By Michael Moore, PWTorch Collectibles specialist

In Brief: Only one action figure was ever made of "Playboy" Buddy Rose, and it is part of one of the scarcest and most valuable series ever produced.




Action Figure Spotlight #24: Buddy Rose Remco AWA Mat Mania
Originally released: 1986
What you can expect to pay: $75-300 (loose); $800-1,200 (packaged
Recent sales: $107 (loose)

Many fans remember “Playboy” Buddy Rose as the overweight, comic relief jobber to the stars who hocked his mock “Blow-Away Diet” product on WWF TV shows in the early 1990s. But, before that, Rose was a star in professional wrestling.

Rose starred in the Pacific Northwest in the 1970s and early 1980s, and occasionally traveled to New York to challenge Bob Backlund for the WWF Championship. In the mid-1980s, he formed a successful tag team with “Pretty Boy” Doug Sommers and went on to engage in arguably the AWA’s last great feud with the Midnight Rockers.

Rose, Sommers, and the Rockers – Shawn Michaels and Marty Jannetty – were prominently featured in the final series of AWA figures from Remco. Unlike previous AWA figures, which were sold in two- or three-packs, the Mat Mania figures were packaged individually, and could be purchased for around $2.99 each. If you bought a Rose figure for that price at your local Lionel Playworld in 1987 and had somehow hung onto it over the years, in 2012 you might be able to sell it for more than $1,000.

The Mat Mania wave of figures is the scarcest and most valuable series of wrestling toys ever produced. These figures very rarely surface on the secondary market, so assigning a value to any one of these toys is extremely difficult. Rose is one of the most collectible figures of the entire series; a loose figure in mint condition can fetch several hundred dollars, while packaged figures have sold for upwards of $1,200. Even a loose figure in rough shape usually will fetch around $100.

Remco made just two body types for the AWA figures: muscular, which closely resembled Masters of the Universe toys, and flabby. Rose was the only figure in the Mat Mania series to be made with a flabby body, fitting for the 271-pounder who insisted he “weighed in at a slim, trim, 217 pounds.”

The Rose figure originally came with a removable black robe, which featured a picture of a rose on the back along with his name in cursive writing. Removable cloth accessories for wrestling toys are common today, but Remco was the first company to offer these, and for the time the Mat Mania accessories were well made with accurate details.

Rose understood the value of his own action figure. In the mid-2000s, he once offered one of the toys still in its original package for sale on eBay. Serious collectors had a chance to buy an extremely rare toy from the wrestler after which it was modeled, and the figure ended up selling for more than $1,000.

Sadly, Rose died just a few years later at the age of 56. The “Playboy” may be gone, but his lone action figure remains one of the most valuable ever made.

Collectibles News

- When Jakks-Pacific launched its line of TNA figures in 2010, the company released a series of Micro Impact figures that were similar to the small WWE figures Jakks had made. The first series of tiny TNA figures didn’t generate much interest, but the scarcity of the second series has led to a surge in sales on the secondary market. Three of the three-packs have been selling for a whopping $99.99 each: Beer Money and Matt Morgan; Kevin Nash, Eric Young, and Jay Lethal; and Sting, Rob Van Dam, and Jeff Jarrett. A three-pack of Jeff Hardy, Hulk Hogan, and Abyss has been selling surprisingly low at around $20-25.




- Don West is doing some serious housecleaning at shoptna.com, offering $800 of TNA merchandise for $224.10. The lot includes the infamous Jeff Jarrett autographed guitar, a signed Skelebrities print of either Velvet Sky or Rob Van Dam, seven action figures, 10 DVDs, five t-shirts, and five more items, one of which will be autographed.

Sloppy Signature Trivia Answer

Congratulations to Doug Bagnall, Jimmy Fazio, and Rich Liptak, who correctly identified Billy Gunn’s signature in last week’s column. A new sloppy signature will be included in Thursday’s Collectibles Column.

Michael Moore has been a collector of sports cards and memorabilia for 25 years. He spent ten years as a newspaper editor and reporter, and has also written for publications such as Pro Wrestling Illustrated, Tuff Stuff, and various Beckett sports collectibles magazines. He can be contacted at michaelmoorewriter@gmail.com.

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