I Am Seeing Double Three Times

I have been in a purchasing freeze since December and besides the blaster boxes for my Sports Card Super Bowl prediction I have not spent a penny on cardboard. I will admit it has been difficult at times because I have seen some very cool cards come and go but I keep reminding myself that the cards will show up again when I am not under a mountain of medical bills so they will have to wait.

Now this doesn’t mean I don’t look. To kind of help with my urges I will scan through eBay and COMC adding cards to my want list for the future and it kind of has been freeing because when I look I know I am not buying so I am not keeping a price point in mind and I have been checking out cards that normally would be outside my price range.

When it comes to my MMA collection there are some fighters who I know I will never be able to afford their autographs but I have been looking at Royce Gracie, GSP and Jon Jones autographs to see what is out there and while searching COMC for Gracie’s cards I noticed that Topps sticks with one picture through multiple releases over a number of years. I am not sure why they are doing this because there are thousands of images of him inside and out of the ring and this just seems lazy and not something the first UFC Champion deserves.

Some of the cards are just parallels or variations of another card but there are enough unique cards where they used one of three images to use as pretty good examples.

2010 Topps UFC Main Event #1

2010 Topps UFC Main Event Autograph #1

2010 Topps UFC Main Event Autograph-Relic #1

2010 Topps UFC Series 4 Fighter Gear Relics #FR-RG

2010 Topps UFC Series 4 Propaganda Card

2011 Topps UFC Title Shot #1

2012 Topps UFC Bloodlines Fighting Forefathers #RG

2015 Topps UFC Chronicles #4

2015 Topps UFC Chronicles Victorious Debut #VD-8

A little Photoshop and voila… nope not the same image because it doesn’t have the ATAMA company logo, see completely different.

2015 Topps UFC Chronicles Victorious Debut Medallions #MED-4

So here are 10 examples over a five year period (actually just three years) where Topps used the same exact image on each card. To show this isn't just a coincidence, here are a couple more where the photo was taken on the exact same day just from a different view.

2009 Topps UFC Round 1 Ultimate Gear #UG-RG

2010 Topps UFC Knockout Autograph Fighter Gear Relic #AFG-RB

How about a couple "If we flip the image they won't know" cards

2014 Topps UFC Bloodlines Historic Battles #HB-1

2014 Topps UFC Bloodlines Relics (Both regular and jumbo versions)

2014 Topps UFC Champions Octagon Greats #OGRG

2015 Topps UFC Champions Fighter Autographs #FA-RG

2015 Topps UFC Chronicles Octagon of Honor #HONOR-2

2015 Topps UFC Knockout Dynamic Duels #DDR-GS

A Prestige Basketball Follow Up

Something bothered me about one specific card design in the 2009 Basketball Prestige release. The Connections insert is loose; the colors are poorly used along with photos that are cut off. To top things off, the relics are small and oddly die-cut. This is a set that should have been either left on the design room floor or re-worked.

Panini's original Connections insert

Late last night I decided to work on a design based on the Prestige Connections insert, I tried to keep it along the lines of the original release. I am not saying that this would be the best option but at least it ties up the looseness of Panini’s design. You get a clean view of both the player’s photo and the jersey pieces, there is a hierarchy to the design and allows you eyes to flow.

My redesign of Panini's Connections insert