Fanatics to acquire Topps.
 

Just read a deal to be announced tomorrow.

Not entirely unexpected, but still a big surprise and big news. Wow.

I’ll reserve judgment on Fanatics for now, but it’s nice to see the Topps brand live on

Didn't that happen last summer?

Call me old school….I’m good with it
 

My initial thought….. But Topps did what they needed to do for their people and their brand. At least that is my hope.

Fanatics bought the rights to the players' likeness when Topps current deal expires in a couple years. That deal was announced last summer, and probably set in motion the merger.

No, Topps was supposed to go public until Fanatics bought the rights to the players and team logos out from under them. Then Topps dissolved their SPAC and decided not to go to IPO.

Nice to see that Fanatics decided Topps was best off for them and the industry.

Made too much sense not to happen...Topps lost it's bread and butter, and Fanatics needed a bread and butter factory.

I hope this keeps the brand alive and throws additional resources behind it. Smart move.

maybe Fanatics will be more interested in protecting their new IP than Topps ever was. Would be nice to see all of the counterfeit Topps, Bowman etc. come off of ebay.

Try listing a fake piece of Tiffany jewelry or Michael Kors Hand Bag and see how long it lasts.

They had to buy Topps or one of the other brands. Really had no choice as they have no experience printing cards.


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That was my understanding also

Trying to create an “Amazon” of sports collectibles putting everything under 1 ownership umbrella

I wonder if Fanatics will also purchase Panini or will Panini just fade away. Not really much there for them if Fanatics holds all the rights for all the major sports.

I was thinking about posting something regarding this today.....along the lines of if those of you set run collectors/builders would continue in a couple years once Topps ceased production...+/- to both sides...but I think overall happy it will continue...even if it would have given the pocketbook a small break

So it would seem that the MLBPA and MLB torpedoed Topps’ IPO for the sake of helping Fanatics take over Topps then.

Not sure what their motivation was, anyone know?

It's been discussed quite a bit, the simplest reason is Fanatics is promising MLB and MLBPA (and the NBA/NBAPA and NFL/NFLPA) more $$$ then they are making in the current contract with Topps. Nothing more, nothing less

Rich

It's certainly plausible, but now that they own Topps and the licenses for all major sports, I assume they could just start making Topps cards for NBA and NFL as soon as panini's contract expires. Panini would be far less valuable to them now that they own Topps.

Neither did upper deck in 1989

Motivation? They got a bunch of money, the IPO wasn't going to make them a bunch of money, at least not in the short term.

Yeah, printing cards isn't something that I see as being very complicated.

In today's world *unlike 1989 to a large extent* it's the prep not the printing. There was prep in 1989 but it was easier to create checklists, get photos, etc.

Nowadays you have to pay attention to autographs, Jerseys. relics, parallels, insert sets, etc and stay within a budget.

It is somewhere between 11-14 months depending on the product between OKing the product and having it go live.

I can imagine the crazy prices that cards will go up to. Sad day for modern collectors.

Has Fanatics talked about issuing graded new cards? Seems crazy to sell cards to middlemen who deliver them unopened to PSA for grading and then auction them off to "collectors". Why not slab them as uncirulated, or something, and sell them directly?

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Fanatics: Jerseys, reproduction tickets, counterfeit sports memorabilia, etc.

https://tealtownusa.com/2020/08/buye...s-memorabilia/

But still nothing too complicated for the average business man (or woman for those of you younger than me, hahahaha). I could do it, if I had the budget. The most complicated part is the license. They have that.

Topps jumped the shark several years ago and the overproduction in the modern market will catch up to it just like the 90's. I think it's a brilliant move to take top dollar from a clueless newbie and play the game to keep the brand alive and the employees working.

The smart move will be when the modern market falls out from overproduction following the same roadmap it followed before. Then Topps slides in and rebuys the brand at less than 30% of the money they were bought with and restart the cycle anew with a monster profit for sitting and watching from the sidelines for a few years.

It's not a new play, but it's a great one.

My thought too. And that created a new era of card designs and new standard of quality.

I happened to speak to Bill Hemrick a few weeks back about it. Precisely the reason they were so good....no bad habits, not willing to cut quality

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And invented the 'chase' card...

That's great. Wasn't Bill's card shop the namesake? I wonder if he and Buice remained friends after Buice's suit against UpperDeck almost buried them.

"the simplest reason is Fanatics is promising MLB and MLBPA (and the NBA/NBAPA and NFL/NFLPA) more $$$ then they are making in the current contract with Topps. Nothing more, nothing less"

That's most of it, but there's also the fact that MLB owns a slice of Fanatics (a minority slice, it's true, but they own part of it). To some extent, they were selling the license to themselves.

George,

I'm not saying that it won't happen, but from an integrity point of view; it's sort of like having a company CFO do a financial audit on the company he works for (as opposed to using an unbiased third-party firm).

[QUOTE=from an integrity point of view; it's sort of like having a company CFO do a financial audit on the company he works for (as opposed to using an unbiased third-party firm).[/QUOTE]

I can see the conflict grading circulated cards, but slabbing cards before they leave the factory should be possible without exercising any "judgement" that could be corrupted by self-interest.

Except it would be difficult grading cards you didn't produce.

Can you imagine if PSA only graded (say) Upper Deck cards? They would quickly become a bit player in the marketplace.

As supposedly do the MLBPA, and the other major U.S. sports leagues and their player's unions/associations who also own a piece of Fanatics as well. So yes, they are in effect selling the licensing to themselves. And these groups not only get the up-front licensing money, like they did in the past from Topps and other card companies, they are also now supposedly going to be sharing in the back-end profit that would otherwise have been going to the Topps and other card companies' ownership.

In other words, the sports leagues and players to some extent are just basically cutting out the middle man and going to be selling cards directly to the public themselves.

Big surprise! :eek:

They're about the money. Wouldn't be shocked once they actually take over card production to see them do to the breakers out there what they're doing to Topps, Panini, and others. Why let online breakers profit from your product when you can figure out a way to keep those profits for yourself.

I'd already brought up the idea in earlier posts, months ago, when word of Fanatics taking over baseball licensing from Topps first came out, about the possibility of Fanatics maybe issuing cards encapsulated as "uncirculated" to customers sometime in the future. Figured that Fanatics might also look to take over direct distribution of cards to the public one day, cutting out the online breakers. And if so, and they're willing to go that far, why not then offer those customers buying directly from them the option (at an additional cost of course) to have Fanatics encapsulate a card certified as "uncirculated", and make even more money for themselves? Supposedly all these modern cards are perfect when first coming off the printing line, so immediately encapsulating them before they get handled, like sending them in to get graded, would/should ensure they are in perfect condition. And it would also ensure no card doctors have a chance to mess around with such cards either, which would likely be viewed by many as a very good and positive thing for the hobby.

Pure speculation, but not an impossibility. Could severely impact TPGs going forward then. And who knows, maybe it would even be done as a calculated move by Fanatics to damage existing TPG businesses to then swoop in and acquire one when they're down. Kind of just like what they did to/with Topps. Once again, it's probably all about the money.

Not really, because you'd only say the card is "uncirculated", which it is. Most people would expect a modern card coming off the printing line to be perfect and exactly the same as every other similar card just coming off the printing line, before it starts getting handled a lot and becomes circulated.
You wouldn't need an experienced grader to do that either, it would just be accepted by the collecting public.

Think of it maybe like autographed cards that Topps creates, has signed, and then inserts into their products. Topps states the autographs are real, and everyone pretty much just accepts it. I don't believe people normally take such autographed cards and then spend more money to send them in to a TPG to be authenticated a second time. They generally just accept Topps word, and that is it. So why wouldn't the same hold true for a card Topps sends out that claims it is uncirculated, and therefore should be perfect.

Agree, encapsulating a card before it leaves the factory is 100% accurate, and requires no judgement or the additional costs of hiring "expert" graders.

It's not, but pretty much every company that's gotten started has made loads of mistakes, even if they're switching from small sets to larger sets.
Leaf.... kinda speaks for itself

Bowman- small 48 set, even then some cropping consistency issues. Bigger 49 set with still more problems that had to be fixed.

Topps- small 51, a couple variations because of trades. 52 large set, Loads of variations, like different backs on the first series

Fleer - a few things with the small sets, loads of problems with the first big set in 81

Donruss- Experienced with non sports, big baseball set in 81= problems.

Score- Lots of problems in 88.


UD - Oddly pretty good in 89. No more really than any other company at the time. But they probably only used one printer that they may have owned.

Pacific sort of eased into bigger sets from smaller ones and I think went into football first. and we know how that went.....

Who else? I sort of forget what was owned by who in the 90's.

Even with Topps, I expect big things on the variation front :D

encapsulating and even grading cards before release has been done before

Signature rookies signature prime signed cards, all came in a had holder with a factory seal.

Collectors Edge Edge Graded had a PSA graded card in each pack.

I think there were others too.

And those were back when taking a piece out of PSA would have been a lot more likely.

Sorry, I didn't mean to infringe on your intellectual property rights, he said good-naturedly. But isn't it the case that PSA was buried under an avalanche of "circulated" current-year cards that were sold by Topps (et al) to "specialists", who immediately and with as little handling as possible submitted them to PSA for grading in anticipation of selling them as soon as they were returned as PSA 10s? Unless I'm wrong about that, it seems like common sense (and basic free-market capitalism) for Fanatics to address the tsunami of demand for PSA 10 (which is essentially a euphemism for uncirculated) current-year cards directly.

But a big (huge?) factor in the tsunami of demand for PSA 10s is that not every, or anywhere near every, uncirculated card gets a 10. PSA goes to great (ridiculous, arbitrary) lengths to create artificial scarcity of 10s by "finding" undetectable flaws that result in a 9 or an 8.

Shipping out pre-slabbed "uncirculated" cards in any robust number would kill the (arbitrary, perceived) scarcity, which is the real source of the demand, not the condition itself. On the other hand, if they ship out few enough pre-slabbed for them to be scarce, it probably wouldn't be very profitable. If they tried to charge too much, people would just buy the regular version and hope to get the blessing of the PSA wizard. Or I guess they could do a very limited-edition release of a pre-slabbed card that isn't replicated in a non-slabbed version, but there the slabbing would be only a minor selling point above and beyond the scarcity of the card itself.

The Fanatics ownership group also owns CSG. Any cards that they distribute already slabbed will almost certainly be in CSG slabs.

LOL

George, Wasn't picking on you, and my apologies if it came across that way. Just mentioning it in case you wanted to go back and see what others may have already said in the earlier thread(s). I'm bad at finding and attaching old thread links myself.

I get your point about PSA and trying to get 10s from them, but seems like after listening to all the talk and criticism their grading gets, it sounds like it is really getting harder to get 10 grades from them. Plus there's the additional dissatisfaction with the backlog issue and submitters waiting months and months to get their graded cards returned, not to even mention the increased fees. But why would Fanatics/Topps be so concerned about PSA? The way things are working now, what does Fanatics/Topps make off people buying their cards, and then submitting them right away to PSA (or any other TPG)? Far as I can tell, nothing. So if Fanatics/Topps were to decide to start marketing directly to their customer base, and basically begin taking distribution over from the breakers, why not try something like also offering their customers the opportunity to have cards they win from them encapsulated as "uncirculated" right from the factory? Fanatics/Topps can then charge their customers extra for this service, and make money that otherwise would just be going to TPGs. It also eliminates the possibility that customers buying cards through breakers, or from other sources, could inadvertently do damage to them in handling and sending them off for grading, regardless of how careful they are, and thus end up with a lower grade. Heck, the TPG they send their cards to could mishandle and damage someone's cards, ever so slightly, also resulting in lower grades. And any submitter would probably never know it. And you sure as heck know the TPG likely won't admit to damaging someone's cards. Don't know about you, but I honestly can't really tell the difference between a 9, 9.5, or 10, with the naked eye. And if the cards are encapsulated at the factory, people buying them in the after-/secondary markets won't have to worry so much about card doctors having gotten their hands on them before they sent off to TPGs for grading. So if given the opportunity, I could see some people, at least in the beginning, possibly embrace the idea of a factory issued "uncirculated" designation. And as you said/asked, isn't a PSA 10 card more or less considered the equivalent of an uncirculated card? To that statement I agree and say yes. But then what's to stop the possibility in the future, if the practice becomes more and more accepted by even just some collectors, that a Fanatics/Topps factory encapsulated "uncirculated" card now in people's eyes becomes the equivalent of a PSA 10?

If Fanatics/Topps could pull that off, I could even see them possibly looking to later on acquire one of the established TPGs that possibly took a hit from such actions. That would help Fanatics to add to and expand their vertical market even further. Just look what they've done to the sports card manufacturing business as a whole, and Topps specifically, in a relatively very short period of time. If Fanatics has already gone this far with the card manufacturing part of the industry, what makes you think they'll stop there, and maybe not try to get into (and possibly take over) the distribution/wholesale sales, breaking, and grading parts of the industry next? Fanatics, ergo the major U.S. sports leagues and their accompanying player's associations and unions, is all about making as much money for themselves as they can. How they intend to do that, and how it will end up affecting our little niche of the collecting universe, remains to be seen.

That would/could probably still be done to such factory "uncirculated" cards. Weren't/aren't some people/groups putting stickers and other markings on previously TPG graded cards to further separate them from similar graded ones already? So why not just do the same with these. And how long is PSA's registry going to keep driving their inherent price advantage over other TPG's graded cards? It seems that more and more of the young people jumping into the"hobby" with their new money are of the investor/flipper ilk, and don't really care that much about having their cards listed on the PSA registry. If that turns out to be true, I can see down the road where that could start to turn some collectors off on PSA, and maybe have them start embracing the factory "uncirculated" concept. You only need a few people/collectors to start it off, and then maybe have it snowball from there. And who's to say people from Fanatics couldn't be going into the secondary markets online to light that spark themselves. Past market manipulation has been discussed on here and other sites numerous times already, so what's one more?

Or what about this idea? What if Fanatics came along and set up their own registry, but incorporated all the major TPGs in it? Everyone on here's been complaining about SGCs lack of a registry for quite some time now. I don't believe Beckett has ever had a registry, am I right? And of course, PSA's registry is king! It wouldn't necessarily be easy to convince everyone to join in, nor have the info fully loaded overnight. But over time, maybe as more and more people accepted the idea and would send graded collection info in, the fact that collectors could used graded cards from different TPGs to get their collection rankings, without having to cross everything over to, or sent in for grading by, PSA, could end up proving to be attractive to an awful lot of collectors. Not to mention maybe taking down PSA a notch or so. And Fanatics could include their factory "uncirculated" cards somewhere in their registry as well.

Before anyone says it is too far-fetched, and will never will occur, just consider of everyone else out there already in this industry, who has a greater economic drive, motivation, and wherewithal to maybe make something like any, or all, of this happen, besides Fanatics? And again, before you just flat out say no way, think and look back over the last few decades at all the things you swore or never dreamed would eventually happen.....................but did!

Bowman did some auto rookies that were factory sealed in early 2000’s…


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I just hope that, in addition to the likely plethora of glitzy and iridescent junk they produce, they issue also a set of straightforward base cards every year.

I agree. The conflict-of-interest that I saw was if they were grading their own cards.