Some Box Breaks and Other Things

A while back I wanted to bust some packs, so I ordered some boxes of my favorite products of the last year or so from Blowout Cards. It feels a little weird that I don't have any baseball product in this order, but I've sort of moved into only buying singles and sets for that sport. I collect a relatively small number of baseball players, so the likelihood of pulling something that fits into my collection is slim. I tend to enjoy all kinds of stuff from racing, wrestling, and UFC, so the randomness of box busting is a little more collection-friendly for me.

There's the lineup of boxes. For wrestling I got a blaster of 2017 Topps WWE Women's Division, a hobby box of 2018 Topps WWE Women's Division, and a hobby box of 2019 Topps WWE Road to WrestleMania. For racing I got a box of 2018 Panini Victory Lane and a box of 2018 Panini Certified. I also got a box of 2018 Topps UFC Chrome. The pictures below are not really in order, so anyone who can't handle chaos should probably take off, eh.

Here are a couple of card from the Victory Lane box, an insert parallel of Alex Bowman and a Engineered to Perfection triple relic of Denny Hamlin. I guess this is as good a place as any to repeat that I have a mild interest in Hamlin cards because I worked for his sponsor, FedEx, for a couple of years.

The blaster of 2017 Topps WWE Women's Division turned out to be a pretty good one, with a Blue parallel of Lana and an autograph of Nikki Bella.

These breaks were pretty heavy on the Alex Bowman cards. These cards all came from 2018 Panini Certified. I got that Red Certified Signatures Alex Bowman autograph with two relic swatches, a Gold All-Certified Team insert of Kyle Larson, and two different versions of Bowman's Skills insert.

Here are some Red and Gold parallels and hits from the Certified box. I bought the Certified stuff hoping to get a Hailie Deegan autograph, but that didn't happen for me.

Here are the last couple cards from the Certified box, a couple of basic relic inserts featuring Jamie McMurray and Chase Elliott.

Here are the hits from the 2018 Topps WWE Women's Division box. I got a Silver parallel of Rusev kicking Elias in the face, which kind of makes up for the fact that there aren't any Women's Division wrestlers on the card. That Carmella autograph is a testament to the fact that female athletes don't always have great penmanship. I am always happy to get another Naomi card, even if this is just a manufactured relic.

I got a # / 25 parallel, a Kofi Kingston autograph, and a Titus O'Neil manufactured relic out of the 2019 Topps WWE Road to WrestleMania set. You may recognize Kofi Kingston as the current WWE World Heavyweight Champion.

The UFC Chrome box was a fun break, as usual for this particular product. These insert Refractors are of the # / 50 variety.

These are some of the more colorful Refractors in the box, an Orange # / 25 of Lyoto Machida and a Green # / 99 of Chuck Liddell. 

The box was a hot box, meaning that every pack contained one of those Refractors with the crazy patterned background shown on the Rose Namajunas and Holly Holm cards. X-Fractors and Blue Wave Refractors both come one per box, but X-Fractors are unnumbered while the Blue Waves are # / 75.

Each box of UFC Chrome has two autographs (unless you get a hot box with an OctoFractor), and I did pretty well here. The Claudia Gadelha signature is a base autograph, while the Amanda Nunes is an Orange # / 25.

Back to racing with some more Victory Lane stuff, including a Justin Haley autograph, a nice Chase Elliott auto-relic, and a dual relic of Justin Allgaier.

I pulled two # 1 / 1 cards in this break, and they both came from the Victory Lane box. One is a Yellow printing plate featuring none other than Dale Earnhardt Jr. The other is a Prime Patches card of Jamie McMurray, featuring the series sponsor patch from his firesuit.

Here's a bunch of other stuff I've picked up over the last couple of months. These two autographs were fun finds for me. The Josh Reddick comes from 2012 Topps Mini. It was hard to find autographs in these Mini products, so it was cool to see one in the wild. The R.A. Dickey card is a wrapper redemption autograph from 2013. I don't recall seeing many of these out there, either.

I was glad to add another Jake Butt card to my collection. I believe this one comes from 2017 Panini Unparalleled. The Charlotte Flair signature is a Silver parallel from 2019 Topps Road to WrestleMania. I like the design of that set's autographs, so I was happy to get one of the Queen.

Here are a couple of redemptions that came in from Topps. One is a UFC Museum Collection autograph of Maryna Moroz, which I believe is the first Moroz signature in my collection. The other is a Vanessa Borne card from the 2018 Topps WWE Women's Division set. Again, I think that might be my first autograph from her.

These cards were COMC purchases. Up first is an Octane Autographs card of Bubba Wallace from 2018 Panini Victory Lane. The other is a Green autograph of Naomi from 2018 Topps WWE Undisputed. The parallel coloring bleeds into the photographs on this set, leading to some weird situations, but in this case the green matches well with Naomi's gear.

This year's Topps Heritage set included box toppers featuring Topps staffers. I had to chase this one down on eBay because it pictures Sooz, one member of the A Cardboard Problem blog team and an active member of card Twitter.

I was one of the people who ordered one of the tablecloth relic cards from Manny Machado's press conference. The backlash against this card was so furious that I had to get one for my collection. I love things that other people hate, and the laugh I get from seeing this card in my collection is well worth the price.

The Alex Bregman card is a replacement for a damaged Bregman relic I got in the mail after buying a 2018 Topps Holiday box that was missing a hit. Attached to the card was a sort of passive-aggressive note reminding me that the damaged card was not folded in half when it was shipped. That was kind of the point. I was disappointed in the packaging. Poor packaging tends to lead to shipping damage. The other card is a replacement for a damaged Sandy Alcantara card I pulled from a rack pack of 2018 Topps Fire.

I was chasing a Ricky "The Dragon" Steamboat card from 2018 Topps WWE Legends set, and I was pretty happy to get this Bronze autographed relic. I also picked up a Diamond Dallas Page autograph.

I also got this cool Alundra Blayze Hall of Fame Ring relic autograph card. This is the Gold version of the card, so it is limited to 10 copies. In the same group of auctions I picked up this Paige VanZant signature from Leaf.

That about does it for this bunch. Although my production of blog posts has slowed to a crawl, I am still actively collecting. I am trying to get back into the swing of my hobbies, but there are a lot of things competing for my attention right now and I spend most of my time feeling worn out.

Cyber Week Breaks: Day 17 - Playing in the Snow

Today we went out to my dad's place to make use of the snow that fell over Christmas. He strapped some seats onto an old car hood, tied the hood to the four-wheeler, and pulled the kids around in the snow. They all had a great time, and didn't want to stop. Some of their cousins were there, and I got to see my sister who is home for the holidays from some Navy training. After sledding, drinking hot cocoa, and feeding the cows, we went out for pizza. It was a pretty good day all around.

Here are my boys, shortly after their first round of sledding and just as I was about to drop my phone in the snow.

Today's packs are the first 8 packs in the last box of 2017 Topps UFC Chrome, another pack of 2016 Topps UFC High Impact, and another pack of 2017 Topps UFC Knockout. Tomorrow kicks off two days in a row with Star Wars cards among the breaks, UFC won't be the only thing on tap for a little bit. In fact, out of the six remaining days of Cyber Week breaks, there is only one more all-UFC day.

We start off the Chrome box with two box hits, a Blue Wave Refractor of Frank Mir and an X-Fractor of Jessica Andrade. The Mir card is numbered # 02 / 75, while the Andrade card does not carry a serial number.

The High Impact box had an autograph of Andre Fili and a Femme Fighters insert of Valerie Letourneau. The Letourneau insert has a pretty deep dimple along the top edge, so I'm glad it was a double and not one of the cards I needed for the set.

The Knockout boxes keep on giving with another strong pack. This one held a Knockout Relic Green parallel of Cody Garbrandt, numbered # 31 / 50. The second hit in the pack was a Knockout Autograph Relic of Paige VanZant. It's just the base version, but even her base card from this insert set is really short-printed, with this one being numbered # 20 / 35. This wasn't a bad pair of pulls, with some relatively low-numbered cards of a couple younger stars in the UFC.

Cyber Week Breaks: Day 6 - Some Racing Parallels and More UFC Chrome

Today I opened a couple packs of 2016 Panini Certified Racing and 8 more packs of 2017 Topps UFC Chrome.

Among the racing cards I found a Dale Earnhardt Jr. base card, a Mirror Red parallel of Junior Johnson's Gold Team insert card, and a Mirror Blue parallel of Rico Abreu's base card. The Johnson card is numbered # 09 / 75 and the Abreu card is numbered # 27 / 50.

The 8 packs of Topps Chrome yielded a couple of inserts, a Topps Fire card of Georges St-Pierre and a Tier One insert of Paige VanZant. There were also two parallels of note in the packs, a one-per-box X-Fractor of Nick Diaz and a Gold Refractor of Daniel Cormier. The X-Fractors aren't numbered, but they are seeded at the same rate as the # / 75 Blue Wave Refractors. The Cormier Gold Refractor is numbered # 29 / 50. I also got a couple of regular Refractors, which fall at a rate of 8 per box.

Tomorrow there will be more UFC, followed on Day 8 by a box of 2017 Topps High Tek Baseball. Right now I am locked in an eBay dispute that isn't going to be resolved through communication with the seller, but I have to wait until the 16th to escalate the case for further resolution. I don't want the seller to take a loss, but I am not willing to take a loss either, especially when they charged $10 for shipping and used inadequate packaging methods. You can have hundreds or thousands of eBay transactions go right, but the ones you remember are the ones that go wrong.

Cyber Week Breaks: Day 4 - Star Wars, UFC Chronicles, and Retail Baseball

Today's scheduled breaks from the big order didn't generate a whole lot of excitement for me, so I'm including scans of some retail baseball I busted last week to make things a little more interesting.

First up is the highlights from 8 packs of Topps Star Wars: Jedi Legacy. This box promises 2 hits, with one of them being a film cel relic. We got that hit out of these first packs, with a Darth Vader film cel. The Green parallel at the top left is a variation that falls one per box, and the Magenta parallel below it is either 3 or 4 per box. I can't remember. I don't find this product all that exciting, outside of the autographs and movie prop relics, so hopefully the second hit in the box is something enjoyable.

I also opened two packs of 2015 Topps UFC Chronicles. These come in a jumbo pack format, with 10 packs per box. Each box promises 2 autographs and 3 relics. That Frankie Edgar relic is the first hit of the box. The Gold Ben Rothwell card is numbered # / 88, the Black & White Jordan Mein is # / 188, and the Silver Ronda Rousey isn't numbered, but is probably still the best parallel of the bunch.

I also got a couple of decent inserts from these packs, with a Paige VanZant Climbing the Ranks card and a Ronda Rousey Victorious Debut insert. I also got the first autograph of the box, a base auto of Scott Jorgensen. It was probably about this point where I began to regret buying this box instead of another box of 2017 Topps UFC Chrome.

I picked up some retail cards on a shopping trip. These were my reward for catching and disposing of 5 mice in our basement, so my wife didn't have to look at or deal with them. I grabbed one of those value packs of 2016 Topps Chrome from the clearance bin. The highlights were a Kris Bryant Pink Refractor and a Byron Buxton Future Stars insert. Not the greatest break, but the Bryant is nice. 

I also picked up another box of 2017 Topps Holiday Baseball. I got a couple of nice Dodgers among the Metallic Snowflake parallels, Yasiel Puig and Cody Bellinger. I also got the same George Springer relic I pulled from my last box of this stuff. The relic on this one also does not quite fill the window. Maybe this card design just has an awkwardly-shaped window.

There was a blaster of 2017 Bowman Platinum hiding in the back of the shelf, and I grabbed it. I got an Aaron Judge insert, a Clint Frazier insert, and a couple of Astros among the base cards. I also finally pulled an autograph out of this product, a base auto of Will Benson of the Indians. Maybe even better, I pulled a Black parallel of Pirates prospect Kecin Newman, numbered # 06 / 10. That's a pretty good break when it comes to retail.

That does it for today's cards. The Cyber Week stuff for today wasn't great, but that's to be expected at times when busting a large amount of stuff over time.

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.