Most of you likely havent been too familiar with the story of WWE cards, so Let’s take a walk down memory lane.

Its 2014, and the hobby is a much different place. Wax is generally affordable, the boom is still years off, and we are all gathering in public places without much thought.

Wrestling is different too, John Cena is winding down his active status, the Rock has made a recent return despite being a gigantic movie star, and the Undertaker is still wreaking havoc. Female Wrestlers barely get any TV time, and NXT is just starting up as an up and coming brand. Wrestling cards have a dedicated, but TINY population, and Topps decides to create the first Topps Chrome crossover product which uses the same baseball design released the same year. The Rock, Undertaker, Brock Lesnar and Cena are a main focus of the base set, mainly because they are the focus of WWE TV at the time. Its time to test the waters of what WWE can offer.

Autographs arent much of a focus, so Topps has a small checklist included, on card. The parallel structure has some of the same features as baseball, but it cant support 20 parallels. Because few people pre-order the goods, the hobby product is severely short printed, and though retail configurations exists, there isnt much focus on that marketplace. Blasters only get a small portion of the hits, and very few numbered color cards. The product is moderately successful given its context, but because the market is so tiny, most cards end up in bargain bins.

Now its 2015. Wrestling begins its women’s revolution thanks to NXT and card collecting has started to see some nice upticks in the people and value associated with trading cards. Chrome is brought back for a second year, but the WWE card collecting population is still tiny. This time, given the success of 2014 Chrome in relative consideration, a larger parallel structure is implemented, and the autograph checklist is expanded. The print run is still VERY small comparatively, and Legends like Hulk Hogan, Ultimate Warrior, and the like are huge focuses for the base set.

Again, there is moderate success in comparison to other WWE, but its clear to Topps that the cost of production and the size of the return isnt really worth the giant effort. Chrome is shelved for 5 years.

Fast forward to 2021.

The hobby boom is now likely past its peak as collectors grow tired of the giant speculation costs of wax and singles. The velvet rope VIP area created in 2020 and 2021 still exists, and in all likelihood is even more exclusive. Vintage wrestling cards of top legends like the Rock and Hulk Hogan have exploded in value alongside some of the top sports cards. The most recent era of wrestling cards from is still generally a dark corner, but unlike 2014, the crowd has quadrupled in size.

Not just that but releases of ultra premium sets like Topps Transcendent in 2019, 2020, and 2021 have showcased that there is a place for the high end collectors to thrive in WWE. New audiences start to take notice, seeing that they can enter the market in the top .0001% of the population with ease, something that is completely unavailable right now in any other place.

Panini announces that that they are taking over WWE with a release of Prizm, which will bring with it a speculative investor market unlike anything the modern market has ever seen. A few people look to get out ahead of the tidal wave, seeing the spike with UFC in 2020. They immediately gravitate towards the shiny goodness that has become the backbone of hobby value. Without fail, 2014 and 2015 Topps Chrome present a recipe for success that might be the most perfect storm in the history of the hobby. Short printed, dirt cheap, and on the verge of a coming Panini brand launch.

This story is unfamiliar to most collectors, because wrestling cards are generally unfamiliar to most collectors. That being said, the recent sales we have seen for 2014 and 2015 WWE Chrome shouldnt be surprising. I have been a part of the hobby community for decades, but only recently part of the WWE community. I have seen some weird shit go down in WWE, as the community has developed almost independently of hobby norms. Grading is shunned, supercollectors are king, and the biggest names in the history of the business were basically ignored – even when vintage was doing record numbers.

Collectors want firsts, as we have all experienced ad nauseum. Tom Brady’s first Prizm card is basically thought of as another rookie, something I will never understand. Its ridiculous, but its reality, and it shouldnt be a surprise that the first set with a baseball equivalent parallel structure in wrestling has huge attention as more collectors are coming to WWE ahead of the Panini launch.

We already saw gigantic numbers for big cards over the later half of 2021, culminating with the release of Transcendent. The Chrome superfractors in that set were finally expected to be the cards that broke the ceiling that had existed in modern WWE for ages. When the Vince McMahon Transcendent superfractor autograph hit the auction block, it was clear that it had a chance to do what no card had ever done – sell for more than $10,000. Buzz was palpable, and as the auction creeped to a halt just shy of the golden number, it became abundantly clear that WWE was finally going to open the door to the values seen across the hobby for 2 years.

Yesterday, that door was kicked down. The 2014 Roman Reigns Superfractor Auto 1/1 was sold for $15,000 – breaking every modern record in the process. After sitting for a year plus untouched, the card sold at a price never achieved before. Although other cards had the chance to be the first, they are unlikely to be sold anytime soon. Reigns has been the focus of WWE TV since 2014, and like the Rock, shares a long bloodline in the industry. If you turn on WWE TV today, Roman is everywhere, currently in the middle of one of the longest modern title reigns in history. He is on his way to being the next in line that started with Austin, Rock and Undertaker, and his cards were insanely undervalued for years.

This sale comes on the heels of other huge sales for 2014 cards, including a $3000+ recent sale of a raw (!!) gold refractor /50 of the Rock, and a $2000 sale of a Roman Reigns red autograph /25. CardLadder has similar started tracking a lot of modern cards from sets like 2014 and 2015 chrome, alerting investors that things are trending in a very positive direction. All of these plots on the timeline seem to have led to this black swan event.

The most interesting part of this isnt where this came from though, its where things look to be headed. Overnight, we have started seeing record prices for shiny cards across WWE. Cards that would be ten to twenty dollars are selling for hundreds, and even the 2020 and 2021 sets are seeing big spillover from the sales.

Chrome in WWE is done. There wont be another chrome set made for the foreseeable future. There are only 4 sets of it available to collect, and many WWE collectors have been collecting their favorites since the beginning. Unlike sports cards, WWE collectors are uniquely driven by super-collecting, which means that even if the prices continue to explode, the big cards out there may never see the light of day. This will only add more fuel to the fire for the ones that do show up.

Ive said many times that Chrome is my favorite product ever made. I have collected it since I was a child, growing up in the hobby. Im very much not alone in this sentiment, as we have clearly seen over the last 3 years. When Chrome was brought back to WWE in 2020, I went crazy buying every box I could. Most of those cards have since been sold, but I knew that it was important to remember how important the shiny sentiment was to a WWE calendar that featured so few legacy Topps products.

I love that people are finally starting to see that WWE cards are here for the taking. Collectors joining the fray has already brought insane equity to the front of everyone’s mind who has been here for years. To those wondering what is going on, buckle up – its only going to get more bananas.