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My picks for the most important wrestling sets...

1982 Wrestling All-Stars Series A --- first standard(ish) cards for Hogan, Flair, Andre and many, many more.

1985 Topps WWF -- The first truly mainstream modern wrestling set by a major manufacturer.

1988 Wonderama NWA -- A HUGE set with the prime NWA years covered. (Some awful photos but some classics in there, too.)

1998 Comic Images WWF SuperStarz -- The first certified autos for several stars, including Hawk, Owen Hart and The Rock.

1998 Topps WCW/nWo -- The certified auto checklist is amazing. I wish I would have bought a TON of this stuff.

2001 Fleer Championship Clash and 2001 Fleer Ultimate Diva Collection -- So many good memorabilia cards and autographs from Fleer in the early days.

2005 Topps WWE Heritage -- The autograph checklist is amazing. Hogan, Michaels, Piper, Cena, Stratus, Lawler, Sheik, Angle, etc. And the Relics are decent, too. (Other Heritage are strong, but this one is the definitive No. 1 from Topps.)

2007 TRISTAR TNA -- Not a big fan of the basic cards, but you must dig the variety of memorabilia cards and autos along with other touches such as press plates.

Anybody sitting on any hobby cases of any of these?

  1985 Topps was a big part of my youth, I used to have a bunch of cards from my favorite guys propped up on my dresser, and they migrated to my computer desk later on.
   Didn't some of those have really corny saying on them?? Wow, now I'm gonna dig those out of the moving boxes...

Another memory from those days, while it may not quite be in the same catagory, were those WWF ice cream bars!!! I remember something about those having cards inside the boxes too, and they had different wrestlers pictured on the bar themselves,not that you could really collect and trade those, but still it was cool to open the box and see Hillbilly Jim or JunkYard Dog on your ice cream....

I really like what TRISTAR is doing with the new TNA set. On thier website for the set, it lists all the memorabilia cards in the set, and they actually have photographs of the items that were used for the cards.

Yes, the early Topps sets were in line with their typical non-sport issues for TV shows and similar genres. There are some odd cards.

I busted a 50-some pack lot of 1985s a couple years back. Some real condition problems (centering, gum) right out of the packs.

I have a 1987 Topps box coming here pretty soon.

PLEASE take this into consideration,  chrisolds.  You guys should price all of these older sets in the Beckett Sports Card Monthly. Even add more racing, multisport, and golf pricing.  I'm not even a fan, I just want to see more card pricing over figurines and racing die-cast prices.  Ten full pages of die-cast and figurine prices is silly, I mean it is Beckett Sports CARD Monthly after all. 

They are in the database -- along with many more. We will be doing 2 pages of wrestling in the next BSCM, but I don't know what it will include.

We are exploring some type of wrestling product for 2009 -- there's a lot of uncharted territory with wrestling cards and memorabilia.

And, yes, I am among those who is very, very interested.

I like the direction TNA cards are going in. I dont know what Topps is thinking just repeating the same Heritage idea over and over. I would love to see a dual autographed card of Hogan and Andre the Giant. Topps needs to step it up.

Some of it has to do with time/scheduling/budgets/contract scope I'm sure. Topps has many sets to put out while TriStar is a smaller company with fewer sets. And you're also talking about two very different wrestling companies, too.

That said, though, what I'd want to see would be a Heritage set that uses past WRESTLING card designs from Topps: 1951 Ringside (boxing, but it had a few wrestlers -- and has been used for Walmart insert sets the last two years), 1985 WWF and 1987 WWF.

I just ripped a box of 1987. Good stuff. Haven't added any since around that time.

Would love to see cut signatures of past greats included into sets and dual autos as well
thanks