2010 Tristar TNA Impact New Era - First Impressions

I noticed today while @ Target they had some new product on the card shelves so I took a few seconds to look everything over. They finally had the new National Chicle baseball which I picked up a pack, but they also had a brand new box of Tristar's TNA Impact New Era wrestling cards. I grew up watching the old NWA wrestling with my brother and grandfather. I used to love wrestling. Now it just seems different and I don't tune in every week like I used to. When I have sat down and watched TNA however it does at times remind me of the "old days". So out of curiosity I picked up a pack to see what the cards looked like.

Nothing too spectacular about the packaging outside of Hogan pointing at one of his famous "pythons".

The base design is nice. It has rather simple and clean layout. The pic of Hogan is a let down since it's the same photo used for the wrapper, but at least the back of the card sports a different albeit smaller photo. His "bio" is nothing new.

The regular set is only 90 cards so it shouldn't be too hard to assemble, however @ 5 cards per pack and each pack retailing for $1.99 a pop one would be better off just buying a hand collated set for a few bucks on eBay. There are an additional 10 short printed OBAK cards numbered 91-100, but supposedly are only inserted into hobby packs. My wrapper states these OBAK cards on the back so I don't know how they are inserted. There are also serially numbered autograph cards numbered to 1, 5, 25, 50 & unnumbered. No actual pack odds are given for any of the SPs or inserts.

I saw a preview of Topps 2010 WWE set and it looks nice, but Tristar has down an outstanding job with this set and I believe has raised the bar for wresting trading card sets.