Stardom Wrestling Cards from Puro Central Shop

Last week I showed off some Stardom wrestling cards I purchased from eBay, and today I'll be showing a package from the Puro Central Shop. As a short recap, Stardom is a women's wrestling promotion in Japan. They don't participate in the annual BBM True Heart wrestling card sets, but in 2015 and 2017 they released their own trading cards. The 2015 cards were available for a long time, but after the news broke that Stardom wrestlers Kairi Hojo and Io Shirai signed contracts with WWE, both the 2017 and the 2015 packs quickly sold out.

I was able to buy some 2015 packs before they were gone, and I'll post about my pulls from them at some point. I wasn't able to get any of the 2017 packs from the Stardom store, but I bought a quartet of singles from the Puro Central Shop, which sells all kinds of Japanese wrestling goods. The main card I was chasing was the Alpha Female in the upper left. She is also known as Jazzy Gabert, hails from Germany, and competes in MMA as well as wrestling. She has another individual card in the set, as well as some tag team cards, but I was only able to get this one. I also picked up cards from a few other names I recognized.

Here are the backs of the cards I picked up. The fronts of the cards typically show posed shots or photos of the wrestlers during their ring entrances, while the backs typically have an action photo. That isn't the case every time, but that seems to be the usual pattern. The 2017 cards are pretty similar in design to the 2015 cards, outside of the addition of the year on the set logo.

In a pretty cool move, the owner of the Puro Central Shop sent me a pack of the 2017 cards along with the ones I ordered. I don't know that I deserve that kind of honor because I tend to be a bit of a cheapskate when ordering from him (or anyone, really), but I surely did appreciate being able to rip my own pack of 2017 cards.

These were packaged similarly to the 2015 cards, with a paper insert inside of a team bag. The difference is that the 2015 cards were additionally packed in a gold foil envelope that was stapled shut and then placed in the team bag, while the 2017 cards were just slipped inside of the paper insert and put in the bag. The red stars on the checklist denote autographed cards, which are numbered as part of the set. The autographs are either made in differing quantities, or the collation really sucked from order to order, as the Puro Central Shop got several of the same wrestler in the packs they opened, and every pack they sent out also featured the same autograph. There's probably some lucky collectors out there who got only Kairi Hojo or Io Shirai autographs in their packs.

Each pack has ten cards in it, and here are the fronts of the nine non-autographed cards I pulled. There is pretty good variety here, with some homegrown stars, a tag team, some guests from out of the country, and a tournament victory card.

Most of the wrestlers have more than one card in the checklist. Some of them have what I would categorize as wrestling cards and modeling/idol cards. The idol cards have posed photos on front and back, like the cards above featuring Jungle Kyona, Kris Wolf, and Starlight Kid.

My autograph was Toni Storm. The glossy coatings on these cards mean that most of the autographs I've seen are smudged / streaked / faded in some way. BBM's True Heart sets moved to matte finishes on their autographs a few years ago (2014 maybe?), but Stardom's printer probably printed all of these cards on the same sheets and treated them all with the same coating. The only thing really separating these from the look and feel of a regular card is the white box where the signature goes and the 'SIGN CARD' designation under the set logo on the front.

I don't know a lot about Toni Storm, but this is a pretty cool card. Not all of the packs have autographs (maybe), although it seems like the 2017 packs are more likely than 2015 packs to contain an autograph. I haven't opened enough from either year to make a definitive statement on that, though.

I am glad that I was able to get a few of the Stardom cards in various ways, especially since they are now sold out and will probably be impossible to find after another month or two. I don't have any hope of completing a base set from either year, but it would be cool to find all of the Alpha Female cards that are available. She doesn't have an autograph in the set, so that should make the search a little easier.

Much thanks to Puro Central Shop for the bonus pack of 2017 Stardom cards, as I wouldn't have had the opportunity to bust a pack of these otherwise. As always, the card collecting community has proven to be more generous than I deserve. I am planning on sending a couple of these cards out to people who I know are fans of particular wrestlers, so maybe that will keep the karma flowing a little bit.

Stardom Wrestling Cards from eBay

I've posted a lot about BBM's True Heart trading cards that feature female wrestlers from a number of promotions in Japan, but there is one notable wrestling promotion that doesn't participate in the True Heart sets. That promotion is called Stardom, and they kind of do their own thing when it comes to trading cards. They put out a 2017 card set, and a 5th Anniversary card set in 2015. The 2015 cards were available on their website for a long time, but when two Stardom wrestlers, Io Shirai and Kairi Hojo, got signed by the WWE, the cards sold out within days. I was able to get 5 packs of the 2015 cards and was gifted a pack of the 2017 cards, so I'll post about them soon. In the meantime, here are a few cards I picked up from eBay.

First up is this autograph card from the 2015 5th Anniversary set featuring Haruka Kato. She has actually appeared in the True Heart card sets, probably because she has worked with several other promotions that are heavily featured in those sets. There seems to be some tension between some fans of Stardom and fans of other promotions, possibly because Stardom is seen as models who wrestle, while other promotions are more focused on wrestling, although some of them also model on the side. I don't know. I'm a fringe lurker when it comes to fandom, so I'm not as invested as some of these folks, Stardom does seem to be more focused on reaching out to the English-speaking crowd, though. They have an English website, a webstore on that site that ships to American addresses, and a video subscription service that uploads every event with English subtitles.

Stardom is also pretty active about bringing in guest wrestlers from outside of Japanese promotions. Kellie Skater is a wrestler out of Australia who has also wrestled in the United States and Canada, but did some wrestling with Stardom in Japan. She retired earlier this year. All of the base cards I picked up in this lot are from the 2017 set. You can tell because 2017 is in the set name on the front, while the 2015 cards don't list a year.

Kaitlin Diamond is a Canadian wrestler who wrestled for Stardom for about three months in 2016. It looks like she is back in Canada now, though, working for many wrestling promotions there.

I mentioned this card yesterday, as I picked up a Topps UFC autograph of Shayna Baszler recently. She's out of the UFC now, but had an MMA bout in early 2017 while she was in Japan wrestling for Stardom in early 2017. It looks like right now she is wrestling in the United States again. Most of these foreign wrestlers seem to do tours for three or four months with Stardom before returning to their home promotions. She also appeared during the Stardom USA tour a while back. I kind of wanted to go to one of those shows, but couldn't justify a trip to California at that time.

That's a quick intro to the Stardom trading cards. I'll have a couple more posts about them over the next month or so. Unfortunately, they aren't really available anymore, so if you want them you'll have to find singles on eBay or at a place like The Puro Central Shop.