The Beckett Blog

Update: The card sold for $1,175 after 17 bids in the auction, which ended on Sunday (Oct. 25).

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A rare and impressive autographed professional wrestling card has hit the auction block and bidding is pushing $450 even though it’s got some rough corners and a few slight creases.

How rare? It’s not supposed to exist.

How impressive? Well, the 1998 Topps WCW/nWo Autograph card shows — and is reportedly signed by — the 16-time world champion “The Nature Boy” Ric Flair.

The WWE Hall of Famer retired from in-ring competition following a loss at WrestleMania XXIV in Orlando, Fla., in 2008 and had never appeared on a certified autograph card until earlier this year when Panini America landed him for its Americana series. (Unsigned version of the card at right.)

Had this card been widely issued more than a decade earlier, it obviously would have been highly sought after.

This card, which is on eBay from a Tampa, Fla.-based dealer, has reached $449 and change with more than four days remaining in the auction.

While several wrestlers didn’t return their signed cards to Topps for packaging — some of those cards regularly appear online — we’ve never seen or tracked a sale of the Flair card. The seller has a few lots of personal memorabilia from Hall of Fame manager “The Mouth of the South” Jimmy Hart on eBay  — including an unsigned card of Hart — so one could easily speculate that the card came along with those items and was signed by Flair for Hart before the rest were discarded or misplaced.

While the card does appear to have a genuine autograph — at least it’s not one that appears to be obviously bad — with the “missing” cards collectors should beware that some autographs might not be legitimate even if they have an authenticity statement on the back.

Topps‘ Jeff Zapata, who presently works on the company’s wrestling products, offered some additional background on the card.

“The Mouth was a friend of Jerry McCarrick, who used to work here and help[ed] with our WCW autographs,” Zapata said Wednesday morning. “He told me although The Mouth helped him get a lot of autographs, some were never returned and he never knew if they were ever signed.

“The Mouth said sometimes wrestlers never returned the cards,” Zapata said. “This Flair card may be one of those but we can not be for sure.”

In this case, one thing is for sure — interest in memorabilia for “The Nature Boy” is still stylin’ and profilin’ pretty darn well.

Chris Olds is the editor of Beckett Baseball and Beckett Graded Card Investor. Have a comment, question or idea? Send an e-mail to him at colds@beckett.com.