By Michael Moore, PWTorch Collectibles specialist

If you’re looking for early cards of some of the biggest stars of the ‘80s, check out this unlicensed set.

Card Show #39: 1986 Monty Gum Wrestling Stars

Randy Savage was one of the top five pro wrestling stars of the 1980s, yet he has surprisingly few trading cards compared to his peers. Savage appeared in just a handful of WWF sets in the 1980s and early ‘90s, and a few WCW sets later in his career. But Savage hasn’t appeared on a wrestling trading card since 1999, largely due to unresolved issues between the McMahon and Poffo families.




While many of Savage’s contemporaries appeared in wrestling trading cards from the late-‘70s or early-‘80s, the “Macho Man” didn’t show up on a wrestling card until the mid-1980s, when he was already established as the WWF’s dominant Intercontinental champion. Savage appeared for the first time in the 1985 O-Pee-Chee WWF Pro Wrestling Stars set.

In 1986, Savage and other top stars from various North American wrestling promotions were included in the 1986 Wrestling Stars set from Monty Gum, an unlicensed product that was produced in Holland.

The unlicensed 1986 Wrestling Stars set is notorious for using photographs taken directly from wrestling magazines – in many cases, the cards included the text from the article from which the picture was taken. These cards also feature a variety of misspellings – such as “Eric Flair” and “Rick Flair” – and misidentified wrestlers. One card shows Hulk Hogan choking Sylvester Stallone in a scene from Rocky III, but the header at the top of the card reads, “Hulk Hogan & Muhammed Ali.”




These oddball cards have found a way into collectors’s hearts in recent years. They’re a trip down memory lane for fans who followed wrestling in the mid-‘80s. The 100-card set includes plenty of cards of top stars like Hulk Hogan, Ric Flair, the Road Warriors, the Von Erichs, and Dusty Rhodes.

Also included are cards of wrestlers who don’t show up in too many sets, such as Eric Embry, Konga the Barbarian, Gino Hernandez, King Kong (Bruiser) Brody, “Mad Dog” Buzz Sawyer, and Jesse “Jimmy Jack Funk” Barr.




If you’re looking to open an old box of trading cards that will put a smile on your face, you can probably find a box of Monty Gum’s 1986 Wrestling Stars on eBay for $50 or less. Each box delivers 50 packs with eight cards each – 400 total cards.

A full checklist with sample images is available at WrestlingTradingCards.

TNA’s Latest Merchandise Ploy

If you were given $200 to spend on one wrestling item, which would you rather own?

(a) A commemorative plaque of the “Best vs. the Beast” from Summerslam 2013, featuring signatures from C.M. Punk, Paul Heyman and Brock Lesnar (and still have $50 left over);

(b) A signed A.J. Lee “Longest Reigning Divas Champion” plaque;

(c) A Daniel Bryan signed plaque commemorative plaque from WrestleMania; or

(d) An unsigned plaque with a piece of the table that Bully Ray put Dixie Carter through during the New York Impact tapings.

Yep, the folks in TNA apparently believe that piece of table is worth just as much as signed plaques from Punk, Lesnar, Bryan, A,J, and Heyman.

PWTorch Collectibles Specialist Michael Moore can be reached at michaelmoorewriter@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter @MMooreWriter .

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