Memorabilia from any sport can be valuable to the fans who follow them. This includes professional wrestling, which has been around as long as football, baseball and other “legitimate sports”. Professional wrestling may not be able to claim the “legitimate sports” designation but it has produced it’s share of legitimate memorabilia over its existence in the form of ring-used gear like robes, trunks, tights and masks. And while the major promotions offer replica championship belts to fans, you can at time find ring-used title belts on other sales sites.
However, a recent listing on an auction site has turned some heads among collectors. An eBay posting by a seller named cojoha445 out of the Minneapolis/St. Paul area has listed an allegedly authentic ring-used world championship belt from TNA Wrestling – one of the major wrestling companies still in business – at a value of $100,000. The belt – according to the auction site’s description – “is the ring used world heavyweight championship belt sting [sic] debuted in 2011.” (Sting is a former champion in TNA and in recent weeks retired from All Elite Wrestling.) However, documentation of the item is merely pictures of the belt along with stock photos and a screenshot of Sting holding a TNA championship belt, which may or may not be the same belt being auctioned off.
Collectors and fans are voicing concerns about the listed value of the belt saying it is excessive, even for being a ring-used item. By comparison, the now-defunct American Wrestling Alliance – a major professional organization ran by Verne Gagne and also based out of the Minneapolis/St. Paul area – had one of their decommissioned ring-used belts listed on eBay a number of years ago at around a tenth of the price. Inflating the price of auction items on eBay is not a new practice as many sellers have done it. But in this instance, it’s been noted that the value of the TNA belt isn’t consistent with similar offerings.
At the end of the day, any object’s worth in any type of offering is determined by demand and it is the responsibility of the potential buyer to do their due diligence before purchasing. In this case though, this piece of memorabilia seems to be providing more questions than offers.
