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Happy Anniversary, Topps Slam!

July 14 is the one year anniversary of the game, and to celebrate they released an anniversary set that is just full of all sorts of goodies that sold out within 15 minutes of release. The rest of the set is still available, but the really good stuff (Stone Cold, Andre the Giant, Eddie Guerrero sigs, extensions of the Queen of the Ring, Taglines, Rivalries and other sets and oh yeah a Macho Man tribute set) all sold out way too quickly. Oh and Diamonds are a thing in the game now. I’ll touch on those at another time, but they are not very popular amongst the players.

Since my last full column (not the special on card values) we’ve seen two brand specific Pay-per-Views, the lackluster “Money in the Bank” which while it featured the first ever Women’s MITB match, was really a crummy show. No belts changed hands, the gimmick matches were incredibly predictable, and there wasn’t any new ground broken. I hate to say it, but since the Superstar Shakeup, Smackdown hasn’t been nearly as good. That hurts me to say too, since I really enjoyed the pre-Shakeup Smackdown. I just don’t see Jinder as a viable champion, and therefore the rest of the roster is suffering. Though I think it’s good that AJ Styles has the US Championship instead of Kevin Owens. It’s still not a must-see show. Whereas Raw on the other hand…

The buildup to the poorly titled “Great Balls of Fire” was amazing. WWE really went out of their way to show that Samoa Joe could defeat Brock Lesnar, and while he didn’t do it, and also no other belts changed hands (and for the second PPV in a row we got a Hell Champion lose to a count out) it was a much much better show than anyone expected. The aftermath of the Ambulance Match alone brought people back to the Attitude Era, and oh there was a lot of blood, most of which looked unintentional, and not just in the gimmick matches. Matt Hardy, Alexa Bliss and others all bled the hard way. For being a bad title, the show was excellent.

Austin Aries was granted his release from the WWE earlier this week; Topps actually seemed like they knew before the rest of the world, as his base cards sold out a couple of hours before the press-release from WWE was announced. Interesting, apparently Aries was scheduled for this week’s Topps Archives release and some of those cards made it into packs and into collector’s hands. They immediately sold out after a few copies were released, and for a while they were untradeable. There’s both a red and blue version. They won’t be required for the award, as a new Liv Morgan card was released on Thursday as well.

BREAKING: Just as I was finishing this column I watched the Facebook Live First Anniversary Live-Video, and they announced and showed us Battleground cards (Wednesday July 19) and Monochrome Series 3 (Monday July 17). Oh and they’re giving away replica belts.

What’s New

New Sets:

1st Anniversary Set

Allegiance Series 2 (4 x 5 = 20 Cards)

Extreme Rules Topps Now & Awards

Father’s Day (4 cards)

Fireworks Base Variant Set released (150 cards)

Great Balls of Fire PPV Set, Poster, Predictors & Topps Now

Money in the Bank PPV Set, Coin Exchange, Predictors & Topps Now

WWE 2017 Wave 1 Released (based on physical cards)

Inserts

John Cena Independence Day Red, White & Blue Signatures

Macho Man Randy Savage Independence Day Insert

PPV Season 4 Awards

Sunday Showcase – Miss Elizabeth

New Insert Set Victory #1-4 Paige, Vader, Curtis Axel, Johnny Gargano

Live Digital Signatures – Alexa Bliss & Bray Wyatt

Heatwave #5-7 Batista, Sami Zayn, Drew McIntyre, (Stone Cold Steve Austin)

New Insert Set – Household Names

Sasha Banks The Miz Ric Flair Bayley Kevin Nash John Cena Dude Love

Award: AJ Styles

New Insert Set – Supreme

Beth Phoenix (First card in game) Goldust Ruby Riot (First card in game) Oney Lorcan Samoa Joe Brock Lesnar Rich Swann TJ Perkins Titus O’Neil Billie Kay

Award: Chris Jericho

Special: Blue Beth Phoenix Twitter Contest Award (66cc)



Base Variants

Fire Red Braun Strowman

Light Blue Carmella, Charlotte Flair, Becky Lynch & Natalya

Lime Green Coin Subscription Incentive Charlotte Flair, Brock Lesnar, Randy Orton, Asuka & Braun Strowman

Gold Rush Heath Slater, Shawn Michaels

Purple Lana, Dash Wilder, Scott Dawson, Sasha Banks, Austin Aries & Rhyno

Marathons

205 Live #12 & 13 + Award – Lince Dorado, Jack Gallagher, (Neville)

Archives #5-9, + Wave 1 Award – Dean Ambrose, Apollo Crews, Sami Zayn, Charlotte Flair, Braun Strowman, (AJ Styles)

Colorful Characters #8-12 + Wave 2 Award – Kofi Kingston, Goldust, Ricky Steamboat, Jeff Hardy, Dude Love, (Sting)

Focus #7-12 + Wave 2 Award – Shinsuke Nakamura, The Revival, Ember Moon, Kevin Owen, Becky Lynch, Neville, (Finn Balor)

NXT #10-15 + Wave 2 Award Wesley Blake, Buddy Murphy, Ember Moon, Tucker Knight, Shane Thorne, No Way Jose (Johnny Gargano)

Then & Now #4-8 + Wave 1 Award – Zack Ryder, Sasha Banks, Dolph Ziggler, Emma, Neville, (John Cena)

Insert Set Focus Part 6

This time: Allegiance, Personified Series 2, Signature Poses & Blackout

21. Allegiance

There is a concept called “coin path” where a set of cards is released with increasingly higher odds in packs, you get easy odds for card #1, and can’t pull any others until you pull that one. Then the odds go up for card #2 and so on until you hit the final card. This is the concept that Topps introduced to slam with Allegiance. The idea was you had to choose either Raw or Smackdown as your “brand” and then you tried to get all the cards in the brand to get an award. If you managed to do it with both brands then you got a bonus award.

Here’s the problem that Topps didn’t foresee. The first awards for obtaining all 7 of the sets cards were instant, meaning as soon as you had card #7 in your collection and assuming you had the 6 other cards, you got the award card. You could trade a set to your buddy and they’d instantly get the award card too. More than a few players took advantage of this situation, so while there are only a total of 151 and 159 Raw and SDL sets possible, there are 474 and 440 of the award cards! As such these can be tricky to trade and max out at about $5. The individual cards are usually in the $1-3 range except for the level 7 Seth Rollins & AJ Styles, those are $10 cards easily., The mega award turned out to be a dual autographed Becky Lynch and Sasha Banks and is only at 100cc, and is still one of the hotter cards in the game, selling for between $30 and $50.

RAW Set

Bayley 8,255 Roman Reigns 3,799 Chris Jericho 1,453 Rusev 684 Sasha Banks 342 Kevin Owens 222 Seth Rollins 151

Award 474





Smackdown Live Set

Bray Wyatt 10,922 Nikki Bella 4,922 The Miz 1,850 Becky Lynch 872 John Cena 412 Dean AMbrose 243 AJ Styles 159

Award 440

Mega Award – Sasha Banks & Becky Lynch 100

They also released two “teaser” cards which are technically part of the set, though they were given to everyone and have over 10K cc. Apparently this set was very popular with some very vocal fans and Topps has just recently released a series 2 expanding to four groups but subtracting 2 cards. Also those cards were untradeable until after all the awards were issued.





22. Personified Series 2

You can never accuse Topps of not recognizing a good thing, and thus we get a second series of the super-popular art cards. This time around there’s only five cards limited to 750 cc and an award.

Undertaker Triple H Roman Reigns Ultimate Warrior John Cena

Award – Kevin Owens

You’ll notice there’s only one duplicate performer here, John Cena, the rest were all brand new choices for a change. These cards are still very popular and can run $3-5, with the Owens signature award topping out around $10.



23. Signature Poses

Signature poses was yet another three variant set with the same rarities that we’ve seen time and time again, a 500cc (Blue), a 24 availability (Red) and an open edition (Silver). Performer selection was pretty much run-of-the-mill too, no one here stands out as being more special than any others, and the poses pictured are pretty much ones we’ve seen often before.

Daniel Bryan Stone Cold Steve Austin Randy Orton AJ Styles Edge Seth Rollins Shawn Michaels

Award – Undertaker

The Red limited set has some slight value, a full set with the Undertaker award sold for $30, which is about $3.75 per card. The blue and silver set though are barely worth $1.00 per card. There is also a gold Undertaker award for collecting all 24 of the other cards. It sells for between $5-10. Oh and you can still pull silver variants from certain packs. As if you wanted them. The Daniel Bryan and Steve Austin Silvers are amongst the highest CC of any open edition, and as such are on my “avoid in trades” list.



24. Blackout

Finally a set of in-ring action photos, and only two variations this time. Blackout was 8 cards in length, the B&W were a 1:20 pull, full color 1:40 and each was available for only 24 hours. Only the Alexa Bliss B&W went over 2000cc, the rest are much more rare.

Alexa Bliss Asuka Big E John Cena Finn Balor Dean Ambrose Samoa Joe Sami Zayn

Award – Ultimate Warrior

With three of the most popular performers in the game you’d think the set would have more players looking for it, but alas, it’s just not that popular. The Alexa color can sell for up to $8 by itself, and the Asuka and Finn both go for over $5. The rest of the colors are $4 or less. The B&W sell for roughly half to 3/4ths of that. The Ultimate Warrior award doesn’t seem to sell by itself, at least it hasn’t recently. There’s only 285/155 of them total, but it’s Warrior, and we know from the past that Warrior cards aren’t that popular outside of his die-hard fans.



Next time: Roman Empire, Splatter Art, Aerialists Series 2, Halloween

Don’t forget you can find me in game at GRENDELSEN, and I’m always happy to trade or answer any questions you might have. Leave questions or concerns here and I’ll see you next time.