I dont think there has been a WWE product that I have paid this much attention over the five plus years I have been in this niche of the hobby. Prizm is a whirlwind of intrigue, with record sales coming one after the other, and a new frontier of mainstream attention. Funny enough, there are a few things yet to happen that will change the landscape of the product going forward. I want to go through a few of them.

Major Parallels from Hulk Hogan, The Rock, and Roman Reigns

As of now, we have seen 4 cards hit $15k on the secondary market, and none of them are the ones that everyone is waiting to pop up. The most desirable base parallels of the top tier guys have yet to hit the block, and its entirely possible that each will set their own new record as they surface. As mentioned yesterday, there are likely a number of reasons for this to happen, including the wait times at PSA.

Once these cards show up and really show the potential of the product, things could get very out of have very fast. There are multiple high end sports collectors waiting for the first Rock Gold to be available for sale, and the Black 1/1 will likely end up being one of the most valuable wrestling cards of all time.

I have started compiling a tracker of the Black Prizm 1/1s, available here.

We did see a Gold Rock base pulled by Santiago Sports early last week, but there have been only friend of a friend reports of any sales for the top gold in the set. I would think the major Rock parallels will continue to be the chase card for this product, long into the future. Weird that we havent seen any pop up yet for sale. Same can be said for Roman Reigns, a gold yet to be pulled on a public page.

The End of the Recoup Scramble

Most Prizm buyers will buy wax and break slots to chase specific aspects of the set that they are looking for. Very few will see their lottery ticket payoff. Left behind is a lot of debt and invested cash that needs to be replaced with returns from those breaks. Prizm features a MASSIVE checklist, and with it, a lot of bulk that will end up hitting eBay en masse to attempt to pay back all the money people have poured into this product.

The result is auction after auction being posted without a true need to get top value for the cards. Right now, those individuals just want SOMETHING, and the market isnt big enough yet to support the massive amount of sales at the value that they deserve. This gives people the chance to get some really REALLY nice cards for a cost well below expectations.

Over the next few weeks, this phenomenon will stop, and the auctions will be replaced with fixed price listings that are more representative of dealers who can wait out the storm. More importantly, as PSA returns cards submitted during these first few weeks, we will start to see a true representation of what the market can support. Pop reports will start to fill up, investor apps will launch their indexes, and all of this will seem like a period we should have all spent some money within.

The Beginning of the Retail Storm

Busting hobby boxes isnt an available option for many collectors, especially as prices climb above $1000. per. Retail is another option that people have tried to use as a replacement, without realizing that the main parallels that make Prizm such a landmark brand are not included. The parallels that are included will be available in quantities that far exceed today, and that side of things will take an absolute dive.

There is an entire contingent of the hobby based around retail sales for Prizm, and even more wrestling collectors who want a chance to rip some packs. This leads to a gigantic flood of base, unnumbered base parallels, retail exclusive unnumbered parallels, and bulk that will crash value on a ton of cards.

As you are looking at the market today, remember that the numbered cards are usually immune to the floods that will rain down upon this niche. Panini printed a fucking shit ton of Prizm, as they know it is a product that has the highest demand across all areas of the collecting population. The cards that will be most impacted by this are the ones that have no limit to their print run. Just be careful.

Ongoing Battles With Hobby and Wrestling Trolls

I have been doing what I can to chronicle Prizm, mainly because its entertaining as hell to see the niche I adopted blow up. Others have huge investments in the product and want it to be successful to ensure those investments appreciate. The cheerleaders like me and the investors all will look at Prizm in a very positive light. On the other side is a group of people who are unhappy that they are no longer able to participate in the fray the way they once used to. They are joined by influencers with ulterior motives around the content of their own collections, and savvy investors who know what is coming and try to drive prices down to buy the dip that will only be available during the scramble drill described above.

Each day, those people will point to the market settling as a sign that Prizm is a bust. They will continue to pick and choose their battles to showcase the data that supports their agenda. In reality, nothing that has happened with Prizm is surprising other than the shocking prices paid already for some of the main product hits. Most are pointing to the dropping values associated with the bulk, and higher numbered parallels within the gigantic checklist. In reality, this happens with every release, and is not surprising in the slightest.

Prizm is already the most successful WWE product ever produced, and nothing will change that. Every day since release, cards have sold at prices that would just not happen in any other product. As Panini gets into other legacy brands, similar things will happen for those sets too. Although the market will settle on a number of things, the existing performance has already cemented everything Panini was hoping to get out of this product.

As more configurations are released, more record sales are achieved, and more eyes land on WWE as a target for investors, Prizm will continue to have a tremendous impact on wrestling cards that has never been available before. Here is the thing, that is a very good situation for a number of reasons – regardless of what the trolls spout from their mountaintops. Panini is going to own this license for the foreseeable future. A huge successful performance will ensure future investment in the brand, above and beyond expected ROIs.

More importantly, the dip isnt going to be permanent on most of the desirable elements of this product. Manufacturer expectation is that 33-50% of the hobby run gets busted in the first few weeks. As that rush tails off, the available inventory will shrink. Less inventory and baseline general speculation creates an outcome that very easy to predict. The trolls may have their day for a bit, but for those who know how Prizm performs long term, its easy to react with a sly laugh.

A Look to the Future

We already know what the next WWE product is, and its one that I wouldnt have chosen as my second in line. Revolution WWE is designed to be a more affordable product in a very expensive hobby, but as with everything, that has changed over the last few years with the other versions Panini has released. Revolution NBA started off as a cheap set builders product with lots of base variations and few autographs. As the hobby took off, it has found a niche market within the NBA of rabid collectors who want the rare variations that come less than one per case.

Because the NBA market is so huge, products like Revolution can be successful in niche collecting communities who have built PCs around the product and certain players/teams. For the WWE, I dont really see that happening in the same fashion. The market is too small, and the box prices are already creeping above $300 dollars in preparation for predicted crossover. My guess is Panini thought that Revolution would be a more affordable option for people priced out of Prizm, but secondary market dealers have already crashed that party with pre-order pricing well above expectations.

Similarly, with Chronicles WWE now confirmed as well, we could see the giant impact that these dealers can have in suffocating the momentum started by Prizm. I understand the speculative drive that leads to ginormous prices on Prizm wax. For non-legacy products outside of Prizm, Immaculate, NT and the like, I think this is a bit reckless with a new market. Then again, with major breakers able to support any price the dealers choose, it might end up being a snake eating its own tail – our Hobby Ouroboros.

Regardless of the future prospects created by Prizm’s explosion onto the market, WWE is on the cusp of the hobby mainstream. With that, the hobby will need to figure out the path before the trolls can derail things. Its so weird to see how this all has played out, because I knew there would be an army of wrestling collectors fighting against the tide. Im just hoping that people can see through the bullshit and really understand what is going on.

I hate graded cards. I feel that the whole business is a conflict of interest riddled scam that preys on collector vanity in a way that was never the original intent of the process. I have a PLETHORA of articles on this site that speak to the major issues with the grading process, its lack of transparency and lack of accountability to the results that drive 50x value in some cases. Over the last 2 years, PSA has seen a massive overhaul in the habits of collectors, driving a business model built on marketing gimmicks and manifested a whole new type of target population.

Background of This Giant Mess

Ill say, that my issue with grading isnt that it exists. There is value in providing a third party authentication of specific cards with a history of fuckery from forgers and other scam artists, as well as a borderline need to provide condition opinions in a world where sales are done almost entirely online. However, the lack of transparency around how those grades and authentications are completed, as well as the artificial creation of a hyper mint grading scale is absolutely fucking ridiculous.

Originally grading was created to add a reliable standard for items sold online, mainly due to the lack of high megapixel camera technology. Now that our phones are built for photos, there is less of a need to deliver this side of things outside of major defects purposefully hidden by shady sellers. That hasnt stopped the grading companies from using marketing gimmicks like “GEM MINT” and “Black Labels” to goad collectors into a practice of paying exceptional amounts of money for hyper mint examples.

There are specific indicators that show this market trend was manipulated into existence in the late 1990s and early 2000s, and somehow just stuck due to constant reinforcement from the marketing arm of the hobby and hobby media. The conflicts of interest present in price guides used exclusively during the turn of the century had clear impact as well, being that the grading card niche was so small prior to the launch of a true prospecting subhobby in baseball.

Grading has become a mess of pleasing high profile customers, lawsuits, and scandals, including public relationships with auction houses and manufacturers that speak to giant potential inflection points of market manipulation and public pump and dump schemes. Because the grading companies have no accountability any longer due to the sheer volume of sales and transactions done within the market, they are free to operate without regulation or scrutiny. For a larger rundown of the many conflicts of interest present in the model, just go to the top and search “grading.”

The WWE Anti-Grade Brigade

Most of this new market was originally built around shiny cards, but it has extended to every deep dark corner of the hobby over the last few years – save one. WWE cards have not had the engagement with graded cards outside of vintage cards, whose only major attribute is a high grade in most cases. The older sets are rarely impressive, unlike other examples from the vintage era of trading cards. Most come from a junk wax era where hundreds of thousands of examples were produced of every card, and where few made it through the last 40 years without condition issues.

On the modern side, WWE collectors avoided graded cards in a way that probably puzzled the hell out of every grading company that exists. Basically, up until the massive spike in Chrome from 2014 and 2015, there was absolutely zero reason to grade a modern WWE card at all. It rarely added much value, and only very specific cards popular with crossover sports collectors had any real population reports to speak of.

Most WWE collectors lived in and live in a bubble of collecting, devoid from influence from the mainstream hobby. The community approached their collections in a different way, set collectors operated in a uniquely populated market, and graded cards just never caught on. Some of the most vocal modern WWE collectors made campaigns out of videos cracking cards out of PSA and BGS cases, and the lack of other voices deafened the grading echo-chamber that is so prevalent in the hobby today.

The Prizm Grading Revolution

With the growing crossover crowd coming to join the WWE hobby on the heels of Panini’s announcement of their license acquisition, grading in WWE has started to go in a similar direction to where it has been featured in other areas of the hobby. Chrome and rookie card examples being graded and sold for record prices to a small group of people have built a new branch of the market over the last few months.

With more and more crossover collectors joining the parade with the release of Prizm, a lot of those pre-conceived understandings are following in their wake. Already, we have seen graded WWE Prizm cards show up on eBay, with people taking advantage of proximity to PSA and / or paying for express service to get out ahead of the tidal wave.

I fully expect that over the next three months, there will be more modern WWE cards submitted to the grading companies than they have ever seen in the history of wrestling cards. Bottom line, new management means new rules, and I can guarantee that the new breed of persona coming into this niche will absolutely subscribe to the mainstream hobby approach.

Determining a Plan for Big Hits

Here is the age old dilemma that most mainstream hobby collectors have to consider as they pull cards from next generation WWE products – Do I grade and sell or just throw it up on the block. For most cards, the application of a gem mint label means more value. This includes a 1/1, where there will be no other examples to compare it to.

There is also competing timers at play that speak to the softening of the market in between release and the first graded examples being available. For the average non-connected collector, grading can take weeks to months to years (yes you heard that correctly), and there are huge implications for making a decision to grade versus sell immediately.

In my experience, if a card is one that transcends the softening of a market, its worth taking the time and spending the ridiculous amounts of money to grade it before you sell it. For some of the five figure cards that have populated this Prizm release above and beyond any other product in WWE history, this will include massive upcharges that the grading companies have instituted to further squeeze more money out of their new seat upon the throne of hobby businesses.

If your card isnt immune to the fluctuations in price, which is most of what Prizm is made up of, it becomes a measure of how fast someone needs to recoup cost of ownership in the card. For people that can wait, and have a clean example of a card that should hit the hyper mint scale, it might be worth the submission. There are many ways to do it quickly or slowly, and cost will vary. Collectors will need to figure out a path as the prices and the market settles during the time needed to get your goods back in hand.

Overall, I understand that my thoughts on this subject are largely irrelevant, as my commentary will have zero effect on what the general public decides to do. I am forced, as a captive audience, to make sure that I position myself within the market as best I can, so I will likely not have a choice as I participate in the sales myself. All I have to say is that grading, and the marketing machine behind it, have changed the face of the hobby to an irreparable degree. Most collectors are only aware of what value is created by grading a card, not the aspects of what brought that preference to light. With that, the choice is up to you.

As I have mentioned before, Prizm is a whole new world of craziness for most Wrestling collectors who have lived inside the hobby bubble. For many of them, the first major shock was the price of wax, followed quickly by the mind blowing prices for the top tier rare and desirable cards. With that consideration in play, it has led people to take some enormous risks on Wax, and in turn even more risks in trying to recoup costs.

Some of this has led to some quick softening of values from the lower end examples in the product, but also a borderline revolt from a contingent of people who feel like Panini has ruined Wrestling cards. Lets start by saying that there are still 4-5 more years of Prizm to come, and nothing that happens on the secondary market is really going to impact any of that fact’s truth. Panini is here to stay, and it serves everyone to better understand how to operate and still have fun, rather than complain constantly.

This leads to one of the larger questions that most collectors will struggle to work with – can you exist in this new world order without ripping wax? Let’s dive a bit deeper into the pros and cons, as well as the best ways to engage without losing your ass.

A Game of High Stakes Gambling?

Over and over, Ive said that Panini wax is usually very top heavy and those tentpoles hold up the enormous prices that the wax usually sells for. If you can pull five figure cards in the product, the wax price will be a reflection of that value, not the likelihood of actually pulling one of those cards. What this represents is the hobby equivalent of a lottery ticket. Sure, you can hit the jackpot, but it is FAAAAR more likely that you will lose what you put in. The good thing is that there are a number of ways to come out ahead outside of just hitting a big card, but that is outweighed by an overwhelming chance that you will get a fraction of value back within your box.

There are two ways that collectors mitigate this risk. The most common is by using groups to shoulder the gigantic cost of buying into a box or a case, rather than just an individual. Instead of one person forking over four figures to get a box, a group of people can all take their part in a number of ways. Whether that means buying access to serial number, a group of wrestlers, or even a letter corresponding to their names. Because more people are buying together, the cost of the ante is lower, thus reducing the recovery costs needed to break even. Problem is, it does make the odds significantly higher that you will hit that big card.

The second way is to rip a bunch at a time. Although the odds dont really shift box to box, opening cases and getting more chances versus hoping lightning strikes on a single box is a very common strategy. This does give the buyer more POTENTIAL opportunities, but the percentage of loss increases with each box or case added to the pile. This is the hobby’s equivalent of the gambler’s fallacy, and I can guarantee that too many people have found themselves in dire straits as a result.

Overall, wax is absolutely a gamble. In this case, its likely one of the biggest gamble in the history of wrestling cards. Although there are more four and five figure cards in this product than any other product that has ever been released, the price reflects that situation. If you are a wrestling collector looking for cheap thrills like before, there are a ton of ways to get that, but opening your own personal box of Prizm is likely the worst engagement opportunity there is.

Understanding the Record Prices and the Low End Bottoming Out

Prizm is a tale of two cities. One side is the record setting values that the rare and desirable cards have on the secondary market, and the other side is the drop in value for the lower tier cards that have significantly dropped in value since release. Let me say this, the prices will be a roller coaster across the entirety of the life of the product. It all has to do with the way investors and buyers engage across the spectrum of hits, the grading that will take place over the next 6-12 months, and the reduction of supply as people rip product and put cards into their PCs.

Lets start with the super premium cards, because those examples are the sexy investment pieces that are responsible for the giant wax price. Even though hitting one of these cards is a once in a lifetime situation for many collectors, its the driving force of why Prizm has become what it is. I wrote a retrospective leading up to the release that explains how this product found itself at the front of the line for new investors, and its worth checking out if you are new to this game. To put it simply, shiny cards are an asset that many investors build their collections around. In the vein of rookie cards, these people all love firsts in the hobby, and being that Prizm is a debut edition, they want to have the first example of the premium cards for all the top tier subjects.

This means that cards from guys like The Rock, Stone Cold Steve Austin, and Hulk Hogan will be more valuable this year than they will be any other year. Because comparative value for WWE versus investment pieces in the NBA and the NFL is tiny, these cards are low end for most. Looking into debut Prizm examples for people like Lebron James, Tom Brady, and others, a 15k price tag isnt even in the same zip code. The Rock is on that level for WWE, but his cards are chump change by comparison.

As you can expect, if everyone is ripping and ripping, chasing the big hits along side group breakers who are going through case after case of product, there is a lot of bulk that will flood the market. For the wax addicts, the goal becomes to recoup cost as quickly as possible, and the best way to do that is to list the cards auction style and hope for the best. Because Prizm WWE is a brand new market, the collecting base isnt large enough to sustain a huge number of auctions that all end in rapid succession. There are a few reasons for this.

With Topps products, the run was likely 1/3 to 1/4 of what the Hobby run is for Prizm. This means that the big hits happen with a lot less bulk in the checklist to flood the auction listings for bottom feeders, set builders and flippers. This is a huge contributing factor, because Prizm has the largest checklist that has ever been run in a WWE product. We are talking a gigantic difference in set size, and the amount of cards produced for all those unnumbered parallels. Its like comparing a house cat with a tiger in terms of size.

Similarly, all those people who usually feed off the underbelly of a product, collecting lower tier wrestlers, building sets, and generally hunting for deals are ripe with contempt for this new license. They are spurred by vocal influencers who have a vested interest in the product’s drop in price. For most of these people, being unfamiliar with the market has bred a sense of apathy, even though they can likely buy singles at or even below where they would have in previous Topps sets. All they need to do is open their eyes.

Many of these people have seen their ability to rip boxes hobby format reduced, and though the singles are easily attainable, most seem to have chosen to check out instead. Funny enough – NONE of this is a new concept. This has plagued Panini products since day one, and it wont be different for a small niche like WWE. If anything it will be more exacerbated.

Prepare for the Roller Coaster

Its time for me to put on my psychic friends network hat and offer some potential outcomes that might happen over the next year – all leading up to the second edition of Prizm in 2023. Many of the nay-sayers will point to fluctuating values on the secondary market as a measure of viability, which I can assure you it is not. This product is already a success to a vast degree. More people are talking about WWE cards in the hobby than ever. WWE cards were trending on Twitter as a result of the release, and the record prices are well above expectations already. Even if everything tanks to an ocean trench level, this has already done more for WWE than even I expected.

In terms of the record setting prices, those will likely continue as people try to chase down the rare cards for the top tier superstars. The 1/1s of the Rock, Hulk Hogan and others will likely set all time records each time they are sold, and that could happen multiple times after they are pulled. As for the golds /10, there will be huge sales to start, and then a dip as they get into the third and fourth copies sold. As the months progress, those prices will creep back up as the opportunities to buy decrease. Five years from now, the prices from today will look laughable in how inexpensive they were.

As more formats are put on shelves, the lower end of Prizm will drop to a very high degree. Panini has printed an absolute shit ton of this stuff already and retail is still on the way. There will be other options, including box sets, TMall, and any other formats Panini thinks the market can support. They dont make money on any of the secondary market sales, so they want to run the presses for as long as people will buy. Because the cards arent numbered, there is no available understanding of how many of each exist. Pop reports for grading companies can be an indicator of size comparisons to other products, but we will never know the actual number. This includes high value inserts like the Color Blasts.

From this point forward, I expect a few dips as each new format hits the scene, followed by a rise as more versions of the products come out in 2023 and beyond. Again, none of this is a surprise, as it happens every time Panini releases a debut edition.

I wholeheartedly encourage people to research before they buy, and see what the trajectory of these things looks like long term. Apps like CardLadder show a long chart of pricing trends for many of the bigger sets, and its easy to pick out the places to make money. Dont listen to the trolls, and definitely do your own homework. This is a landmark release regardless of what happens, and it wont be the last time either.