welcome and I agree one of the best intros nice story thanks for sharing 

Wow great intro! :)

I never formally introduced myself. My name is Larry and I live in Alabama. I have been a fan of the UFC for many many years!!! I have never collected any type of cards or sports memorabilia until UFC 88. I attended my first live UFC event. UFC was popular, but not nearly what it is today. I joined the fight club in order to get presale tickets, the weigh-ins, the Forest Griffin interview, pic and autograph with Forest.... We went to Atlanta on the Friday before the fights for the weigh-ins. We had a blast with the meet and greet. We head back to the motel to kick back and relax. We walk in and there is this guy who had just met a lot of fighters and got lots of autographs. We asked him how he did it...he said..I just went to their hotel about 3 blocks over. Needless to say we jetted right over and hung around the lobby. It was FREAKING AWESOME!!!! We got pictures made with Bruce Buffer, Chuck Liddell, Randy Couture, Kenny Florian, Herb Dean, Yves Lavigne, Miguel Torres, Rampage Jackson, Keith Jardine, Brian Stann, Sokoudjou and I am sure I am leaving out a couple more. At that point, I was already a fan, but I was completely hooked after that!!! I started collecting the action figures, and I ordered a case of Topps Round 1 Series when they first came out. I just ordered the cards because they were UFC. They stayed behind my recliner in the plastic until April 2012. We had tickets to UFC 145 and I remembered I had the cards, and I thought I would take them and maybe get some autographs on them and put them up. On the way to Atlanta, we opened every pack of cards and went through them to see who we thought might be there. I had no idea the difference in cards. I thought the thicker ones meant something and certainly the ones with numbers meant something, but I had no idea. So I separated the relics, the autos, and the "thick ones" and put them aside. The popularity of the UFC has grown exponentially since 2008, so I didn't get any autographs. It was a circus in the ATL! We come back home and i get to thinking about those cards and thought I would look and find out what the difference in them were. I found this site! I posted some questions and had several people help me via messages. It turns out that I had the "Holy Grail" of cards. The round 1 Royce Gracie 1/1 red card.