Besides Ken Griffey Jr and Jay Buhner I also collect MMA
fighter Ryan Bader. He is my “homer” pick with him being a local guy. When I
was living in the East Valley my son worked out at his gym, Power MMA, in
Gilbert and even spent some time with Bader over the years. I worked out at a
near-by LA Fitness and when I was at Power MMA he was never around so I never
had the chance to meet him.
Ryan Bader currently has 306 total unique cards of which
I have 110 of them giving me 36% of his total cards. What makes this a rough go
is that of his 306 total cards 91 of them, 30%, are #1/1 cards including
printing plates but not counting Topps Vault cards.
But I keep plugging away at his cards and if I can hit
200 unique Bader cards by the end of the year I will be happy. These were
pickups late last year during COMC's Black Friday sale and most were base cards or parallels
with upper print runs over #/100 so they are nothing special but these are a
couple of the big wants for me.
2010 Topps UFC Main Event Tapout Bronze parallel #1/88
WowZZza a eBaYz OnE1 of OnE1 (damn I hate that term, even though I got this
through COMC isn’t every card on eBay an eBay one of one?)
2011 Topps UFC Finest Jumbo Autograph-Relic
These cards never show up so this was pure luck to have
one show up on COMC during their sale. I don’t mean never ever but this is the
first one that I have seen anywhere in the 6 years that I have been collecting
Ryan Bader cards so it is pretty rare to me.
2011 Topps UFC Finest Fight Mat Jumbo Relic
I already have one of these cards but it is just the
plain blue mat so when I saw this multi-color beauty I just had to have it.
2016 Topps UFC Knockout Dual Relics
OK, I have tried to do some research and I am hitting a
dead end due to Topps’ ambiguity used describing relics. I do not like that
they create a card like this, specifically list UFC 192 and then say that the
relics came from no specific event or fight. If you don’t notice the red arrows
in the background you may not even realize whose relic is whose.
Those are some nice additions to your collection. I've noticed that fighter-worn relics usually have the standard disclaimer about 'no specific event,' but mat relics usually state which event the mat piece came from. For a lot of mat relics I've been able to locate which part of the mat the relic came from by matching the colors on the swatch to sponsor logos in photos of the event.
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