DIGITAL DABBLINGS #4 – Elimination Chamber Fallout and What’s Hot Right Now in Slam

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Each of WWE’s flagship TV Series has a PPV event between the Royal Rumble and WrestleMania. Smackdown Live’s was first, with Elimination Chamber (EC) held this last Sunday, and in about three weeks we’ll get RAW’s answer. With only a week in between the Rumble and EC, many collectors were pretty much overwhelmed with choices as to which cards to chase after, and also scrambling to finish their PPV Season 2 Awards before the deadline, which is February 17.

The EC Set was released on Wednesday last week, and as typical of Topps style, all the initial “premium” content was behind a paywall, meaning you had to purchase a specific cash pack to have a chance at the signature cards. They released a set of three signature cards for EC, Jimmy and Jey Uso and Naomi each got single sigs in two variants, a 100cc “Midnight” variety and a “Cobalt Blue” version capped at 750cc. As of this writing NONE of the high-tier are sold out (each has over 10 remaining) and the low tier are stuck at about 1/3rd of the available cards sold. This tells me that these cards underwhelmed the players, severely. Even with Naomi winning the Smackdown Live Women’s Title her cards aren’t getting any love. Ebay sales on the Midnights are running between $15 and $20. The Blues are selling for less than $5 apiece. There is an added incentive if you manage to collect all six of the signature cards you get both the Triple Signed (Bray Wyatt, The Miz, Baron Corbin) Awards, but you’ll also earn a Fastlane Premium Card pack. Again this tells me that Topps really underestimated the popularity of these sigs. Even though these were only the 2nd and 3rd cards each performer appear on signature wise, they just aren’t popular enough to warrant most players caring.

The base EC set was a 17 card monstrosity in the same “cobalt” color scheme, and instead of guaranteed 1 per pack at 10,000 coins, we got a “Drop 1” pack with 1:3 odds for 5,000 coins, and then the same 1:3 chance with an added chance of 1:12 for their high-tier Midnight brethren which featured only the six men in the Elimination Chamber match. Predictors were again for those 6 in the EC match, and Alexa Bliss & Naomi. The male non-winners range anywhere from 300 cc to over 1900 for Cena, and the lowest four (Miz, Corbin, Dolph & AJ) are all in high demand for trading, and non-existent for eBay sales currently. On the female side there are 1871 of the winning Naomi card, and over 4,000 of the Alexa version. Naomi is going for a couple of bucks, about the same as Alexa.

The one hot commodity coming out of the EC Set is the first ever “booklet” card, featuring signatures of all six men in the main event match. It’s a standard size card just shaped like a foldout booklet. All in all, it’s actually kind of lame, since it doesn’t actually do any folding. (Not sure why they can’t make it a video card like the Topps Focus in Skate, but what do I know?) Of course there were the same two variants, 50 cc and 500 cc. The hi-tier was again behind a paywall, but the low tier wasn’t. While they were still in packs the 500 cc sold for as low as $4, and I bought mine at $6. The lowest ebay price right now is $13, though the highest it’s sold for thus far is slightly less than that. The Black version is safely one of the top 5 wanted cards in the game. It has sold for as much as $65, and the current cheapest available is at $60. [GRAPHIC 1] 

Thankfully Topps didn’t inundate us with new sets after the Rumble and before EC, we only had three new insert sets to chase, two dailies and an offering that parallels other Topps apps, Fire. Fire was released all at once on February 3 in three variations, a red Open Edition, a Blue variant capped at 1000 cc and a Purple tier with no limit; but that was only available for a cash purchase. It was a 9 card set featuring both current and legendary performers with a Becky Lynch signature as the award (including a black version available to those few who could get all three variations).

The purple tier was available as a set for $50 or as random singles for $10 per card. Since there was a Finn Balor in the set I bought one of the $10 packs, which gave me a Purple Seth Rollins and 2 open edition reds. With that purchase I also gained access to the 15K mid-tier pack which actually had better odds on the Blues than the Reds, and pulled 3 blues. I traded the blues for the Finn Balor Purple and managed to get a rainbow (that’s when you get all the variations of the same card) of Finn and said that’s enough. I traded my Purple Seth for the six lowest CC of the IN-App Royal Rumble cards just before the award was issued. [GRAPHIC 2] What few purple singles have made it to eBay haven’t really made much of an impact on pricing, the $10 single price point is holding at the moment, but once packs are sold out you can expect the purples to fetch higher prices.

Super Stats was a no-variation daily set that featured six current stars and Daniel Bryan, with the eighth card being a Sting Award. Each single is capped at 1000 cc, and they sell for between 50 cents and $3 apiece, with a full set going for just under $10 right now, as the award has not been announced yet. Personally I passed on this one, just not interested in the performer selection. [GRAPHIC 3] 

The last new set was Underdogs and was a six card affair in two variants, a green open edition and a blue capped at 750 cc. The gimmick here was that those depicted are supposed to be the ultimate underdogs i.e. your Sami Zayns and Bayleys. Not sure when the award will drop for this one or who it will be. Expect these to go between $1 and $2 apiece (regardless of variety) or $5 for the green set and $8-10 for the blue set.

Speaking of Bayley, her cards will most likely get a bump in both demand and pricing due to her first championship victory over Charlotte Flair for the RAW Women’s Title on Monday. Her best cards are going to be the 50cc Black Royal Rumble Signature, her 50cc Gold Rush Base, and her NXT Generation Week 1-10 Award card. The two 50cc cards sell for between $30 and $40 as it is, and the NXT Generation award goes for anywhere from $20 to $40 though the lower end is more typical than the higher end. [GRAPHIC 4, GRAPHIC 5] 

Now that all four of the NXT Horsewomen have been WWE Title Holders Topps is celebrating them by releasing a Four Horsewomen set today, with only a single variant and fairly long odds for 10,000 coins (1:45 in normal or 1:25 in “super” packs only available with a specific coin purchase). They’re not capped but rather 24 hour releases and there’s no indication as to the number of cards in the set. So far Card #1 released this Tuesday afternoon is going for between $2 and $3. [GRAPHIC 6]

Also released on Tuesday in honor of Valentine’s Day is a two variant Shawn Michaels “Heartbreak Kid” signature card. White is 750cc and Red is 250cc. Buying a $10 70k Coin bundle got you access to the 250k Coin pack which guarantees a white and has 1:3 odds for a red. Buying any coin purchase today got you access to the 100K coin pack with a 1:5 chance for a white and 1:12 chance at a red. Or you could not buy anything and have a 1:75 chance at a white. The Red is selling for between $8 and $15 and the white is going for between $3.50 and $8. This is the second time Michaels has been on a single issue Signature Card and these represent only his 5th and 6th signature cards in the game.

Later this week we should get a 6 card Topps Now set from Elimination Chamber featuring the winners (Becky Lynch, Nikki Bella, Naomi, Randy Orton, American Alpha and Bray Wyatt) and then a single Bayley winning the Raw Women’s Championship card. If they make all 7 available in one package then the Bayley card will have a very low CC and thus be very very desirable. However if the Bayley is in her own package you can expect the numbers to be inflated ala the Goldberg single (997cc).

The app (and some might argue the WWE itself) is a lull period right now, as I previously stated the Royal Rumble and NXT San Antonio release was pretty exhausting and it was an indicator of what’s to come for the biggest show of the year, Wrestlemania. If the ‘Mania release is anywhere near the breadth of the Rumble release, and there’s no reason to expect it wouldn’t be, then collectors need to be saving both in-app coins and cash for their purchases. All of the good WM content is most likely again going behind a paywall. With about 6 weeks to go before the big event, collectors who save every coin will end up with just about 1.5 million coins to spend on WM content, and basically that’s two of the super-premium packs. That’s if they buy nothing in the interim and there’s still another PPV that will count towards PPV Award Season 3!

Last thing this week; the current PPV Award Season #2 ended with the Rumble, and the checklists for all the cards needed for the two season awards have been released (and supposed to be fixed) so that you can make sure you have all the required cards. For the low-tier Charlotte card you just need all the low-tier base cards from TLC, Roadblock, NXT Takeover San Antonio and the Royal Rumble, a total of 85 cards. For the high-tier Becky Lynch card you need those 85 PLUS the award cards issued for the same sets (TLC Slater and Rhyno but not Kalisto and Nikki, Roadblock Enzo & Cass and Rusev, Rumble Ryder, Naomi, Y2J and Strowman, and NXT SA Asuka. Based on redemption numbers from the last PPV you can expect that about 50% of the available 3100 hi-tier sets will redeem, which would be a marked improvement over the population of the AJ Styles hi-tier redemption from PPV Season 1 (2502 cc out of a possible 5100 sets)

While there are plenty of the standard low-tier base PPV cards available, the Rumble awards are only just above 3100cc, so if you didn’t earn them you’re going to have a tough time trading to get them and I wish you luck.

As always if you have any questions or comments post them here, or go to the Reddit Topps WWE Page at reddit.com/r/toppswwe, or find me in the game under user name GRENDELSEN.

NOW CHECK OUT LAST WEEK’S ARTICLE: DIGITAL DABBLINGS #3 – Trading ABCs: Some basics on how to post your Topp WWE Slam cards for trade