As the second Panini WWE release arrives, we see the market from the first one dropping quite a bit. Even these first appeared for preorder at a greatly inflated price, only to drop very quickly. As the economy worsens, it seems obvious the card market is likely to follow.
On the surface, this seems like a fairly straight forward release. You have a 150 card base set, but this comes along with nine parallels related to the background images. Luckily, the back of the card lists the type of parallel to make it easier to identify each type. There are only a handful of inserts sets possible, but each of those also comes in five different parallel designs. There are possible also possible autographs, but unlike the Topps releases, these hobby boxes do not guarantee any hits.
Once again, Topps Heritage heralds in the pending baseball season, even if this year is different from normal. This release pays tribute to 1973 Topps with cards in that style, as well as buybacks and other homages to that year. The base set contains 400 cards, with an additional 100 SPs running 401-500, as well as various variant SPs within that base run.
While the prices on many releases have been skyrocketing, and Heritage is up, it still comes in at a mostly reasonable range. Part of the reason for this is likely that Heritage isn’t really a hit driven release, so it’s not as popular for group breakers. Each box does guarantee one relic or autograph, but the autographs are much rarer to receive. A box contains 24 packs, with 9 cards per pack.
There’s a rush to get the last few Topps WWE releases out before Panini WWE hits the streets. It still seems weird to have a 2021 release come out well in to March of 2022. The awkwardness of knowing this is one of Topps’s final WWE releases is compounded by the fact that many of the talents featured have already left the company anyway.
The base set features 100 cards showing events that occurred within the Women’s division. Along with these matches and moments, comes an insert set featuring 55 members of the roster. There are a few other insert sets, along with the normal autographs and mat relics cards. In addition to the mat relics, others hits include superstar logo patch cards.
A box contains 24 packs with 7 cards per pack, including two hits per box, one of which is guaranteed to be an autograph.
Another long delayed release finally finds its way to store shelves. With the end of the year approaching, and Topps losing the WWE license, we’ll see a final push to get out the remaining releases. This set combines matches and moments with roster cards, for a total of 200 base cards. There are also an assortment of insert sets available.
A box is advertised as 24 packs of 7 cards, with two hits, one of which is guaranteed to be an autograph. A new type of hit is possible in this set. It is a film strip included in the card, allowing you to see the image showing through. It’s a departure from the standard piece of mat relic from previous releases.
This release had been pushed back a little bit during the year and now comes out after it is announced the WWE trading card license will be moving to Panini in 2022. Couple that, with many recently released talents being featured in this release, and the set has a weird feel to it. It’s been a few years Topps released a Heritage set for wrestling, so this one moves forward to the 1990 baseball design. It also mixes in a few other releases, such as Allen & Ginter, as insert sets.
The base set features 100 cards, across SmackDown, Raw, NXT, and WWE “teams”, with a different color combination for each, as well as a number of limited parallels. There are a handful of insert sets, including Allen & Ginter, stickers, Superstars Speak, and more. A hobby box comes with 24 packs of 7 cards per pack, and advertises 2 autograph cards.
