Urijah Faber
Rookie Card Case

The candidates, the evidence for each, and which card FightCardboard treats as the working pick.

Working pick2010 Topps UFC Main Event #144
SubjectUrijah Faber
Year2010
ManufacturerTopps
ConfidenceProbable
Print runUnknown — not estimated

High confidence×1Probable×1Uncertain×1View sources & research

Why this is the working pick

It is the earliest Faber card confirmed by two independent sources, and it sits in a UFC-licensed Topps base set. eBay's catalogue entry titles it '2010 Topps UFC Main Event - WEC Fighter Urijah Faber #144 (RC)' and describes it as part of the base set's rookie subset. Jeff Allender's complete checklist for 2010 Topps UFC Round 4 (Series 4) has no Faber card, and no Faber row was found in SportsCardsPro's 100-card 2010 Leaf MMA base list, so nothing earlier in the Topps or Leaf 2010 wave competes with it. The counterweight is SportsCardsPro, whose rookie field for #144 reads 'No'.

Faber's earliest confirmed trading card, and the reason he is a Topps-WEC case rather than a Topps-UFC one. Main Event was Topps' third UFC product and the first to carry a block of WEC fighters; Faber lands in that WEC Fighter run at #144, roughly a year before he ever fought in the Octagon and two years after he had already lost the WEC featherweight title. He is absent from the 200-card 2010 Topps UFC Series 4 (Round 4) checklist, so there is nothing of his from between his 2003 pro debut and this card.

The dispute

Sources disagree on whether #144 is a designated rookie card. eBay's catalogue marks it (RC) and places it in a rookie subset; SportsCardsPro's rookie field says No. TCDB, which normally carries the RC flag, could not be consulted and Beckett is offline site-wide, so the flag could not be settled. Cardboard Connection has no Urijah Faber player page (404).

Commonly misidentified

Sellers sometimes describe the 2011 Finest UFC #32 as a 'Finest Debut' card and price it as a rookie; the checklist shows it as a plain base card. Gold and Red parallels of the 2011 base cards are also listed as 'the rookie' — they are parallels.

Identifying it

Base-set card #144, catalogued by eBay under the 'WEC Fighter' subset heading
Shown as a WEC fighter, not a UFC fighter — he had no UFC bout until UFC 128 in March 2011
eBay pick-lists for this product simply read '#144 Urijah Faber'; the WEC/RC wording appears only on the catalogue entry

What gets mistaken for it

What you'll read	What's true
Faber's rookie is a 2011 Topps UFC card, because that is when he joined the UFC.	Topps had already put him in the 2010 Main Event base set as a WEC fighter at #144, more than a year before UFC 128.
Faber is in 2010 Topps UFC Series 4 / Round 4.	Jeff Allender's full Round 4 checklist has no Faber card at all — that set ran 200 base cards of UFC fighters and personalities.

Grading & population

Population figures will be taken directly from the grading companies and dated when they are. None are shown yet.

Sources & research High confidence×1Probable×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.

Probable

Urijah Faber's rookie card: 2010 Topps UFC Main Event #144 — Urijah Faber.

High confidence

2010 Topps UFC Main Event #144 — Urijah Faber.

Uncertain

Rookie status only. eBay's catalogue calls it (RC); SportsCardsPro's rookie field says No. The card's year, set and number agree across both sources.

Go deeper

The card record2010 Topps UFC Main Event #144
Urijah Faber archiveKey cards and eras
2010 Topps UFC Main EventSet record