My Introduction : the story/pics of my collection; plus wrestling cosplay!

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thejohndours
Posts: 3
Joined: Fri Oct 21, 2016 7:50 am
7
French Southern Territories

My Introduction : the story/pics of my collection; plus wrestling cosplay!

Post by thejohndours »

Hey all! I was teamrjmj20 on the old forum, I finally went through my emails after a month plus of horridly neglecting them to find out the old belttalk forum is in read-only mode, and thus, here I am at last in the new one!

I like to collect replicas, although I now have less than I did at the peak of my collection. Here's an old picture of my collection at it's peak, in order of when I got each from top to bottom:

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I also have the mini WWE WHC and Hardcore championships. I guess I can tell the story of my collection as a bit of a proper introduction. The mini WHC was my first replica belt of any sort, I got it at a RAW brand house show in 2004 during Benoit's reign. He defended it against Kane, my favorite wrestler at the time and still one of my all-time faves, as well as defending his tag championship with Edge (another favorite) on the same night.

A year or so later (2005), my first true replica came in the mail after either winning it on ebay or buying it from that Tyler Hailey guy, the Hardcore championship. It was the belt I had pined away for in early high school when Figs Toy Company started producing more than just WCW belts and the WWE "big eagle" championship of the Attitude Era (another dream that would become reality in time), so it was absolutely thrilling to snag the belt for what I remember to be less than 100 bucks as my senior year of high school was about to begin. As you can see in my picture, the next two belts I got were in a close proximity to one another; the Undisputed v2 and the Spinner. Actually now that I think about it, the v2 came only about a year after the Hardcore belt, as an 18th birthday present from my parents. Although it was promoted hard by Figs Toy Company as new with "better" outlines, I quickly realized that even with a curve applied by yours truly, it was comically large for me at my thinnest, even though I'm 6'3 (I was 6'4 or '5 at the time, spinal surgery made me shrink a bit two years ago), it was way too wide, tall, just too damn large of a belt.

With the remaining money I had gotten for my 18th birthday in '06, as well as some high school graduation cash, I made a pretty big mistake of a choice and blew all that dough on the newly-released Spinner belt, at retail price at the time no less. It was shiny and gimmicky and spun nice and smoothly; admittedly it looked nice on my wall, and although I wasn't ever the wildest Cena fan either, he hadn't yet overstayed his welcome with the fans yet, so all in all it was nice for what it was and for it's time.

Some time around mid-summer at the launch of the new ECW brand, I felt like I just -HAD- to have a piece of the original, so I think I once again went through Wrestlingfigs' forum and found a good deal on an original Figs '99 ECW world belt, modified to include a 6th plate fashioned from what I believe to be a kid's size TV title. I think I dropped around 150 for the ECW world, not a bad deal overall. I feel like the big eagle was purchased around '07-'08 or so, once again at a pretty fair price although it was missing some stones and was a tad scuffed. I paid 200 for it, so for the original WWF replica belt, I think I got a pretty good deal.

It was around that time I also snagged a Hardcore mini replica, another of the original belts released in 01 that made me want to get into collecting replicas. I don't know what it was that drew me to both sizes of the Hardcore championship so much, but the colorful strap and cracked up winged eagle belt design probably was the big sell for me now that I think about it. By around 2010 or so, the duct tape had gotten to be really nasty and the letters coated onto the duct tape were literally falling off and had to be clear-taped onto the duct tape. I finally thought it was time for a change, so I took all the duct tape off and goof-offed the belt until while discolored due to the tape being on the belt since it's creation in 2001, it added to it's battle damage type of appeal, and ever since then my modified Hardcore championship has been the centerpiece of my Raven cosplay, which I've worn countless times to comicon, or for Halloween when I'm too lazy to come up with a new costume. Here's a pic of my costume, along with my fiancee' dressed as Big Stevie Cool!:

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I've gotta say I'm pretty proud of my all-too-often-reused costume; last Halloween both Raven and Stevie Richards retweeted this picture of us and it was the biggest case of "senpai noticed me" that a wrestling fan could ask for.


Although I skipped a bit in the timeline, it's due to me not having an updated picture of what my most recent belt was. I wound up selling my spinner belt in 2010 or early 2011. Now, hindsight being 20/20, if I had known Punk would've held that title for so long and made it mean something special other than Cena's gimmicked out bling belt of the mid 00's, I would've held onto it, gotten a Punk nameplate, and replaced the dumb MON NITE RAW sideplate with the more contemporary matching WWE Champion logo with the eagle. Oh well, it's not worth buying another spinner just to remember Punk's spectacular 434 day run.

Wrapping up my story of replica belt ownership thus far with a more modern story that actually happened on Belttalk, with a very pleasant transaction with a few awesome members here that I unfortunately have lost their contact info. Basically around WM30 (which happened in my hometown!), I wanted to trade my Undisputed V2 for a V1, but I also wanted to get the proper CZ stones to really make the replica look good, as well as getting the inaccurate black coloring on the belt's main and side plates removed, along with adding some texture added to the plain flat metal on the sideplates. The person who traded their V1 for my V2 was kind enough to send their belt directly to the guy who did the detail/stone work, and that guy was kind enough to throw in the deluxe strap from another belt he worked on. I later had him do my big eagle's side plates for texture, as well as applying the stones to my big eagle belt that so desperately needed some TLC. If you're the cool guy who did the work on my belts, please PM me! I don't need any work done now, but it'd be great to have a means to contact you!

So, all in all, my experience in the Belttalk community has been a pleasant one from when I started out just chatting, then moving on to modding my newly traded belt with the help of really cool and really talented people. I thank you all for checking out my story, and am eager to participate in this awesome community again! I look forward to expanding my collection in the future as well; I've always wanted some form of the WHC. Maybe since I have the original release versions of both the WWF and ECW world titles, I should aim for the WCW '99 WHC. What do you guys say? For it's age, how does that belt hold up?!


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MitchellJames
Posts: 558
Joined: Tue Sep 06, 2016 1:10 pm
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Location: London
Great Britain

Re: My Introduction : the story/pics of my collection; plus wrestling cosplay!

Post by MitchellJames »

Hey Man, nice intro and pics. Its really cool for your girlfriend to be into wrestling as much as yourself. My wife will watch it from time to time but would never dress up :D
NS Male
BeltMarks Original
BeltMarks Original
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Joined: Mon Sep 05, 2016 3:39 pm
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Location: Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, CANADA
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Re: My Introduction : the story/pics of my collection; plus wrestling cosplay!

Post by NS Male »

Great story and pics, brother. Wrestling cosplay IMO still rocks.
"I work,... I get paid. 'Nuff said."
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