A Delayed Post About a Mail Day

I am pretty sure this package has been sitting by my desk for nearly a month, but for various reasons I never scanned the cards. I wouldn't feel too bad if it were an eBay purchase, but I try to be better about getting to packages from other bloggers. Things have felt a little hectic lately.

Jon from the blog A Penny Sleeve for your Thoughts sent me a mailer full of cards in early January. I scanned some of my favorites from the bunch for this post. I may not have as much commentary as I'd like, because my kids have had a hard time getting to sleep the last few nights and by the time they get to sleep it is usually time for me to get into bed and my patience is worn pretty thin.

That die-cut Damaryius Thomas Hands Team insert from 2014 Panini Prizm football is really cool. I don't think I'd seen one of those before. It hearkens back to the days of Flair's Hot Gloves inserts. I could never afford to buy Flair when I was a kid, but I remember seeing the Hot Gloves inserts in Beckett. That Jeff Bagwell Studio Stars insert from 2004 Donruss Studio comes from a time when I was out of collecting, so it was new to me. It also comes from a time when the Astros were an NL team.

There were a bunch of serially-numbered cards in this package, including the Evan Gattis from 2016 Donruss and the Brett Oberholtzer from 2015 Topps. Chris Holt feels a little left out because he doesn't have a serial number on his card, but he is a Refractor. Goose Gossage thinks that Refractors and serial numbers are ruining the game, because he played in the days when all you got was some thin papar and a little adhesive, and you were just grateful to have your picture on that sticker. Oh, how he pines for 1981-1983.

Back then, men were men, and Uncle Rico could throw a football over them mountains.

That 1999 Pacific Prism card of Shannon Sharpe is one of my favorite cards in the package, and it even has a serial number (# 101 / 480). I guess serial numbering was getting to be more common at the time, but if I'd pulled a card with a print run that small in 1999 it would have been like winning the lottery. Those Horace Grant cards are pretty sweet, too. The Upper Deck Black Diamond is also serially-numbered on the back, but with a much more era-appropriate number (# 0730 / 1500). I always like Horace Grant's goggles, and his reputation as a guy who was willing to go after rebounds.

Jon also plussed-up my Clyde Drexler collection with a few cards from The Glide's time in a Houston Rockets uniform. I especially like the Topps Finest card. That was another product I couldn't justify paying for at the time these were released. Backtracking a little in the scans, Randy Couture was a little before my time as an MMA fan, but I can respect what he did to help build the sport. I also can respect a die-cut insert from Goodwin Champions.

I skipped scanning a couple of cards from the package, but I made sure to get this graded Bob Abreu card, which had a note attached: "P.S. Hopefully you like this novelty item as well." I do like it, and not just because it will fund college for one of my children. I also like the gold foil. There's no mistaking that this is a 1996 ROOKIE. I think it's a little funny that those words are in a larger font than Abreu's name. I guess rookie cards were a big deal then. It didn't really matter who the player was, as long as the card was his rookie card.

Thanks for the package, Jon! I had a lot of fun sorting through the cards, even if it did take me nearly a month to get them onto the scanner.

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.