Why this card matters
The card that actually starts his run, and it is Japanese. It comes from the year after he won the 2005 PRIDE middleweight grand prix by knocking out Ricardo Arona, when he was the best light heavyweight in the world and had never fought in North America. Anyone building a complete Shogun collection has to begin outside the Topps and Panini catalogue entirely, and his PRIDE-era cardboard begins and ends with this set.
Identification
Missing a front scan. Contribute one.
- Sports Card Investor's set page lists the entry as 'Shogun Rua 2006 Pride FC #52 Base'; the archive writes Pride FC numbers with three digits, so #052
- Cardbase counts 583 cards across variations: Base (142), Gold Foil Signature (141), Silver Foil Signature (141), Holographic (140) and ten PR-1 to PR-10 promos
- A foil facsimile signature across the photo is the quickest way to tell a Gold or Silver Foil Signature copy from a plain base card
- PRIDE-licensed, Japanese-issued, sold in packs in Japan — DSE-era names fill the checklist (Fedor Emelianenko at #14, Alistair Overeem at #1, Anderson Silva at #003)
| Shogun's first card is a 2009 Topps UFC card. | Those are his first UFC-licensed cards. The Japanese Pride FC issue precedes them by three years. |
Disputed
The card number is single-sourced. Only Sports Card Investor's set page names a Rua card, and it tracks just 12 cards from the set, so #52 has no second confirmation; Cardbase's checklist table for the set returns 'There are no records to display', and no eBay listing or catalogue page for a Shogun card from this set surfaced. Which variations exist for his number specifically — Gold Foil Signature, Silver Foil Signature, Holographic — is inferred from the set's composition, not from a checklist line. TCDB, which holds the full checklist, is not reachable.
Parallels
Population & market
Population. Population figures will be taken directly from the grading companies and dated when they are. None are shown yet.
FightCardboard doesn't republish other sites' price data, and won't label an asking price as a value. What appears here instead: sales we made or watched happen, and public auction results — each tagged with its source.
Sports Card Investor — 2006 Pride FC MMA Cards price guide — 'Shogun Rua 2006 Pride FC #52 Base'
Cardbase — 2006 Pride FC MMA Cards — set composition (142 base, 583 across variations)
Available copies
None in the vault right now.
More Maurício Rua
Sources & research Probable×1Uncertain×1
Every factual claim on this page, the evidence behind it, and an honest confidence level. Where sources disagree the disagreement is kept, not quietly resolved.
2006 PRIDE FC #052 — Maurício Rua.
The card number is single-sourced. Only Sports Card Investor's set page names a Rua card, and it tracks just 12 cards from the set, so #52 has no second confirmation; Cardbase's checklist table for the set returns 'There are no records to display', and no eBay listing or catalogue page for a Shogun card from this set surfaced. Which variations exist for his number specifically — Gold Foil Signature, Silver Foil Signature, Holographic — is inferred from the set's composition, not from a checklist line. TCDB, which holds the full checklist, is not reachable.