One of the highest-graded copies of one of a wrestling icon’s first cards has hit eBay and is already putting on a show.
It’s the 1982 Wrestling All-Star Series A card of Hulk Hogan, and it’s a card from an iconic set that was available via mail order three years before the first WWF (now WWE) cards arrived in packs from Topps.
Is it a Rookie Card? Is it not a Rookie Card? Doesn’t really matter, brother, as it’s already a big deal on eBay.
Its a PSA 9 card — one of 15 in existence and none top it — and that’s helped it jump to $2,025 after 25 bids with more than five days remaining in the auction. (What’s it up to now? Click here for the latest.)
It’s perhaps simplest to call this card an “XRC” using somewhat-familiar hobby terms as this one wasn’t as widely distributed as if it had been in packs of 1985 Topps WWE. That’s where Hogan’s Rookie Card would be found using traditional in-pack definitions, but the demand for this 1982 card dramatically trumps his Topps card.
There have been 152 copies graded by PSA per its Pop Report and most of them have graded a PSA 7 (50 copies) or an 8 (44 copies) with the rest ranging from a PSA 1 to the 15 copies that are PSA 9s. Why is this one so tough grade-wise? These cards are slightly larger than standard size, so they couldn’t easily paged or sleeved in the past and weren’t an everyday find, anyway. Other than a back stock find of these cards being sold by a wrestling magazine/photo dealer about a decade ago, what was out there was it for what is the first comprehensive wrestling set (non food-issue) of the modern era.
More than 2,300 copies of cards from this 36-card set have been graded by PSA and just 62 have come back as a coveted PSA 10. Once again most (more than 800) are PSA 8s and some (only 389) are PSA 9s. Throw in interest from registry-minded collectors and that just makes this Hogan card even more interesting to watch on the auction block in the next five days.
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