Cyber Week Breaks: Day 13 - Another Pack-Pulled # 1 / 1

More UFC cards today, but I will be showing off another pack-pulled # 1 / 1 card later in this post, just a few days after I pulled one from a prize box of football cards from Panini. Today's break was 2 packs of 2015 Topps UFC Chronicles and a box of 2016 Topps UFC High Impact.

I got a few different parallels from the Chronicles packs. The Krylov is a Gold, numbered out of # / 88, if I recall correctly. The BJ Penn is a Black & White parallel, numbered out of # / 188. There are also buybacks in this product, stamped with a foil Topps Originals Octagon.

That Green parallel is numbered out of # / 288. I also pulled one of the hits from the box, a Dual Relic of Cain Velasquez and Fabricio Werdum. This one isn't numbered.

The Holly Holm Femme Fighters insert is a double for me, but I was expecting some doubles from that insert set. This is the third copy of that Al Iaquinta autograph I've pulled in this break. I'm getting kind of tired of seeing it.

One card I couldn't pull doubles or triples of was this one, because there's only one of them! This is the Gold parallel of Dominick Cruz's base card. I'm not much of a Cruz fan, but it's pretty cool to pull a # 1 / 1 from a pack.

That does it for today. I'm glad I pulled that Cruz card, because otherwise this was a pretty boring break. Maybe I'm just getting jaded. I'll be back tomorrow (probably) with some cool shiny cards.

Cyber Week Breaks: Day 12 - Star Wars Masterwork and UFC Chrome

I didn't post yesterday. I was busy (taking a nap) and didn't feel like posting. Today's packs were a mini-box of 2016 Topps Star Wars Masterwork and 8 packs of 2017 Topps UFC Chrome. Pretty fun stuff. Let's see what the pulls were.

Here are the base cards from the Masterwork pack. BB-8 is a fun one to get. That Mace Windu is pretty cool, too. It's a Blue parallel, which as far as I know without looking it up is the most common parallel.

I also got a Great Rivalries insert, highlighting Finn's battle with FN-2199. This box also had a base autograph in it, an on-card signature of Rocky Marshall as Colonel Datoo in The Force Awakens. The base cards in this one were pretty good, and the insert was okay. The autograph was all right, and certainly better than a manufactured relic.

Not a lot came out of this batch of UFC Chrome. There was a John Lineker Gold parallel, numbered # 43 / 50, and a base autograph of Eddie Alvarez. Not too bad. I like all the colorful Refractors I've been pulling out of this product.

That's about it for today. Since I got a couple of autographs and whatnot in this break, I skipped out on busting a pack of 2017 Topps UFC Knockout. I figure there will be posts later that might need the boost more.

Cyber Week Breaks: Day 11 - Knockout Steps in Again, and Hulkamania Runs Wild

Once again, I have a break that needs a little something extra to make it worth posting about. I guess if I were a better writer, I could make a good post out of anything, but that's just not going to happen today. The packs that were scheduled for today were 8 packs of Topps Star Wars: Jedi Legacy and a box of 2016 Topps UFC High Impact. I am adding a pack of 2017 Topps UFC Knockout to the post, too, as well as a surprise item that appeared on my doorstep this morning.

Not much came out of the Jedi Legacy packs. I guess the highlights were these die-cut inserts that fit together to make a circle. I think there was a promotion when this product was released that allowed collectors to obtain a disc card that fit in the middle when the puzzle was complete.

These Magenta parallels aren't that rare, but there wasn't much else to go with. I think you get four of these per box.

The High Impact box had a Felice Herrig Blue parallel in it, a Julianna Pena Femme Fighters insert that I already have at least one copy of, and an autograph of Al Iaquinta that I also pulled a copy of on Day 7 of Cyber Week Breaks.

With those breaks out of the way, here are the hits from the pack of Knockout that I opened. First up is a Fight Mat Relic of Ronda Rousey. Her last couple of fights didn't end well, but she is still pretty much responsible for the rise of women's MMA into the limelight. I am not certain, but this might be the first Rousey hit I've ever pulled. This is the base version, and it is numbered # 16 / 99. The mat relic piece is supposedly from UFC 157, where the first UFC Women's bout was held. That fight involved Rousey and Liz Carmouche, with Rousey coming out on top.

The next hit is a Fearless Fighters Autograph Copper Ink parallel of Matt Hughes. These are pretty tough to come by, as the Copper Ink autographs only fall 1:77 packs, or about 1 in 20 boxes. This one is numbered # 08 / 10. This box of knockout has been pretty amazing so far. It will be fun to see what else comes out of this product for me. And now it's time for the bonus item!

This is a terrible cell phone picture, but I couldn't scan this thing and it came rolled up in a tube and won't lay flat for a photo. Hulk Hogan's official storefront, Hogan's Beach Shop, was clearing out some stuff and I grabbed this poster featuring his signature x2, once as Hulk Hogan and once as Hollywood Hogan. He also added some nice inscriptions to the poster, with my favorite being the '12x Champion Brother!' on the right. It also included a Certificate of Authenticity with a little story about Hulk's rise to fame. I've been thinking about buying an autographed tear-away shirt from the shop for a while now, but I couldn't pass up an opportunity to get two signatures on a poster for the price of one. I'm pretty happy with this piece.

Also, Hulk Hogan retweeted my Tweet about the poster, so that's pretty awesome.

Contested Shots 30: A Thanksgiving Playoff Prize from Panini

Every few months, typically around a holiday, there is a scavenger hunt contest on the Panini America blog. They will link to several photo galleries of Panini products, where there are logos hidden in a certain number of pictures. To enter the contest, you have to find the logos and comment with the locations of the hidden images. There are usually 150-200 entries, and 10-20 prizes, so the odds of winning something are pretty good. I recently participated in the Thanksgiving contest, where the prizes included boxes of 2017 Illusions Football, 2017-18 Ascension Basketball, 2017 Chronicles Baseball, and 2017 Playoff Football. I won one of the prizes, which happened to be a box of 2017 Playoff Football. I've won twice previously, getting a box of 2015-16 Panini Preferred Basketball at the end of August 2016 and an Odell Beckham Jr. National Treasures relic card in the 2016 Easter contest. I think there were about 160 entries in this latest contest, so an entry had about a 1 in 8 chance of winning a box of cards. I think it took me about 30 minutes to find all of the logos. Sometimes it takes me a little longer.

A few days after I responded to the e-mail notifying me of my prize, it arrived on my doorstep. This particular product has 12 packs per box, 8 cards per pack, and tells me that I should find an autograph and a relic card inside.

The pack design mimics the box design. Marcus Mariota seems like kind of an odd choice for a cover athlete given that he's barely inside the top 25 fantasy quarterbacks this year, but he had a pretty good season last year and he's the leader of a probable playoff team this year.

Based on what I pulled from this box, a typical pack will hold 5 base cards, 1 rookie, and 2 inserts/parallels.

I think this is a good-looking set. The base checklist includes 200 players, with a mix of active and retired players. It seemed like there were a lot of retired guys in the set, but maybe collation is playing tricks on me. I had to photograph the Broncos from the box, Bo Jackson, Neon Deion, a couple of quarterbacks, and a neat kicker card.

I got a total of 58 base cards in the box, with no doubles.

In addition to the 200-card base set, the checklist includes 100 rookies. They are short-printed, falling about half as often as you'd expect based on the size of the checklist. I got 13 rookie cards in the box, or about 1 per pack. These four were the highlights, the top two because they made an impact and the bottom two because they were rookies for my son's favorite team (Bengals) and my favorite team (Broncos). Also, Jake Butt's last name is Butt. In retrospect, I probably should have ignored Mixon's card because of his legal history, but I forgot about that until I looked him up just now.

There are plenty of inserts in this product. I kind of like most of them. They take me back to the 90's, which were kind of the heyday of inserts. The folks over on Cardboard Connection seem to dislike them, saying they are cheap-looking and pointless. Different strokes for different folks, I guess. Boss Hoggs is the running backs insert, highlighting various ball carriers. When I see Derrick Henry, my mind immediately thinks 'Eddie George.' I guess Eddie George will always be Tennessee's running back in my world.

The Flea Flicker insert shows three playmakers from each team, a rusher, a receiver, and a quarterback. This might be my least favorite insert of the group, probably because the three player photos don't leave much room for anything else on the cards.

Gridiron Force is devoted to players on the defensive side of the ball. I was happy to get a Von Miller card, but disappointed to pull two Ravens. I might dislike the Ravens more than I dislike even the Broncos' division rivals. Michael Strahan was a nice pull, though.

These Playoff Momentum inserts are pretty flashy. I think this might be the insert devoted to wide receivers. If not, my collation made it seem that way. I like the design of this insert, with the lines and positioning making the players look fast. The Jordy Nelson is a 1st Down parallel, and is serially-numbered # 96 / 99. All of the parallels in this set have football-themed names, like 1st Down, Kickoff, Hail Mary, Red Zone, Touchdown, and so on.

Star Gazing appears to be a catch-all insert featuring star players. I pulled a receiver, a tight end, and two quarterbacks. There are some pretty decent cards here, although I think Rob Gronkowski's party boy gimmick is tiresome. It works for him, though, and you can't deny his talent on the field.

Thunder & Lighting is the quarterback/receiver insert. I got two of them, with another couple of cards featuring Packers and Patriots. I guess there are worse teams to pull.

The box promises two hits, on average, and both of mine were parallels. The relic card was a Kickoff parallel of Jordan Howard's Headliners insert. This card is numbered # 31 / 49. Howard has been a top ten running back this year, so this is a decent card.

My autograph is another Kickoff parallel, this time of Josh Jones' Rookie Signatures card. It is numbered # 11 / 99. He plays Safety for the Packers, and is currently 4th on the team in tackles. He's also got two sacks. I don't mind pulling a defensive player autograph, especially from a free box of cards. 

I pulled two base parallels from the box. This might be one of the cooler cards from the box, a Kickoff parallel of Jim Brown. Look at that old-school uniform! This is just a cool card. I don't know football cards well enough to say if this photo has been used before, but I thought it was neat. This one is # 075 / 299. 

The other parallel was in the last pack I opened, and it was quite a shock. This is Jordan Mathews' Touchdown parallel, numbered 1 of 1. Mathews struggled with injuries this year, but he's not a scrub. I can't recall ever pulling a non-printing plate 1 / 1 before, so this was a pretty awesome card to find in a pack.

I like this product. If I were more into football cards, I might chase more of this stuff. The base set looks good, I like the inserts, and the hits are about what you expect. The only thing I don't really like is the short-printed rookie cards. You'd have to open 9 boxes with perfect collation to complete the base set including the rookies, and that is just too many. I know a lot of products use short-prints to keep people buying them, but I hate that tactic. Other than that, though, I enjoyed opening this box. It was exciting to win the contest, and I got some very nice cards out of it. Thanks to Panini for the box, and for running the scavenger hunt contests. Even when I don't win, I enjoy spending a little time looking for the hidden pictures and hoping that my name comes up in the list of winning entries.

Cyber Week Breaks: Day 10 - Red Racing Cards and Some Punchy Folks

Today's breaks are pretty good. I'm starting things off with a 2 packs of 2016 Panini Certified Racing and 8 packs of 2017 Topps UFC Chrome. Also, I'm excited about the boxes of 2017 Topps UFC Knockout I got in the mail yesterday, so I'm opening one more pack of that product. Tomorrow I might take a breather and post about something other than my Cyber Week Breaks. We'll see.

Here are the hits from my 2 Panini Certified Racing packs. On the left is a Mirror Red Certified Signatures autograph of Justin Allgaier. This one is numbered # 43 / 75. He spent 2014 and 2015 at the highest NASCAR level, then dropped back to the Xfinity Series for 2016 and 2017, finishing 3rd in the standings both years. As with the quad autograph card I showed off a few days ago, the certification hologram isn't as obtrusive in-hand.

The other hit in these packs was a Complete Materials Mirror Red parallel of Ryan Blaney, numbered # 22 / 75. It's got four swatches of material, including red and white firesuit pieces, a gold chunk of sheet metal, and a bit of tire. Blaney is doing pretty well for himself in NASCAR's top circuit, finishing 9th in the standings this season with one win.

Neither of these hits really matches up with my personal collections, but they are still pretty decent pulls. Both are names that I recognize, which is a step up from many of my racing breaks.

Here are the biggest cards out of the 8 packs of 2017 Topps UFC Chrome I opened today. The Arianny Celeste Topps Fire insert is the Refractor version, numbered # 48 / 99. The Luke Rockhold Blue Wave Refractor is a one-per-box insert, numbered # 59 / 75. The autograph is a base auto of Mickey Gall. He had a couple of big fights in 2016 and 2017 that rocketed him into popularity, a win against WWE wrestler CM Punk and a defeat of the a fighter the UFC was pushing pretty hard, Sage Northcutt. He lost a decision last month to Randy Brown, so he's still got some work to do before he's a real contender.

That closes out the second of four UFC Chrome boxes from this order. So far I am still pretty happy with the product. It seems like there are enough Refractors, inserts, and autographs to make it a fun break. People complained that the autograph checklist is relatively weak, but I haven't felt ripped off by this product yet.

I got two numbered parallels in the second pack of 2017 Topps UFC Knockout. Again, I pulled a Green and a Blue. The Green Aldo is numbered # 055 / 215, while the Blue Werdum is # 13 / 99. Neither really moves the needle for me, but they're all right.

As far as hits go, I pulled a Knockout Autographed Relic of Jim Miller, a fighter I collect. This is the base version, numbered # 056 / 149. I've already got a copy of this card, but now I have another. I also got a Knockout Relic card of Joanna Jedrzejczyk. It's a Red parallel, though, so it's numbered # 01 / 10. The Red parallels only show up about once in thirteen boxes, so this is a pretty good card. It probably would have been even better if she still had the championship belt, but some other # / 10 relics of hers have still sold north of $30 recently, so I still 'made' money on this pack.

Cyber Week Breaks: Day 9 - Knockout Saves the Day, Plus LEGO

Today was going to be kind of a boring break, in my opinion, but the two boxes of 2017 Topps UFC Knockout I ordered from the Topps website arrived and I added a mini-box from the product to today's offerings. Each box of Knockout includes four mini-boxes, and promises 2 autographed relic cards, 2 autographed cards, and 4 relic cards overall. That works out to a relic and some kind of autograph per mini-box, along with a couple of parallels and six base cards. I didn't photograph the base cards, but they look like the parallels with less color. The other stuff I busted today was a box of 2016 Topps UFC High Impact and 3 jumbo packs of 2012 Topps Series 2 Baseball.

The first parallel from the Knockout mini-box was this Blue Tecia Torres, numbered # 42 / 99. I am a little bit of a Torres fan, because an Invicta fighter (Sharon Jacobson) I know trains with her. Torres' only loss is to current champion Rose Namajunas, and she's won three fights in a row since that loss.

I also got a Green parallel of Khabib Nurmagomedov, numbered # 037 / 215. My hits from this box were pretty darn good, with a Nate Diaz Tier One relic card numbered # 107 / 125 being the promised relic in the box. This is the base version of the card, which is seeded at a rate of 1:6 packs. The big hit of the box is a Miesha Tate Tier One Autograph Silver Ink parallel, numbered # 08 / 10. These are a tough pull, at 1:61 packs, or about every 8 boxes. It's a nice-looking card, too, with an on-card signature and a dark background to help the ink really pop.

Moving on to the scheduled breaks, here are my pulls from the box of High Impact. Tony Ferguson is the autograph from the box, and I think he is another fighter whose signature is new to my collection. The Femme Fighters insert is Cat Zingano, whose card I already had. I only need a couple more cards from the Femme Fighters insert, so I'm expecting a lot of doubles from here on out.

The three packs of 2012 Topps Series 2 Baseball didn't have much that was very interesting, so I took pictures of the 1987 Topps Mini inserts and a Nolan Ryan Mound Dominance insert.

We were planning on going to see the new Star Wars movie today, but it didn't work out that way. Instead I built some LEGO kits I had kicking around under my desk. First up was kit # 70902, the Catwoman Cycle Chase. The kit has 139 pieces that go together to make a jewelry shop, Catwoman's motorcycle, Catwoman, Batgirl, and Robin. This is a smaller kit, but it was a pretty fun build. The motorcycle looks like a proper custom chopper, and the jewelry shop has enough detail to fit into any retail shopping scene, if you are a person who is building a custom LEGO city.

I am adding a picture of the interior of the jewelry shop to go along with the conversation in the comments. There's not a whole lot to it.

I also built kit # 75168, Yoda's Jedi Starfighter. This one has 262 pieces, and is made up of the ship, Yoda, and R2-D2. This isn't the first time this kit has appeared on a trading card blog, as San Jose Fuji built it last March.

Cyber Week Breaks: Day 8 - 2017 Topps High Tek Baseball

One of the big-ticket items on my Cyber Week order was a box of 2017 Topps High Tek Baseball, the patterned acetate offering with a new packaging scheme for this year. While the previous incarnations held just a few cards per box with one guaranteed autograph, this version has 40 cards in a box and promises two autographs. I scanned the cards in based on their background patterns, with the most numerous in the box first. I would imagine that the collation in my box does not necessarily match the collation in the overall print run.

These all have the same background pattern, but my scanner likes to add some variation in the coloring. Not a lot stands out to me in this foursome, but I do like that jersey Moncada is wearing. There seems to be a decent mix of rookies, veterans, and retired players in the checklist.

I also pulled four cards of this pattern. I think I read somewhere that the patterns are broken out by positions, so you have two different sets of patterns. One of them has pitchers, catchers, and outfielders (PCO); the other has all other infielders (AOI). That seems to hold true throughout the cards in this box. This pattern is probably one of the more common PCO patterns.

This group of four cards belongs to the AOI group, and is again probably one of the more common patterns. That's a young-looking Jeter there in the bottom right.

This last group of four is another PCO group, with Kluber making his second appearance in the box. I also like the Ichiro and Trout cards, with Roger Clemens rounding out the group.

I only pulled one group of three cards, which included Mike Trout's second appearance in the box. I guess I should try giving cutesy names to all of the patterns, but I think I tapped out my brain power coming up with the PCO/AOI designations. I'd honestly just like to figure out how rare each tier is and call them PCO 1, PCO 2, PCO 3, and so on. That's a lot easier to remember than Tek Prism Clockwise or some other name.

Each of these patterns had two examples in the box. It was nice to see Jim Thome in here, as well as a couple of star Astros. So far I am pretty happy with this product's player selection.

There are three patterns that had only one example in the box. The Bryant is a nice pull. Even though he got a little overshadowed this year by the hot new rookies, he still put up a 6.1 WAR season and got a decent share of MVP votes.

You supposedly get four of these Blackout parallels per box. I guess maybe that solves the question of which patterns are the 'base' patterns for each group. The pattern on top must be the PCO base pattern, with the pattern on bottom being AOI base. These are some pretty nice cards, too, especially the Aaron and Koufax up there.

You also get one of these second-tier patterns of the Blackout parallel per box. I got lucky with mine and landed another Altuve card for my collection of Astros cards.

There were four serially-numbered parallels in my box of High Tek. The top two cards appear to be the basic version of parallel, probably a Diffractor of some kind. The Kluber (his 3rd appearance in this box) is numbered # 007 / 250 and the Bogaerts is numbered # 101 / 250. Then there are a couple of colorful parallels, a Blue and a Green. The Pedroia is numbered # 42 / 75, and the Clemens is # 07 / 99. Not too bad, although this is a bit too much AL East content for me.

You get two promised autographs per box. Mine are both base versions, and I assume there are also parallels out there. Both of these are decent pulls, the Lindor probably more than the Fulmer. Lindor's signature is a little more faded than I'd like, but that seems to happen fairly often with these acetate cards.

What's this? My box had a third autograph inside. This Ben Zobrist autograph is a parallel of the TwiliTEK insert. I guess maybe this spot would normally be occupied by a regular insert card, but I got lucky and pulled a third autograph from the box. This is a pretty good one, numbered # 10 / 50.

This was a pretty fun break, although it's a bit pricey to bust a box of this stuff. Moving up from a handful of cards to 40 cards in a box really feels like an added value when opening this product. I am happy that Topps listened to the consumer on this one and boosted the number of cards per box. This set is really about collecting pattern variations, and it was harder to do that a few cards at a time. As it is here, High Tek is a little over my price range for box busting, but if they dropped an autograph and $20-30 from the price tag I would find it very hard to resist.