By Michael Moore, PWTorch Collectibles specialist

In Brief: The latest WWE cards from Topps feature cool memorabilia and autograph cards from Ryback, Daniel Bryan, A.J. Lee, and ... Tom Pritchard?

Author’s note: The Action Figure Evolution feature will return in next Tuesday’s Collectibles Column.

The Basics

2013 Topps WWE is similar to recent sets in price point and content. Hobby boxes contain 24 packs of seven cards each and are selling for around $50. Each box delivers one wrestler-worn shirt relic along with one other “hit,” either an autograph of a piece of the mat from last year’s Summerslam.

Retail packs – those you find in stores like Wal-Mart and Target – are $1.99 per pack or $4.99 per jumbo pack. Relic and autograph cards can also be found in retail packs, but are much more difficult to pull than in hobby packs. There are also $20 retail boxes that deliver 10 packs and one relic card.

There are 110 cards in the base set, including several different parallels, such as black, gold and 1/1 press plates. All of the usual stars and legends are included in this set, as are the first WWE trading cards of all three members of the Shield and Big E. Langston.

There are 90 cards in the tiered Triple Threat insert set. There are 30 wrestlers in the set, each with three different Triple Threat cards highlighting what makes him a success. For example, John Cena’s three cards are “Gift for Gab,” “Cenation,” and “Ring Presence.”

Divas Snapshots are foldout mini posters that are the size of three regular cards. Ten Divas are featured in this set, including Eve, A.J. Lee, Aksana, Natalya and others.




The Good

Each year, Topps seems to release scarce and first-time autographs of legends and current Superstars. Included in this year’s set are signatures from Ryback, Antonio Cesaro, Randy Orton, Michael Cole, Sin Cara, and Daniel Bryan, among others. This year’s Divas autographs are from Kaitlyn, Eve, Rosa Mendes, Alicia Fox, and Lillian Garcia.

The selection of Legends autographs is somewhat curious, with Ted DiBiase as the lone main-eventer of the group. Also included are signatures from Tom Pritchard, both Bushwhackers, Dean Malenko, and Bob Orton.

A.J. Lee’s autograph is once again the top seller on the secondary market, with most early auctions ending in the $75-100 range. Ryback’s first certified autograph is also a hot seller, selling for about $50. A few months ago, his autograph almost certainly would have sold for considerably more.




The rare Triple Threat autographs are tough to pull and will probably be big sellers on the secondary market for years to come. These feature t-shirt and mat relics along with a wrestler’s autograph.

The t-shirt relic cards, which feature swatches of shirts worn by a wrestler, also look pretty cool this year. This includes Ryback’s first memorabilia card, which has been selling in the $10-20 range. Other popular cards in the set include Rey Mysterio, Daniel Bryan, and C.M. Punk, with multi-colored pieced fetching a premium.




There are also relic cards of guys who seem to be included in every set, such as R-Truth, Sheamus, Dolph Ziggler, Big Show, and Kofi Kingston. There are also relic cards of several wrestlers who haven’t been featured in these sets before, including Alicia Fox, Damien Sandow, Wade Barrett, and Titus O’Neil.

One of the most popular relic cards in the set features a swatch of a suit worn by Paul Heyman. This is unique in that Heyman doesn’t have many cards, and Topps rarely uses any material other than pieces of t-shirts.

The Divas Snapshot foldout mini-posters are something new for Topps, and collectors seem to really like them. They fall about one per box and most have been selling in the $5-10 range.

The Bad

If collectors have one common complaint about Topps’s WWE products, it’s the constant inclusion of mat relic cards. For the last several years Topps has delivered the one t-shirt relic/one mat relic OR one T-shirt relic/one autograph per hobby box, when most collectors could do without the mat cards. For $50 per box, most collectors are expecting a relic and an autograph.

This year’s mat cards feature a swatch of canvas from last year’s SummerSlam, so there are some cool pieces. Cards that feature pictures of A.J. Lee, Paul Heyman, John Cena, C.M. Punk, Triple H, Brock Lesnar, and others who played a memorable role at the pay-per-view event sell fairly well. Unfortunately, there are also mat cards featuring pictures of R-Truth, Kofi Kingston, Santino Marella, and the Prime Time Players. Does anybody remember who – or if – these guys wrestled at that event?

The most disappointing thing about this year’s WWE offering from Topps appears to be another promise that went unfulfilled. Early sell sheets and promotional items touted the inclusion of a Paul Heyman autograph, which would have been the first certified Heyman autograph card. However, not one such card has surfaced on the secondary market.

Topps, unfortunately, has a history of promising and not delivering on big name autographs. In recent years Topps advertised autographs of Triple H and Chris Jericho, but they were never produced. (Topps did include Jericho’s signature in later products.)

Final Thoughts

2013 WWE is another solid offering from Topps. The base cards look great, with the type of photography Topps has become known for over the years. The memorabilia cards also look cool, with expectedly hot cards of Ryback, Bryan, and Punk. The memorabilia cards of Fox (which includes a piece of skirt), Barrett, Sandow and O’Neil are cheap now but could become real sleepers.

As with almost all sports cards these days, the real draw is the autographs. Topps may not load up its boxes with autographs the way TRISTAR does with its TNA products, but limiting the number of autographs keeps the box prices down and helps preserve the secondary market value of the cards.

If Topps had included a John Cena autograph in every product since 2005, how special would it be to pull one in 2013? Not every basketball product offers a LeBron James autograph, and not every football product includes a Tom Brady signature. There’s a reason for that.

All of that said, one autograph per box seems like the right number for a product of this type. Topps could do away with the mat relics – or perhaps make them retail exclusives – and few collectors would complain.

PWTorch Collectibles Specialist Michael Moore can be reached at michaelmoorewriter@gmail.com .

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