Check Out This Remarkable Collection of OSU Wrestling Cards

Just about every sports fan at some point in their life has collected trading cards. I personally grew up in the 1990s when collecting sports cards was probably at its peak in popularity and just about everyone was doing it.

A few days ago I stumbled across a Twitter account that had shared some pictures of John Smith trading cards.

I clicked on the account and went on to discover the backstory on Rob England, the “King” of wrestling trading cards. There are obviously a lot of trading card collectors out there, but very few specialize in amateur wrestling.

Rob is now on Twitter and sharing pictures and information on some of those cards. Naturally, with all of Oklahoma State’s history in the sport, he has a lot related to them and I thought I’d put something together on it here.

I’ll start with the one I felt was probably the most unique one of the group. A 1936 Frank Lewis rookie card from the 1936 Olympics. Lewis is from my hometown of Cushing, Okla. and won a gold medal at that Olympics in Berlin.

This autographed three-card set from the 1960 Olympics features two Cowboy Olympic Gold Medalists, Doug Blubaugh and Shelby Wilson.

Jack Brisco was an NCAA champ for the Cowboys in 1965 and went on to a Hall of Fame career in Professional wrestling.

The 1991 set is probably the most well-remembered Oklahoma State-themed card set, at least to me personally. There was basically every sport at Oklahoma State in the set and Rob has a group of wrestling cards and nearly all of them are signed.

I have some vague memories of this Dr. Pepper set that came out around the time I was in Junior High. I feel like could get them at local gas stations or maybe they could be purchased at duals?

These next ones have a really similar look to the Dr. Pepper cards and came out not long after them. It’s pretty cool to look back at now as this group was the team that started the run of four-straight team titles from 2003-06. He has a number of them signed.

There are more Oklahoma State cards out there, and I’m sure Rob has many of them. I actually went down an eBay rabbit hole myself and purchased a few at one point.