2022 Panini Prizm UFC Retail Box

Some of my pickups from my latest Blowout Cards order were UFC cards. I was heavily into UFC cards during the Topps years, but then Panini got the license and prices were too high to be reasonable. Topps recently took the license back and followed suit with a $250 asking price on a box of Chrome UFC. That's just too high for me. I got some cheaper boxes by going with retail and watered-down Hobby releases, including this 2022 Prizm UFC Retail box. Most of the Hobby Prizms are out of play here, and you're lucky if you pull a hit, but I'm hoping to get a good chunk of the base set and maybe some interesting retail-only parallels.

I believe the Green Prizms are retail-exclusive parallels. The Derrick Lewis card is a Prizm Flashbacks insert, and Jorge Masvidal and Marvin Vettori are other guys I've heard of before. Not too bad of a start to the parallels.

Yair Rodriguez is another name I'm aware of, so 4/4 on the Green Prizms as far as name recognition goes. The base set is 200 cards, with 100 horizontal and 100 vertical cards. I didn't bother to photograph any actual base cards, as the parallels look the same outside of the colored border.

I didn't photograph all of the inserts I pulled, but I tried to get one of each kind for this post. The Rafael Dos Anjos card is a Bonus Machines insert, highlighting fighters who have won Fight of the Night bonuses for their performances in the Octagon. Rose Namajunas is a non-parallel Prizm Flashbacks card. Most of the Prizm Flashbacks cards seem to feature fighters wearing belts, so I thought maybe it was a champion-centric insert. I had to go to Cardboard Connections' checklist to find out it was a flashback-themed insert.

Fearless and Fireworks feature fighters who are fearless and explosive. Khabib Nurmagomedov and Valentina Shevchenko are both pretty good pulls here.

According to the packaging, these Pink Pulsar /42 Prizms are the big chase in retail. I've never heard of Movsar Evloev before, but I haven't been following UFC very closely the last few years. It seems I'm never around for the Fight Nights on ESPN+, and I can't justify the expense of the PPV events. I almost logged in last night for the fights ,but the ESPN page wouldn't load and I took that as a sign that it wasn't meant to happen for me.

I did get lucky and pulled an autograph from this box. This is a Green Prizm autograph of Stipe Miocic. I have a small collection of his cards, so I was pretty happy to get this one.

Museum Collection Mania

I think I've mentioned once or twice that I went a little overboard on 2016 Topps UFC Museum Collection. It just appealed to me, and I picked up quite a bit of it. This is going to be a picture dump, because I scanned a lot of stuff, but I don't have a lot to say about it at the moment because I want to get this written and posted so I can go to bed.

I kind of wanted to bust a box of the product, but I never could bring myself to pull the trigger on that. I did pick up a fair number of group break slots, though, which brought me a fair number of cards for certain fighters, like Rafael Dos Anjos here. Those are his base and Gold parallels. The Gold is # 05 / 75.

Cris 'Cyborg' Justino has finally been brought into the UFC, and I am pretty sure the new Featherweight division for women was created to give her a place to play, although Germaine de Randamie and Holly Holm are going to kick the division off in a couple of weeks, with the winner presumable getting Cyborg's next fight. I got her base and Bronze card here. The Bronze is numbered # 108 / 135.

I also got Cyborg's Gold parallel ( # 45 / 75 ) and this Rashad Evans Bronze parallel ( # 084 / 135 ), probably from the same group break.

I think these single-swatch Meaningful Material cards came from a mixture of group break slots and eBay purchases. I guess the foil color is different on these, which is pretty much the only difference I can see between parallels. It's pretty subtle. The Justino card is # 06 / 50, the Rafael Dos Anjos is # 01 / 10, and the Daniel Cormier is numbered # 12 / 35.

I think most of these Primary Pieces quad relics came from a single eBay lot. I got a good deal on it, maybe because it came from overseas. I think there are many bidders who have qualms about bidding on stuff from across the ocean. There are a couple that I purchased separate from that lot, though, probably the higher-numbered of the Stipe Miocic cards and the Carla Esparza. I can't read all of the serial numbers, but I'll give a go at saying what I've got here. The first Miocic is # xx / 99, the second one is # 10 / 10, the Chris Weidman looks to be # 04 / 25, the Carlos Condit is # xx / 99, and the Carla Esparza is # 69 / 99.

These Archival Autographs are all base versions. I am pretty sure the Antonio Silva card came from the previously-mentioned overseas lot. It is numbered # 40 / 99. The others were probably separate purchases, although at least one of them might have come from a group break. Anyway, the Jim Miller is # 02 / 99, the Julianna Pena is # 11 / 99, and Cat Zingano is # 13 / 99. Miller, Pena, and Zingano are all PC fighters for me.

These are all single-relic Signature Swatches cards of varying rarity. As opposed to the on-card Archival Autographs, these are all sticker autographs. Again, the parallels seem to be mostly denoted by small shifts in foil color. The Julianna Pena is # 107 / 149, which I believe is the highest of the print runs on these. The two Cat Zingano cards are # 07 / 25 and # 09 / 25, and the TJ Dillashaw card is # 02 / 25.

This Ovince Saint Preux card came from a group break. It is one of the dual-relic Signature Swatches cards, and is numbered # 04 / 25.

Closing things out, I've got a few triple-relic Signature Swatches cards. The Julianna Pena cards are numbered # 25 / 25 and # 23 / 50. The Anthony Johnson card probably came from the overseas lot, and is numbered # 134 / 149.

I would still like to open a box of this someday, but I just know the box I get will have three scrubs for hits and I will feel bad because I could buy three really nice hits I actually want for the price of the box. With new baseball cards coming out now, I imagine the urge to break a box of this will subside as it is pushed off my radar by newer releases.

This Collection Belongs in a Museum

That post title wasn't any good, but I am under a deadline here. I promised my kids that I would play a board game with them today, and they have been after me about it since they woke up this morning. The youngest of the twins has been especially persistent (annoying), asking me literally every three minutes if it's board game time.

2016 UFC Museum Collection is the latest MMA product release from Topps. It is, in my opinion, a great product. The checklist is pretty good, limited mostly to champions, fan favorites, and a few retired stars. It's still a loss most of the time if you're buying it in box form, but you can do pretty well in group breaks or by purchasing singles. I think I got these two cards in a group break. On the left is a Carla Esparza base card, and on the right is an Amanda Nunes Copper parallel. The parallel is numbered # 017 / 135.

The base cards are thinner than I remember Museum Collection cards being, but they still look pretty good. They look the part of a premium card. I think a box of Museum Collection usually contains three base cards, two parallels, and three hits, which include at least one on-card autograph, one relic card, and one autographed relic card (usually a sticker auto). I've seen a few boxes opened that have an extra hit in them.

Here are a couple of cards from the quad relic set, Primary Pieces. Both are the base version, with the Cat Zingano being # 11 / 99 and the Rafael Dos Anjos is # 77 / 99. These are pretty basic relic swatches, but I have seen some really colorful pieces on cards, too. 

Here are a couple of the on-card Archival Autographs. The Cat Zingano card is the base version, numbered # 49 / 99, while Jim Miller is the Gold parallel, numbered # 20 / 25. Again, these are good-looking cards, and most fighters make good use of the large blank area set aside for signatures.

This Cat Zingano Signature Swatches Triple Relic card is an example of the relic autographs. There are also single and double relic versions of this set, with parallels of each. I believe this is the base version of the Triple Relic set, numbered # 46 / 50. It's got some nice colorful swatches and a sticker autograph.

I like this year's Museum Collection set. It's got a nice look to it, and I've been chasing down cards of some of the fighters I collect. The relatively small checklist means that a lot of exciting fighters are excluded, but I think it also increases the value of the product overall.

Tonight is a pretty exciting card for UFC Fight Night, with Paige VanZant and Michelle Waterson headlining. The other big fights on the card are a highly-anticipated matchup between Sage Northcutt and Mickey Gall, and Urijah Faber's retirement fight against Brad Pickett.

My kids are about to tear the house down if I don't get the board game out, so that's it for now. That means I'll probably miss the Early Prelims, but you have to make sacrifices for your family from time to time.