TNA Cross The Line by Tristar
First, let’s give you a bit of a background on TNA and let you know who some of the major players are and then we’ll get into the box break it’s self. TNA is currently run by Dixie Carter and Jeff Jarrett. It has a weekly TV show that airs on Spike! TV and does the typical Pay-per-views as well. The big difference between TNA and its bigger brother the WWE is that TNA features a six-sided ring, which leads to a few different ideas when throwing someone off the ropes. TNA features five different championship belts: TNA World, Legends, World Tag, X Division and Knockouts. Current champions are Sting: TNA World, AJ Styles: Legends, Beer Money INC: World Tag, Suicide: X Division and Awesome Kong: Knockouts. TNA has a lot of great talent both homegrown and that have come in from other companies. Kurt Angle, Kevin Nash, Sting, Mick Foley, Booker T, The James Gang, AJ Styles, Abyss, LAX, Rhino, Samoa Joe, Scott Steiner, Team 3D, Alex Shelley and Shark Boy to name of few. They also feature a women’s division that has real wrestlers called the Knockouts. Not all of the women are true beauties (Awesome Kong comes to mind!) but all can brawl with the best. Awesome Kong, The Beautiful People, ODB, Chritsy Hemme, Taylor Wilde, SoCal Val, Rhaka Khan, Traci Brooks and Roxxi round out this bunch.
TNA does offer the smaller guys a great opportunity as well with the X Division belt and gives them a chance to showcase their own high flying style with-in those matches. There are also several tag teams that battle for the World Tag Belts and the newly creates Legends Belt is a coveted prize in it’s self.
Now on to the box break!
Each box offers 20 packs and 6 cards per pack. You get two autographs and one memorabilia and one parallel numbered to 50 or less. Within the set are different features as well: Insanity, TNA Debut, 6 Years of Glory, Getting to Know…, If I Wasn’t a Wrestler…, Wrestling Roots, Top Rope (Favorites), Then & Now, Art cards, Muscles Ink, TNA Impact Video Game, The Writs Stuff, Drawn to TNA and TNA Rivals for a total base card number of 100.
More information regarding the product and checklists can be found here:
http://www.tnawrestlingcards.com/
Looking at the cards that we opened you get a good mix of these. Looking at the first set of pictures you see an ODB art card, a Drawn Curry Man, Steve McMichael, Kurt Angle Impact! video game card, A Muscles Ink and a Muscles Ink Subset, a TNA rivals of Samoa Joe and Sting, a Wrestling Roots and a Then & Now of Tyson Tomko.
Tna Cross The Line
The subsets are just different categories in the base card checklist (Insanity, TNA Debut, etc.). The base card parallels are numbered to 1, 10 & 50. If it is a parallel, the TNA foil on the front will be the color of the number stamped foil on the back – 50 is gold, 10 is red and 1 is purple. The autograph cards are unnumbered and numbered to 1, 5, 25 & 50. The Event-Used cards are numbered to 1, 5, 50 & 99.
Below is an example of a “subset”
TNA Cross The Line Subset Examples
Notice the colored stripe down the side of the cards?
The second set of pictures goes through the rest of the card types. Top Rope, Insanity, TNA Debut, 6 years of Glory, Getting to Know, The Write Stuff and If I Wasn’t a Wrestler.
TNA Cross The Line
Though some of the photography is a little dark, most of the photos capture great action scenes – exactly what a wrestling card should do. I mean look at that shot of AJ Styles – great stuff!
Now on to what most of you are here to see: THE HITS!
We did get the four guaranteed hits as advertised. Our autos are Petey Williams; kind of a much smaller version of Scott Steiner, that is numbered 25/50 and Lance Rock of the now fired Rock ‘n Rave Infection. Our memorabilia card is a plus as it also includes an auto of Big Sexy Kevin Nash. This is a nice hit and is numbered 31/50. Then our final “hit” is a numbered parallel of the most hated referee in wrestling, Earl Hebner, numbered 38/50.
TNA Cross the Line - HITS
If you have to ask why he is hated I direct you to the book Bret Hart: My Life in a Cartoon World or to Shawn Michaels: Heartbreak and Triumph, both are excellent reads and worth the time. Over all we got 83/100 cards with 13 doubles and 20 of the non-numbered parallels with the stripe down one side. 83% of the set isn’t bad for a box and you can always pick up a blaster or two at the local Target or Wal-Mart to help finish out your set and maybe get another auto or two as well. Once again I want to thank Ross and Tristar for the chance to write up this review. Until next time. ~ Todd aka Darkship.
Great job – Todd. As promised, I will send you the entire contents of this bust for your review. Thanks again to TRISTAR for sponsoring this bust!!
Also, if you have not done so yet – make sure you enter the TNA Cross the Line Giveaway – We are giving away one hobby box of TNA Cross the Line courtsey of Tristar!! Deadline for entry is 3/25/2009.
This product was absolutely terrible. I would have posted my own review but my damn scanner broke.
Congrats on the Nash auto, though. Much better than anything I pulled.
Never busted anything Wrestling so I allowed Todd to write up something since he’s a fan. What didnt you like about it?
For starters, the glitter around the autograph box.
Much of the photography was lousy. The Tattoo cards were ridiculous, so were the paintings done by the wrestling. What about the cards taken from pictures of a video game character?
Not a big fan of TNA wrestling in general and it’s clear they did not have much to work with but it was a real disappointment. Hopefully I can get a new scanner pronto to write about it as well.
Good stuff Mario – I had similar feelings about the glitter but then I thought maybe wrestling fans would like that. As for the photos some of the shots they attempted to get where pretty cool but the quality was a little lacking.
As for the Tattoo cards and the video game characters – I could def. do without those!