When the new television deal was announced for NXT, this set took on a little bit more meaning. Before now, NXT has been a brand exclusively on the WWE Network. It was well received, but perhaps didn’t have as large an audience. That has all changed, but will that mean a bigger market for the cards? Time will tell on that.
It feels like an unusual release. It has a similar configuration to other recent wrestling releases, included a set of matches and moments, as well as one of the roster. There are 100 matches and moments, and a separately numbered 50 roster cards. Only the matches and moments have parallels, which makes it seem the primary base set. There are no other “non-hit” inserts included in this release. It also seems a bit strange that, while included in the roster cards, the women are not featured in the matches and moments portion.
A box advertises 24 packs with 7 cards per pack. It also includes 2 autographs per box, although there have been reports of some boxes containing 5 autographs instead.
This release comes at an interesting time. It’s new for Topps and focuses on one of the lesser pay per view brands. We’re used to see a Wrestlemania release, and this year also included a SummerSlam release. The event itself took place in May of this year, so this seems like a strange time see a release based on it.
While this set contains 90 base cards, the product feels much more hit driven. There are a handful of insert sets concentrating on previous events, but a set will be difficult to put together from packs. The pack out configuration consists of a master hobby box, containing two mini boxes. Each mini box has 6 packs with 5 cards per pack. There is no guarantee for each mini box, but the master box advertises 4 hits, with 3 guaranteed to be autographs. That’s nice, but for the price point, you need to see good autographs for it to be worth while.
SmackDown is a new release for 2019. It’s not clear if it’s directly because SmackDown is moving to Fox after years on USA. Tonight is the beginning of the draft to fully separate Raw from SmackDown for the new future. The new roster may not reflect this release very well, though. This release matches the Raw release from earlier in the year,
In years past, Topps had two major releases, using the standard baseball design from that year. This changed this year. There seem to be two main releases again, representing Raw and SmackDown, but they are using unique designs for each. The Raw design was rather lackluster, but the SmackDown one stands out a lot more. I still wish they were the same, but unfortunately, that’s not the case.
With all the changes in the WWE releases this year, it’s nice to have a familiar release come out. It has a fairly well known pattern with the base set consisting of 60 roster cards, along with 40 card for specific events. Of course, there are multiple layers of parallels. These cards feature wrestlers from all the different brands, including NXT UK.
There are a few insert sets, but not as many as a lot of the other releases these days have. One feature I’m not a fan of, is that some of these insert sets are retail exclusives. A hobby box may get you close to a base set, but you will be completely shut out of some of the inserts. I wish that wasn’t the case, as I’m not interested in chasing these at multiple stores.
This is a new release for 2019, as part of a revamped WWE lineup from Topps. Earlier, we saw a Raw release essentially replacing the WWE flagship. Now we’re stepping in to a release for a specific pay per view. They already have the Road to Wrestlemania early in the year, so it’s not completely out of the blue with SummerSlam was one of their big yearly shows.
This is a new release, but it’s a familiar layout. The base set consists of 50 roster cards and 50 matches and moments. These have a normal set or parallels. There is also an assortment of parallels included. On an initial pass through, it wasn’t always obvious to me which were inserts and which were base moments. The designs are a bit similar. One selling point for this release is that most of the autographs are on card, rather than stickers.
A box advertises 24 packs with 7 cards per pack. This includes 2 hits per box, one of which is an autograph.
