2012 Leaf Originals Wrestling Preview

Leaf will be releasing a new wrestling set in July titled 2012 Leaf Originals Wrestling, The set is based on the 1948 Leaf baseball set and every card will be signed on-card by the wrestlers.

Some of the announced wrestlers:

Rowdy Roddy Piper

Iron Shiek

Ric Flair

Hulk Hogan

Bruno Sammartino

Scott Hall

Shawn Michaels

Jake the Snake Roberts

Bret Heart

Kevin Nash

Additionally there will also be managers and other personalities tied to wrestling like:

Bobby Heenan

Pete Rose

If you are a wrestling fan/collector this would seem like an awesome release, at $80/pack you get 5 on-card autographs of some of the best wrestlers to have ever stepped in to the ring. The problem is that Leaf decided not to use a similar styling with the players from the 1948 set but instead went the artistic route. No artists were named but whoever did the work took some serious artistic licensing with the cards. Some cards look ok like the Iron Sheik and Bobby the Brain Heenan but Hulk Hogan and Kevin Nash are horrible.

To add to the chase there will be parallel versions, some as low as #1/1, as well as alternate art cards, which will also have limited parallel versions. These are just early preview images so the autographs have not been signed yet, these are just mock-up autographs.