun opening so many different products, but I couldn't help thinking about the 'value' of busting boxes versus buying singles.

From a box of 2017 Topps UFC Chrome, you can expect to pull about half a base set, 8 basic Refractors, 3-4 Refractors with print runs from 75 to 99, and one Refractor parallel with a print run of 50 or less. You also get a fair number of inserts, and generally 1-2 serially-numbered inserts with print runs of 50 or 99. A box also promises two autographs, generally a base autograph and a numbered autograph, with the most common numbered autographs having a print run of 99. You also have an outside shot at getting something pretty cool, like an autograph with a very low print run or a rare Refractor or Superfractor of a star.

That led me to do a comparison based on some eBay purchases. A base set of UFC Chrome costs about $20, and so the half-set you'd find in a box will run you about $10. I got the following cards for about $10 less than the price of a box of Chrome, along with a couple fighter lots of base and inserts that I didn't bother to photograph.

First up are the horizontal cards. The two parallels at the top are Red parallels with print runs of 8. The Nurmagomedov, Schaub, and Condit parallels after that are all # / 88. Then I've got a Carla Esparza parallel # / 227 and a nice older Brock Lesnar base card. After that I've got a relic card of Carlos Condit and a base autograph of Jared Rosholt. With just these ten cards, I feel like I'm already approaching the average value of stuff I would pull from the typical box of Chrome. All I would really need is another autograph and a nice low-numbered parallel. I've still got four photos to go.

Those three Green Refractors at the top have print runs of 99, while the Orange row on the bottom are limited to 25 copies each. Esparza and Magny are fighters I collect. Shevchenko is a pretty good card, and I was mostly chasing low print runs with the bottom guys.

That Gold Smolka card is limited to 50 copies. The Blue Wave Esparza and Magny have 75 copies each. Then I've got a bunch of unnumbered stuff, like a Hot Box Refractor of Magny, an Xfractor of Holly Holm (seeded at the same rate as the Blue Wave # / 75 cards), a couple of base Refractors, and a handful of base cards represented by the Magny in the lower right. At this point I feel like I have blown way past the value to be expected from a box of Chrome, but there's more.

The three Cris Justino cards in the upper left are all Refractor versions of the inserts, limited to 99 copies. The extra sparkly one in the upper right is a Pulsar Refractor, limited to 50 copies. I would probably only get 1 or 2 of these in a given box of Chrome, and I got all four here. Justino is one of the more popular fighters in the product at the moment, given her relatively recent entry to the UFC and her dominance in her fights to date. I also have a couple of autographs from various products, as well as a couple of nice high-end relics of Nurmagomedov from 2017 Topps UFC Knockout.

Finally, I have another Red parallel, this time one limited to 25 copies from 2017 Topps UFC Knockout. I also have a Blue Justino # / 99 and a couple of Green # / 215 parallels. There are a few more numbered parallels along the bottom, as well as a die-cut Magny insert.

There are obviously reasons other than dollars and cents to open packs and boxes instead of buying singles, but I find that it sometimes helps me to do a little exercise like this to remind me that when comparing card collecting to real life, busting wax is more like a lottery ticket while buying singles is more like buying shares in an index fund. There is a chance that the lottery ticket will pay off big, but oftentimes the more boring option gives a better long-term return.

Neil Magny 6 / 8 Red Parallel

My month away from home is nearly at an end, which is a great relief for me. It wouldn't be so bad, I guess, if we had internet access in our barracks. It might also be nice to have regular beds instead of bunk beds, and thermostats in our rooms. That's nearly over now, though, as I fly home tomorrow. I should have a veritable mountain of mail waiting for me, so I'm looking forward to opening a lot of padded envelopes.

I did get to visit New York City last weekend, which was pretty cool. One of the guys in my class grew up there, so he led us all around. I saw the Statue of Liberty, the 9/11 memorial and museum, Times Square, Katz's Deli, Freedom Hall, and some other stuff. I was pretty happy about it.

Here's a card I picked up a while back. It's a 2015 Topps UFC Knockout Ruby parallel of Neil Magny. These are pretty scarce, with my copy being numbered # 6 / 8. I was glad to find one on eBay for my collection.

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.