Why this is the working pick
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.
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.
Identifying it
- Three-digit card number in the 1–142 base run; dealers write it #047, price guides write it #47 — same card.
- Base version has no foil signature across the photograph; Gold Foil Signature and Silver Foil Signature parallels carry a printed facsimile autograph and are not signed cards.
- Set is variously catalogued as 'Pride FC', '2006 DSE Pride Fighting Championships', 'Pride Card Collection' and, on PSA slabs, 'Pride Card Collection Grand Prix'.
Parallels
Grading & population
Population figures will be taken directly from the grading companies and dated when they are. None are shown yet.
Sources & research Probable×2Uncertain×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.
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
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
Card number 047/47 is agreed by the two sources that record the card, but neither of the large price-guide catalogues indexes it: a SportsCardsPro lookup for a 2006 Pride Belfort card returns nothing, and Cardbase's 2006 Pride FC page does not list him among the cards it surfaces. The parallels are inferred from the set's structure (Cardbase counts 141 Gold Foil Signature, 141 Silver Foil Signature and 140 Holographic against 142 base cards, so nearly every base card has them) rather than confirmed for #047 specifically. TCDB, which holds the fullest checklist for this set, could not be consulted.
- 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
Go deeper
- The card record2006 PRIDE FC #047
- Vitor Belfort archiveKey cards and eras
- 2006 PRIDE FCSet record