Simply put, Don West got me again.
If you’re a collector of a certain age, then you know the past entertainment value of the past Shop At Home hobby heavyweight who got more than a few people to “dial in now” for their latest shot at some cardboard treasures.
This isn’t exactly a scenario like that one, but a recent tweet by a past wrestling star piqued my curiously and led me to eBay and that then led me to ShopImpact.com, which is the website of Impact! Wrestling, one of few WWE competitors these days, and there was West with a deal that I figured … why not?
While the company formerly known as TNA hasn’t had trading cards since 2013 when its run with TRISTAR came to an end, it’s changed a lot in those years and one way that collectors could keep up with them without cardboard is via promotional photos that were used for autograph appearances and other collector-minded merchandising pushes.
And it’s on that site where West, a former TNA announcer turned product pitch-man and back again, occasionally has “Brown Bag Specials” — you know, grab bags — where the company burns off products at a cheaper price to get stuff cleared out. One such special got me — not because it was cheap but because there was a sale price that was even cheaper. It was a package of 30 8×10 promo photos for $5 — you do the math there — a price that was so cheap I opted for two of them.
Why? “Why not?” was what I thought for the price. At worst, they’ll go in a box or album with other photos I’ve picked up over the years — wrestling and not — and they’ll all be there for potential autograph fodder if needed. (They’ve since been put back up to their regular price of $9.99 per 30 — still not a bad price.)
It’s a time capsule of sorts with photos of big-name stars from the past when there were cards for TNA but also there were a number of names from more recent times. The only drawback here? The 60 images were mailed in a large sturdy photo mailer but that did not prevent some corner damage along the way in shipment — and it’s definitely possible that some of these cardboard photos had taken some shots here and there in the years since they were made.
But, still, that price …
Many of the names inside the lot I received are names fans will know from WWE, too, and some are there now — and about half of my 60 images are of bigger names that even some non-fans probably know. About half of them can be seen in the gallery below — Hulk Hogan, Sting, Jeff Hardy, Matt Hardy, Christy Hemme, Gail Kim, Angelina Love and Velvet Sky, The Dudleys, Bobby Roode, Samoa Joe and Kurt Angle were just some of the names I found.
At a price of about 17 cents a photo I didn’t mind the surprise factor — and, again, the only bummer might be the damage from shipping — but this time Don West delivered for me pretty well.
I’m still waiting on some of those 1990s Rookie Card stashes to pay off, though.
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