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.

2018 Topps WWE Undisputed

Undisputed is the high-end wrestling offering from Topps. It comes on thick card stock and features 10 hits per 10-pack box, with 8 of those hits guaranteed to be autographs. I didn't buy a whole box, but I did snag some 2018 Topps Undisputed.

I found an online shop that was offering Undisputed by the pack at a reasonable price, so I ordered two packs. As I said before, each pack promises a hit among the five cards inside. Based on what I've seen, parallels are a little harder to come by this year, probably due to the fact that there aren't any parallels in the product that aren't serially-numbered.

Here are the pack odds. It's too late to send in a NPN request, as that expired at the end of September. I've been sitting on these photographs for quite a while apparently.

Most packs give you two or three base cards and one or two inserts. I like Sheamus, so that is a decent base card pull for me. I don't like Roman Reigns as much, but he seems to be pretty popular among wrestling fans. It is pretty nice to get an Andre the Giant appearance in this pack. He was one big dude.

Brock Lesnar irritates me, but I guess if a heel can get under your skin, that means they're doing their job well. The inserts I've seen all focus on 30 Years of Survivor Series and 30 Years of Royal Rumble. There may be other insert sets, but I doubt it. There's just not enough room in the checklist for much more.

The hit from this first pack is an Orange autograph of Jinder Mahal. He's not one of my favorite wrestlers, but he's a pretty big player on the current roster and I am happy to add his signature to my collection. I don't think I had previously acquired any of his signed cards.

I do kind of like his gimmick with the Singh Brothers. It's very much a video game set-up where the Singh Brothers are mini-bosses who pester you while you try to defeat the main boss, Jinder Mahal. They all play their roles very well. 

It's nice to get a Bayley card in the second pack, with a cameo appearance by Nia Jax. It is also fun to get a John Cena card in this pack. His new longer haircut kind of throws me for a loop, but that's just because it's different from what I'm used to seeing. Apparently I'm not the only person who was surprised to see it.

This pack also had a Royal Rumble card inside, with Lex Luger as the co-winner of the 1994 Royal Rumble.

I was pretty happy with the hit in this pack, a Green autograph of Charlotte Flair. This one is numbered # 02 / 50. The color splash on these parallels does some weird things to the wrestler photos sometimes, because it overlays the photos and changes their skin and clothing to that color.

This Nia Jax Blue parallel autograph was an eBay purchase. It is numbered # 22 / 25. I was also watching a Green autograph at the same time, but the Blue only went for a little more than the Green, despite having half the print run. It is a little bothersome that the blue ink of the marker blends in with the blue of the color splash, but I don't think it looks as bad on the actual card.

This last pack came from a group break I joined. It was a random pack box break, so there were 10 slots, and the packs from a box were randomly attached to a slot. I got some pretty decent base cards, with Alexa Bliss, Ruby Riott, and John Cena.

The hit of the pack would have been an awesome pull if it pictured a different wrestler. This is a Purple autograph of Dash Wilder, numbered # 4 / 5. I guess I shouldn't complain too much. I've had much worse results out of group breaks before.

Undisputed is a fun product, with a lot of on-card autographs and parallels to chase. I usually try to get a little of it each year, especially if my favorite wrestlers appear on the checklist.

2017 Topps On-Demand WWE SummerSlam Set

Topps has several print-to-demand programs going. In addition to Topps Now programs for various properties, Topps also does Throwback Thursday sets and a program called On-Demand. Throwback Thursday is basically what it sounds like, a fresh take on an older Topps design. On-Demand is kind of a grab bag, with ideas that may not warrant a full product release. There have been On-Demand sets for Star Wars, baseball, a boxing match, a cartoon, Garbage Pail Kids, and WWE.

The WWE set was based on a SummerSlam theme, and offered a 30-card base set, 2 autographs, and a chance at randomly-inserted parallels. I think the original solicitation listed parallels numbered up to # / 99, but only 125 copies of the set were ordered (most people on Facebook and Twitter seemed to think the autograph list was too weak) and the parallels and autographs were changed so that the max print run on them was 10 copies apiece.

The base cards all have that swirly blue and orange background, with a big SummerSlam logo and the wrestler's name at the bottom. The backs have a write-up of the wrestler's SummerSlam exploits. I think it's a pretty fun set, and it's pretty cool that there are only 125 of them out there.

Due to the low ordering, my set was packed with four parallels. I got three Red parallels, featuring Kevin Owens, Samoa Joe, and Nia Jax. They are all serially-numbered # / 10. I was happy to pull the Nia Jax card for my collection of her cards. I wish the other names had been a little bigger. I also got a Black parallel of Big Cass numbered # 4 / 5. You can see the backs have a suffix on the card number that denotes the parallel type.

My two autographs were of the Red variety, again numbered out of # / 10. I mentioned in the comments of an earlier post that these are more initial-graphs than autographs, as Dean Ambrose and Luke Harper put the smallest amount of ink they could on these stickers. I think I would have preferred just about anyone else on the autograph list over these two, but those are the risks you take when you order this kind of product.

Pack of the Day 165: 2017 Topps WWE Hanger Box

I am still working through drafts from April and May, so this is a purchase from at least a couple of months ago. I picked up a hanger box of 2017 Topps WWE trading cards shortly after the product arrived on store shelves.

The front of the box has the usual group shot of some superstars on the front, and a teaser that this product has autograph and relic cards available. 

Your typical box will have 42 cards in it, with 5 of them being roster update cards for wrestlers who switched from Smackdown to Raw. I scanned a couple of Smackdown cards from the box, but just realized that most of my scans feature Raw wrestlers. I guess that's my stable of choice.

The fronts borrow design elements from the 2017 Topps Baseball set, with logos and color-coding for the various branches of WWE. I was happy to get Bayley's card in this box.

The card backs feature height, weight, and hometown (if known) for male wrestlers, and height and hometown for female wrestlers, as well as branding and colors to match the card fronts. Each wrestler also gets a paragraph about their career.

Here are a few more cards from the box. I think I tried the WWE Slam app for a while, but ran out of space on my phone and deleted all of the Slam, Bunt, and other digital card trading apps.

I was also glad to get Asuka's card in this box. I'm not sure what's going on with Paige, but she's been suspended/injured for a long time now. A John Cena Tribute insert card kicks off the non-base portion of this box.

I guess the basic parallel in this product is Bronze. I got two of them in the box, as well as the matching base cards.

The rest of the inserts in the box feature various WWE TV shows. Kind of boring, to be honest, but I guess there is an audience out there for this stuff.

And that does it for the box. I got a couple of base cards and a John Cena insert that I liked, but for the most part this was a snoozer for me.