The rookie case
2006 PRIDE FC #047
The only Belfort card that exists from his prime: he was 28, a former UFC light heavyweight champion and a PRIDE regular when DSE put this set out in Japan in January 2006. It is a Japanese-market product that never reached Western retail, which is why it is absent from most English-language price guides — SportsCardsPro has no Belfort Pride row at all and Cardbase's set page does not surface him. Getting one usually means a specialist PRIDE dealer or a Japanese seller.
Two defensible answers. 2006 Pride FC #047 is demonstrably his earliest licensed card, but no source explicitly calls it his rookie card — unlike Wanderlei Silva's #010, which Collectibles.com flags RC. 2009 Topps UFC Round 1 #15 is the card that actually carries an RC designation in card catalogues and in seller titles, but it is a shared bout card and the Round 1/Round 2 RC flags are applied loosely across those checklists. COMC maintains a 'Vitor Belfort Rookie Card' category page that would settle which card the largest consignment catalogue flags, but COMC is not reachable and TCDB, which holds the fullest 2006 Pride checklist, is too.
Key Belfort cards
12 cards chosen for significance, not completeness; autographs and numbered cards follow below.
Card history
Belfort won a UFC tournament at 19 in February 1997, fought in PRIDE from 1999 and held the UFC light heavyweight title in January 2004, and not one licensed card exists from any of it — the UFC had no trading-card licensee between the SEG years and Topps' 2009 deal. His cardboard therefore starts in Japan, with Dream Stage Entertainment's 2006 Pride FC Card Collection, base #047, released in January 2006 between the Alistair Overeem loss and his PRIDE bouts with Kazuo Takahashi and Dan Henderson. It is a Japanese-market product that never reached Western retail, which is why the big English-language catalogues have no Belfort row for it at all; finding one usually means a specialist PRIDE dealer or a Japanese seller. The set's Gold Foil Signature, Silver Foil Signature and Holographic runs cover nearly every base card, but they are printed facsimiles, not signed cards.
The rookie question has two defensible answers and sources genuinely disagree. The DSE card is demonstrably his earliest licensed issue but nothing designates it RC; the card that actually carries the flag is 2009 Topps UFC Round 1 #15, catalogued as 'Vitor Belfort, Marvin Eastman #15 (RC)' and sold graded as his rookie — a shared bout card commemorating their UFC 43 meeting, three years after the Pride card, in a set whose RC flags are applied loosely across the checklist. Even that flag is unsettled: one listing puts the RC on Eastman, another on Belfort. It is also his only 2009 card; he is absent from Round 2 entirely, having been fighting for Affliction before his UFC 103 return that September. Its parallels run Gold, Silver /288, retail Black /888 and Red 1/1.
2010 Topps UFC Series 4 is where a Belfort collection visibly begins: base #34, his first solo UFC card thirteen years after the UFC 12 tournament, carrying the only true short print in his base-card history, a 'The Phenom' nickname variation reported at 250 copies. The same release gave him his first certified autograph, Fighter Autographs #FA-VB with Onyx /88, Ruby /8 and Diamond 1/1 tiers, and his first fight-worn relic, Ultimate Gear #UG-VB with a ladder from Gold /188 down to Diamond 1/1. Pride and Glory #PG-6 sits alongside them as the closest thing to a PRIDE card he has inside a UFC-licensed product, one of only fifteen in the insert. Sources split on the Series 4 base parallel tiers, one checklist giving Gold / Onyx /88 / Ruby /8 / Diamond 1/1 and another Gold / Silver /188 / Bronze /88 / Ruby /8 / Diamond 1/1.
The chrome and title-challenger years follow. 2011 Finest UFC #20, issued the year he challenged Anderson Silva at UFC 126, is his first chrome-stock card and his first properly tiered chase run — Refractor, X-Fractor /388, Gold Refractor /88, Octa-Fractor /8, Red Refractor 1/1 — though he appears nowhere else in that product. 2012 added Finest UFC #70 with its Blue X-Fractor /188 and a Finest Moments insert, plus Topps UFC Bloodlines #20 with a Black /88, a set built around gym and national lineage that suits a Carlson Gracie product from Rio. The deepest run of his career sits on 2014 Topps UFC Champions #59 — Silver, Blue /88, Purple /88, Black /188, Gold Champions Predictor /25, Red /8 and Platinum 1/1 — beside a manufactured full-belt relic #CFB-7 numbered to 25, although that card is catalogued in only one place.
2015 Topps UFC Champions #24, with Blue /88 and Gold /25 parallels, is effectively the last time Belfort is a checklist regular. He fought on until the Machida knockout at UFC 224 in May 2018, but Topps' final UFC years largely pass him by and Panini, which held the licence from 2021, appears never to have put him on a card at all: catalogue searches return no Panini UFC Belfort issue. For a former champion with a 1997 tournament win, that is an unusually short modern tail — his run ends in 2015 without a late-career capstone.
Autographs
1 certified autograph in the archive.
Numbered & parallels
Serial-numbered cards and parallels with their own record.
Card eras
A UFC tournament winner at 19, a PRIDE regular from 1999 and a UFC light heavyweight champion in January 2004 — and not one licensed card from any of it. No 1990s MMA card product covering the UFC could be found, and the only UFC-branded card issue of the period, the ten-card 2000 SEG/Crave gum promo, has no reachable checklist to check him against.
The 2006 Pride FC Card Collection (DSE, Japan, released January 2006) is his first licensed card of any kind: base #047, issued between his 2005 loss to Alistair Overeem and his 2006 PRIDE bouts against Kazuo Takahashi and Dan Henderson. Like every base card in that set it should have Gold Foil Signature, Silver Foil Signature and Holographic counterparts, which are facsimile-signature parallels, not signed cards.
Topps' first UFC set gave him Round 1 #15, a bout card shared with Marvin Eastman — the two met at UFC 43 in 2003 — with Gold, Silver /288, Black /888 retail and Red 1/1 parallels. He has no card at all in Round 2, released later the same year; he was fighting for Affliction before returning to the Octagon at UFC 103 in September 2009.
2010 Topps UFC Series 4 is the year everything starts: base #34 plus a 'The Phenom' nickname variation reported at /250, the Pride and Glory insert #PG-6 (his only licensed nod to the PRIDE run inside a UFC product), the Ultimate Gear relic #UG-VB and Fighter Autographs #FA-VB, his first certified signature.
2011 Finest UFC #20 is his first chrome-stock card, with the full Refractor / X-Fractor /388 / Gold Refractor /88 / Octa-Fractor /8 / Red Refractor 1/1 ladder. 2012 brought Finest UFC #70 with a Blue X-Fractor /188 and Topps UFC Bloodlines #20 with a Black /88.
2014 Topps UFC Champions #59 carries the deepest parallel run of his career — Silver, Blue /88, Purple /88, Black /188, Gold Champions Predictor /25, Red /8, Platinum 1/1 — alongside manufactured belt relics #CFB-7 /25 and #CB-7. 2015 Topps UFC Champions #24 (Blue /88, Gold /25) is effectively the end of his run as a checklist regular.
He retired after the Machida knockout at UFC 224 in May 2018 and Panini, which held the UFC licence from 2021, appears never to have put him on a card: searches of price-guide catalogues return no Panini UFC Belfort issue at all. For a former champion with a 1997 tournament win, that is an unusually short modern tail.
Rookie parallels
Sets
Where Belfort's key cards come from.
- 20062006 PRIDE FC1 key card
- 20092009 Topps UFC Round 11 key card
- 20102010 Topps UFC (Series 4)1 key card
- 20102010 Topps UFC Autographs1 key card
- 20102010 Topps UFC Series 4 — Pride and Glory1 key card
- 20102010 Topps UFC Ultimate Gear Relics1 key card
- 20112011 Finest UFC1 key card
- 20122012 Topps UFC Bloodlines1 key card
- 20122012 Finest UFC1 key card
- 20142014 Topps UFC Champions2 key cards
- 20152015 Topps UFC Champions1 key card
Buying & wanted
- 012006 Pride FC #047 — his only pre-Topps licensed card, a Japanese-market issue that rarely surfaces outside specialist dealers
- 022010 Topps UFC Fighter Autographs #FA-VB in Ruby /8 or Diamond 1/1 — his first certified signature at its scarcest
- 032010 Topps UFC Series 4 #34 'The Phenom' nickname variation — the short-printed version of his first solo UFC base card
- 042014 Topps UFC Champions Full Belt manufactured relic #CFB-7 /25 — the belt card from his last title-challenge run
Nothing from this archive in the vault right now. Selling one?
Sources & research High confidence×12Probable×6
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.
Vitor Belfort's rookie card: 2006 PRIDE FC #047 — Vitor Belfort.
His first licensed card of any kind is 2006 Pride FC #047, issued by Dream Stage Entertainment in Japan in January 2006 while he was a PRIDE fighter. Two independent sources record it: Sports Card Investor indexes '2006 Pride FC #47 Base' as the earliest Vitor Belfort card it tracks, and UK dealer Combat Kingdom lists '2006 DSE Pride Fighting Championships Trading Card - #047 Vitor Belfort'. Nothing earlier surfaced in any reachable source, despite his UFC 12 tournament win in 1997 and a PRIDE run beginning in 1999 — the UFC simply had no trading-card licensee between the SEG years and Topps' 2009 deal. No Belfort card carries a manufacturer RC logo from the period he was actually a new fighter, so 'rookie' here is hobby and database convention applied retroactively, exactly as it is for Wanderlei Silva and the other PRIDE-era Brazilians.
- Sports Card InvestorVitor Belfort 2006 Pride FC #47 Base Price Guide, accessed September 22, 2026
- Combat Kingdom2006 DSE Pride Fighting Championships Trading Card - #047 Vitor Belfort, accessed September 22, 2026
- Cardbase2006 Pride FC MMA Cards (lists #132 Dan Henderson and the variation counts), accessed September 22, 2026
Belfort won a UFC tournament at 19 in February 1997, fought in PRIDE from 1999 and held the UFC light heavyweight title in January 2004, and not one licensed card exists from any of it — the UFC had no trading-card licensee between the SEG years and Topps' 2009 deal. His cardboard therefore starts in Japan, with Dream Stage Entertainment's 2006 Pride FC Card Collection, base #047, released in January 2006 between the Alistair Overeem loss and his PRIDE bouts with Kazuo Takahashi and Dan Henderson. It is a Japanese-market product that never reached Western retail, which is why the big English-language catalogues have no Belfort row for it at all; finding one usually means a specialist PRIDE dealer or a Japanese seller. The set's Gold Foil Signature, Silver Foil Signature and Holographic runs cover nearly every base card, but they are printed facsimiles, not signed cards.
- Sports Card InvestorVitor Belfort 2006 Pride FC #47 Base Price Guide, accessed September 22, 2026
- Combat Kingdom2006 DSE Pride Fighting Championships Trading Card - #047 Vitor Belfort, accessed September 22, 2026
- Cardbase2006 Pride FC MMA Cards (lists #132 Dan Henderson and the variation counts), accessed September 22, 2026
The rookie question has two defensible answers and sources genuinely disagree. The DSE card is demonstrably his earliest licensed issue but nothing designates it RC; the card that actually carries the flag is 2009 Topps UFC Round 1 #15, catalogued as 'Vitor Belfort, Marvin Eastman #15 (RC)' and sold graded as his rookie — a shared bout card commemorating their UFC 43 meeting, three years after the Pride card, in a set whose RC flags are applied loosely across the checklist. Even that flag is unsettled: one listing puts the RC on Eastman, another on Belfort. It is also his only 2009 card; he is absent from Round 2 entirely, having been fighting for Affliction before his UFC 103 return that September. Its parallels run Gold, Silver /288, retail Black /888 and Red 1/1.
- COMC2009 Topps UFC Round 1 - [Base] #15 - Marvin Eastman vs Vitor Belfort (catalogue title seen in search results; page not consulted), accessed September 22, 2026
- NSListsUFC Round 1 (Topps, 2009) checklist, accessed September 21, 2026
- eBay2009 Topps UFC Round 1 - Vitor Belfort, Marvin Eastman #15 (RC), CSG 9, accessed September 22, 2026
2010 Topps UFC Series 4 is where a Belfort collection visibly begins: base #34, his first solo UFC card thirteen years after the UFC 12 tournament, carrying the only true short print in his base-card history, a 'The Phenom' nickname variation reported at 250 copies. The same release gave him his first certified autograph, Fighter Autographs #FA-VB with Onyx /88, Ruby /8 and Diamond 1/1 tiers, and his first fight-worn relic, Ultimate Gear #UG-VB with a ladder from Gold /188 down to Diamond 1/1. Pride and Glory #PG-6 sits alongside them as the closest thing to a PRIDE card he has inside a UFC-licensed product, one of only fifteen in the insert. Sources split on the Series 4 base parallel tiers, one checklist giving Gold / Onyx /88 / Ruby /8 / Diamond 1/1 and another Gold / Silver /188 / Bronze /88 / Ruby /8 / Diamond 1/1.
The chrome and title-challenger years follow. 2011 Finest UFC #20, issued the year he challenged Anderson Silva at UFC 126, is his first chrome-stock card and his first properly tiered chase run — Refractor, X-Fractor /388, Gold Refractor /88, Octa-Fractor /8, Red Refractor 1/1 — though he appears nowhere else in that product. 2012 added Finest UFC #70 with its Blue X-Fractor /188 and a Finest Moments insert, plus Topps UFC Bloodlines #20 with a Black /88, a set built around gym and national lineage that suits a Carlson Gracie product from Rio. The deepest run of his career sits on 2014 Topps UFC Champions #59 — Silver, Blue /88, Purple /88, Black /188, Gold Champions Predictor /25, Red /8 and Platinum 1/1 — beside a manufactured full-belt relic #CFB-7 numbered to 25, although that card is catalogued in only one place.
2015 Topps UFC Champions #24, with Blue /88 and Gold /25 parallels, is effectively the last time Belfort is a checklist regular. He fought on until the Machida knockout at UFC 224 in May 2018, but Topps' final UFC years largely pass him by and Panini, which held the licence from 2021, appears never to have put him on a card at all: catalogue searches return no Panini UFC Belfort issue. For a former champion with a 1997 tournament win, that is an unusually short modern tail — his run ends in 2015 without a late-career capstone.
2006 PRIDE FC #047 — Vitor Belfort.
- Sports Card InvestorVitor Belfort 2006 Pride FC #47 Base Price Guide, accessed September 22, 2026
- Combat Kingdom2006 DSE Pride Fighting Championships Trading Card - #047 Vitor Belfort, accessed September 22, 2026
- Cardbase2006 Pride FC MMA Cards (lists #132 Dan Henderson and the variation counts), accessed September 22, 2026
2009 Topps UFC Round 1 #15 — Vitor Belfort / Marvin Eastman.
- NSListsUFC Round 1 (Topps, 2009) checklist, accessed September 21, 2026
- eBay2009 Topps UFC Round 1 - Vitor Belfort, Marvin Eastman #15 (RC), CSG 9, accessed September 22, 2026
- COMC2009 Topps UFC Round 1 - [Base] #15 - Marvin Eastman vs Vitor Belfort (catalogue title seen in search results; page not consulted), accessed September 22, 2026
- SportsCardsPro2009 Topps UFC Round 1 — Marvin Eastman, Vitor Belfort [Silver] #15, accessed September 22, 2026
2010 Topps UFC (Series 4) #34 — Vitor Belfort.
2010 Topps UFC Autographs #FA-VB — Vitor Belfort.
2010 Topps UFC Series 4 — Pride and Glory #PG-6 — Vitor Belfort.
2010 Topps UFC Ultimate Gear Relics #UG-VB — Vitor Belfort.
2011 Finest UFC #20 — Vitor Belfort.
2012 Topps UFC Bloodlines #20 — Vitor Belfort.
2012 Finest UFC #70 — Vitor Belfort.
2014 Topps UFC Champions #59 — Vitor Belfort.
2014 Topps UFC Champions #CFB-7 — Vitor Belfort.
2015 Topps UFC Champions #24 — Vitor Belfort.