2015 Stardom 5th Anniversary Japanese Wrestling Cards from Stardom

In late April and early May, I posted about some cards put out by the Stardom wrestling promotion in Japan. So far there have been two sets released, a 5th Anniversary set in 2015 and another set in 2017. I purchased some singles on eBay, and I purchased some singles from the Puro Central Shop. The Puro Central Shop also gifted me a pack of the 2017 cards after I was unable to get some from the Stardom website. Both sets sold out pretty rapidly after the news broke that Kairi Hojo and Io Shirai from the Stardom promotion had accepted or were considering contract offers from the WWE.

Since the 2017 Stardom cards were sold out, I purchased a 5-pack of the 2015 Stardom 5th Anniversary cards. Like the 2017 cards, these shipped with the cards in a foil pack, tucked inside a paper insert, packed in a team bag. The paper insert has the checklist on the back. Autographs in the checklist are denoted with stars. Since autographs are numbered along with the other cards, this is a base set that is going to be difficult/impossible to complete, especially since the packs are sold out in the official Stardom store.

I didn't scan all of the cards, but I did scan some of the standouts, including cards of the previously-mentioned Io Shirai and Kairi Hojo. I've started a small Alpha Female wrestler collection, but her cards are pretty much limited to Stardom releases and that doesn't leave me with a lot of options to choose from. The card fronts are mostly in English, apart from outliers like Kellie Skater at the top center. As far as I can tell, that text says, "Kellie Skater!" I'm not sure why it's not in English.

The backs are not in English. I haven't taken the time to run my translation app across them yet, but I imagine they contain biographical data and maybe a paragraph describing a match or career highlights.

Here are a few more base cards. Some of the cards highlight the winners of specific tournaments, and some of the more interesting cards are found in a subset showing posters for different events, like Stardom Mask Fiesta, which appears to be exactly what it sounds like.

Card fronts tend to show portraits or posed photos, while card backs tend to show in-ring action. There are exceptions, and there are also cards that focus more on modeling than on wrestling. Stardom is kind of a hybrid organization. They aren't afraid to flaunt the looks of their wrestlers, and most of the wrestlers have done some kind of modeling. Stardom also seems to be the promotion that uses the most gaijin (foreign or non-Japanese) wrestlers as guests in their events. They show up in other promotions, but Stardom really leans on them and cross-promotes with organizations in other countries. That's why there are so many German, British, Australian, and Canadian wrestlers in the Stardom card sets.

I was lucky enough to pull five autographs out of my five packs of cards. I know that some packs didn't have autographs in them, but it seems like most packs did. I did pull doubles of Act Yasukawa's signature card. Haruka Kato's autograph is also a double for me, as it was one of my eBay purchases. Momo Watanabe and Starlight Kid were new ones for me, though. You can see there is some smearing and bubbling in the ink on these. Both Stardom sets used a glossy card coating that didn't take ink well. It is rare to find an autograph in these sets that isn't flawed in some way.

Like I mentioned earlier, the autographs are numbered along with the base set, and the card backs are similar to the ones found on the base cards. It looks like the text on most of them consists of birth date and hometown (not for mysterious masked wrestlers, though!), height, weight, debut, and signature move. Haruka Kato's card is different, though, and I don't know what the backs of the other autographs look like.

That's about all I know about the 2015 Stardom 5th Anniversary trading cards. It is unlikely that I will get my hands on any more packs of these, and I'm sure singles will dry up relatively quickly. It would be neat to get a full set, but that would probably take more money and effort than it would be worth.

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.