The Intercontinental Championship has never been the top title in WWE, and that is exactly why collectors care about it. It has spent most of its life on the wrestlers who had the best matches on the card, and it has been redesigned often enough that the belt itself tells you which era a fan grew up in.

What the title is for

The Intercontinental Championship was introduced in 1979, with Pat Patterson recognised as its first holder. From the start it sat one step below the world title, which in practice made it the working championship: the belt defended in the matches that had to carry the middle of a pay-per-view.

That role produced an unusually strong list of champions. Randy Savage and Ricky Steamboat built one of the most replayed matches in company history around it. Bret Hart, Shawn Michaels, Owen Hart, Triple H and The Rock all held it before they held a world title. Chris Jericho ended up with more reigns than anyone. The Honky Tonk Man, meanwhile, holds the longest single reign, which is the sort of detail that tends to settle arguments.

The design families

Collectors do not talk about the Intercontinental belt as one object. They talk about families, and there are four you will run into most often.

The early versions. The first belts used a comparatively small centre plate and relatively plain side plates. They look understated next to anything made after them, which is part of the appeal for people collecting the late 1970s and early 1980s.

The yellow strap. The best-known of the WWF-era belts, and the one most people picture when they hear "Intercontinental". A large centre plate on a bright yellow leather strap, unmistakable on a 1980s television screen and still the version that sells fastest. The yellow strap in brass is the standard way to own it.

The oval and black strap era. Through the late 1980s and 1990s the belt moved to a black strap with a heavier, more ornate centre plate. Several variants exist — different logos, different side plates — which is why you will see the same belt listed as an oval, a red logo or a scratch logo version depending on the exact period being copied. The oval design in 24k gold plate is the display-grade version of this family.

The modern belts. A white-strap version carried the title through much of the 2010s, and the championship was redesigned again in 2019 with a fuller centre plate and a return to black leather. The 2019 Intercontinental replica is the one to buy if your reference point is recent television rather than tape.

Choosing between them

Because the designs are so different from each other, the usual first question is not which metal but which era. Work that out first. If you are buying for someone else, the era they watched as a teenager is a better guide than anything else.

After that the choice is construction. Die-cast zinc plates are the lightest and the easiest entry point. Brass adds real weight and holds its plating well, which matters on a belt you intend to wear. Machined plates cost the most and get closest to the depth of a belt made for television. The same Intercontinental design is usually available across those tiers, so you are not trading away accuracy by starting at the bottom.

One thing worth knowing: the Intercontinental belt has narrower side plates than most world titles, so it reads as a slimmer object on a wall. People who have only ever seen world title replicas in person are sometimes surprised by that. It is not a flaw; it is what the belt is.

The full WWE, WWF and WCW range, including the other titles from each of these eras, sits in the WWE, WWF and WCW collection.