Two Reverse Boxes of 2018 Topps Legends of WWE

Topps has put out a Legends set for the WWE each of the last couple years, and it's a pretty decent product. I thought about buying a box of it, but then I decided this might be a good product to build a reverse box for. The idea behind a reverse box is that you put the money you would have spent on a box toward buying single cards you like from the product, basically custom-building the contents of a box on the secondary market. By buying this way, you remove the chance of hitting something really big, but you also remove the chance of opening a box that doesn't match your interests.

Based on my understanding, each box of this product contains 12 packs with 5 cards apiece, for a total of 60 cards in a box. Of those 60 cards, 12 are parallels and 4 are hits, with three of those hits guaranteed to be autographs. Boxes run about $95 at the moment.

You won't complete a base set or either of the insert sets from two boxes of the product, but I went ahead and bought a complete set and split the cost 50/50 between my two reverse boxes. The base set has 70 cards in it, and features plenty of big names, like Andre the Giant and Jake "The Snake" Roberts.

The first insert set is called Identity Crisis, and it features 20 cards of wrestlers who switched personas during their careers. Here are a couple from my first reverse box.

There is also a 10-card Women's Division set, with cards for many of the bigger names from the female side of the roster.

I was able to get 7 numbered parallels for each of my reverse boxes, mostly from one big lot. These four are all Silver parallels, serially-numbered # / 50. I was especially happy to get The Rock. I think Kane was a single I got because I could combine shipping with some of the hits I picked up.

This Tatanka is a Blue parallel and is numbered # 08 / 25. It also came from the same lot as the other parallels.

The inserts have parallels, too. Cardboard Connection lists Identity Crisis and the Women's Division set as part of the base set. I don't know. They are numbered differently than the base set, so I consider them to be inserts. 

I picked up a whole Bronze parallel set for just a little more than my regular base set cost me, so I split off the Women's Division inserts as my remaining parallels for the reverse boxes. Here are the first 5 cards in that checklist. 

I was able to land some pretty good cards for my hits. The Mankind autograph is a Blue parallel, and is numbered # 04 / 25. The Mark Henry card is a Hall of Fame ring manu-relic with an autograph. That one is numbered # 79 / 99.

The other two hits from this reverse box were a base Jake "The Snake" Roberts autograph and a John Cena relic card. These base hits have print runs of 199. I like that many of the wrestlers included their nicknames on the autographs for this set.

Here are some more base cards to start off the second reverse box. It's fun to see some of the older guys in a set like this.

Here are a couple more of the cards from the Women's Division checklist. I guess I am showing all of them in the Bronze parallel sections of these boxes, but it probably won't hurt anyone to see Miss Elizabeth and Trish Stratus more than once.

And a couple more Identity Crisis inserts, this time Randy Savage and Razor Ramon / Scott Hall.

Next up are a few more Silver parallels. The Kurt Angle was purchased separately, and all of the other numbered parallels here were part of a lot. I hope no one faints at the sight of "Ravishing" Rick Rude. 

That lot also contained a Gold parallel of D'Lo Brown and a Blue parallel of Diamond Dallas Page. I haven't looked at a lot of breaks of this stuff, but I think my reverse boxes did pretty well as far as parallels go.

And a couple more numbered Identity Crisis cards, including my favorite of the bunch, "Macho Man / King" Randy Savage.

Now we've got the second half of the Women's Division Bronze parallel set to close out the parallels. Let's see what I got as the hits for this box.

First up is a nice Iron Sheik relic / autograph. This is the Blue parallel, and it's a Christmas Card, numbered # 12 / 25. I also managed to get my hands on a Trish Stratus base autograph for what I felt was a reasonable price. There was a Silver parallel out there for a bit more, but I couldn't fit it into my reverse box without breaking the price limit.

I had to get a "Hacksaw" Jim Duggan card for my collection when I saw that he covered the cards in his name, nickname, and a 'HOF 2011' inscription. Ricky "The Dragon" Steamboats autograph is one I'm still chasing, but I did manage to land his relic card among those included in a lot.

That rounds out the cards I picked up for my reverse boxes, but I've snagged a few other to go with them.

This trio of autographs includes a Blue parallel of Alundra Blaze and base autograph cards of "Million Dollar Man" Ted DiBiase and Big Show.

I also got a trio of relics. DiBiase makes another appearance, along with Matt Hardy and Kevin Nash.

This is a pretty fun product, and I enjoyed building reverse boxes of the product. There are a lot of big names in the product, but the hits also include a lot of wrestlers you can pick up on the cheap. Rather than take that risk, I was able to get complete base and Bronze sets, some really nice parallels, and hits featuring the wrestlers I really like. I may pick up a box of this stuff some day, but for now I am pretty happy with building my own boxes.

Pack of the Day 187: Two Boxes of 2017 Topps Legends of WWE

Topps had a sale on their website over the Memorial Day weekend, and one of the items on sale was Hobby boxes of 2017 Topps Legends of WWE. These things sell for $95-100 each on most card sites, and I got two boxes with shipping for about $73.50 apiece. Each box promises four hits, with three of those being guaranteed autographs. I opened a box of this stuff a few months ago that had four autographs in it.

Between the two boxes, I pulled a total of 74 base cards, with 51 singles and 23 doubles. That means two boxes got me about half of a base set. As shown in this scan, I tend to favor the wrestling legends from my youth, but the set features a lot of older names that I'm not that familiar with. I do kind of wish that Hulk Hogan would get invited back to the WWE and some of these sets. It is kind of distracting to see cards of all his contemporaries, but to never pull a card of one of the most famous wrestlers ever.

There were 19 Bronze parallels between the two boxes. This is the base-level parallel, which basically shows up in any pack that doesn't have a serially-numbered parallel inside. I thought I got some decent cards among my Bronze pulls.

These were my Silver parallel pulls. The Silver cards are # / 99, and fall 1:8 packs. So in two boxes (12 packs each), you'd expect to pull three of them. The Rock is probably the best card in this group, but I like all three of these.

I also got two Blue parallels, which are # / 50. I wasn't that familiar with Dory Funk Jr., but he is actually a pretty influential wrestler, with a long career and his own wrestling school that has trained plenty of big names.

Legendary Bouts is one of two inserts in the product, and these cards feature famous matches from wrestling history. There are some pretty big names here, like Undertaker, Shawn Michaels, Randy Savage, and Cactus Jack.

The other insert in the product is called Retired Championships, which shows some retired belts and some of the wrestlers who held them. Who knew there were so many belts out there?

I pulled one basic relic card from each box. They are # / 299. That Ricky "The Dragon" Steamboat relic card is pretty amazing for a basic relic card.

I pulled base autographs of two female wrestlers and Bronze autographs of two male wrestlers. The base autographs of Alundra Blayze and Wendi Richter are # / 199, while the Bronze cards of Diamond Dallas Page and Ken Shamrock are # / 99. All except the Diamond Dallas Page card carry on-card signatures.

The first big hit of the break is this autographed manu-relic Commemorative Championship Plate Card bearing the autograph of Big Show. I was pretty happy with this card, although it's probably not a huge money card. I like Big Show, and I was glad to get his signature. The card is # 68 / 99. 

The hit of the break has to be this Black parallel of "Million Dollar Man" Ted DiBiase's autographed relic card. The card features a sweet relic swatch and a nice signature with a '$' inscription. It's also # 4 / 5.

While this break wasn't quite as amazing as my previous box was, this product is a lot of fun. I like pulling cards of all the old-school wrestlers, and each box usually produces at least a handful of really neat things. I'd like to pick up more of this product at some point. The price point is a little high, but there is some good stuff that can come out of it. It also feels a little less risky than a true high-end product like Undisputed.