TRISTAR TNA IMPACT!
TRADING CARDS (2009)
What a difference a year makes!
We previously covered off Tristar's TNA Impact 2008 series which, as a card set, was completely serviceable and had no major issues. But the talent roster just one year later was night and day difference. In fact, if you look at the talent rosters for WWE and AEW in 2020, quite a handful of the wrestlers featured here are mentioned in this very collection.
Of course, for all the awesomeness with findingthe likes of early Samoa Joe, AJ Styles, Christopher Daniels, Robert Roode and Nick Aldis cards, you also end up with cards for freaking Dixie Carter.
And hey, if she were the evil owner by this point... perhaps that would have made for a good character card. But learning that her dream vacation spot it Italy and that her favorite number is six? I dunno.... not really feeling it.
Beyond the top stars of the era (which also included mainstream wrestlers who had crossed the line from WWE and WCW, including Sting, Mick Foley and Kurt Angle), the series also focused on some lesser-known stars, including The Beautiful People, Sojournor Bolt, Consequences Creed (the future Xavier Woods), Doug Williams and Sheik Abdul Bashir.
Speaking of Bashir (a/k/a Shawn Daivari), they featured him in a Then & Now series with a photo of him as a youngster with Mickey Mouse. It's a nice contrast to the Topps series of wrestling cards, which don't often go into the personal photo collections of competitors for card ideas.
Finally, each box of the 2009 cards came with a unique autographed card; hardly a unique feature in the trading card world but a nice touch nonetheless. Does the fact that I own an autograph of Hernandez change much out about my life? Probably not. But every time I look through this particular collection, it's a card that interests me.
Overall, this series is a vast improvement over the 2008 set and one that I wish I had the entire collection of.