Topps to be replaced as the BB Card Manuracturer

[MooseDog]

I would suggest the days of cardboard pictures of players are numbered. The Fanatics market is not for us old guys. Millennials love to gamble in all forms and I see Fantatics getting heavily into the NFT market. The commissions and fees alone would probably dwarf card sales.

[Snowman]

Originally Posted by MooseDog

I would suggest the days of cardboard pictures of players are numbered. The Fanatics market is not for us old guys. Millennials love to gamble in all forms and I see Fantatics getting heavily into the NFT market. The commissions and fees alone would probably dwarf card sales.

That would be a colossal mistake. NFTs are not the future of this hobby. I have no doubt that they will try to push it, but it won't succeed. They'll win over some crypto enthusiasts who just want to invest in what they hope is the next digital frontier, but it's a massive failure to overlook the psychological aspects of what it means to be a collector in the first place. People who collect, which are still the core of this hobby and always will be, have emotional and physical connections to their collections. You can't just separate that aspect and send them all pictures of fake cards instead. The only people who would buy NFTs are people looking to invest who don't take the time to understand the roots of this hobby that actually make the grass grow. It might survive as an adjacent or tangential product, but I just don't see it ever actually taking over as the primary sports collectors' product.

[sbfinley]

Originally Posted by Snowman

That would be a colossal mistake. NFTs are not the future of this hobby. I have no doubt that they will try to push it, but it won't succeed. They'll win over some crypto enthusiasts who just want to invest in what they hope is the next digital frontier, but it's a massive failure to overlook the psychological aspects of what it means to be a collector in the first place. People who collect, which are still the core of this hobby and always will be, have emotional and physical connections to their collections. You can't just separate that aspect and send them all pictures of fake cards instead. The only people who would buy NFTs are people looking to invest who don't take the time to understand the roots of this hobby that actually make the grass grow. It might survive as an adjacent or tangential product, but I just don't see it ever actually taking over as the primary sports collectors' product.

I’m a gigantic crypto enthusiast. I’ve been in ETH since the pre-mine ICO. I’ve given two presentations to my company’s board about allocating a percentage of our treasury or quarterly TCI into crypto. I guided my CFO through her first personal crypto purchase. That being said - NFTs (As they are popular now) are the absolute dumbest thing I have seen and it baffles me. People irrationally dropping $10k on digital 8-bit images then losing almost that much in gas fees because they don’t take five minutes to check network congestion. It’s idiotic. But the again I collect pictures of dudes playing sports so to each their own.

[egri]

Thinking about it a bit more, I guess it was bound to happen sooner or later. Allen & Ginter, the American Tobacco Company, Goudey, Bowman, Leaf and others have all fallen by the wayside for one reason or other, Topps just hung around longer than they did.

[doug.goodman]

Originally Posted by egri

Thinking about it a bit more, I guess it was bound to happen sooner or later. Allen & Ginter, the American Tobacco Company, Goudey, Bowman, Leaf and others have all fallen by the wayside for one reason or other, Topps just hung around longer than they did.

Yep.

It's a sad day for Topps and it's own fans, but life goes on.

[bigfanNY]

Topps not dead yet. They have a license for 4 more years and as mentioned above Brand recognition that is through the roof. Just like Bowman and leaf and Donruss too valuable to just fade away. I just hope the competition brings out some great cards.

[Tabe]

Originally Posted by bigfanNY

Topps not dead yet. They have a license for 4 more years and as mentioned above Brand recognition that is through the roof. Just like Bowman and leaf and Donruss too valuable to just fade away. I just hope the competition brings out some great cards.

Topps has an MLB license for 4 more years but an MLBPA* license for only 2 more. That means 2 years of not being able to use any active players and having to do individual licenses with anybody they do want to use.

With the deal to go public going up in flames, I really see no outcome other than Fanatics buying Topps and continuing the Topps brand. I can't imagine Fanatics would turn down a chance to get Topps at a deep discount and just run cards with the Fanatics brand. Just don't see that happening.

Also, at the end of the day, Topps never had a chance anyway. There's no possible way they could top the licensing deal that the Fanatics group could offer since the leagues and players themselves own the company. They gave themselves the license. Topps can't touch that. No way.

* - what genius at Topps negotiated license deals with MLB and MLBPA that don't end at the same time?

[Mark17]

Just throwing this out there....... is there enough profit for Topps to just issue numerous non-sports sets, like they did in the 1960s (Gilligan's Island, McHale's Navy, The Beatles, The Monkeys, Hogans Heroes, Batman, Combat!) and so on?

Could they come up with something like Pokemon, Garbage Pail Kids, Harry Potter, or whatever, just to produce cards and make some dough?

In other words, can they survive without major league sports?

[Casey2296]

Originally Posted by MooseDog

I would suggest the days of cardboard pictures of players are numbered. The Fanatics market is not for us old guys. Millennials love to gamble in all forms and I see Fantatics getting heavily into the NFT market. The commissions and fees alone would probably dwarf card sales.

They're already there, fanatics owns a majority stake of Candy Digital.

[packs]

Nobody wants baseball card NFTs. Topps Bunt is not a hot product and none of their other digital releases seem to be catching fire.

[todeen]

Originally Posted by packs

Nobody wants baseball card NFTs. Topps Bunt is not a hot product and none of their other digital releases seem to be catching fire.

Since the dawn of time, man has collected random stupid stuff. I can't remember how old it is, but they found a connection of shiny rocks in a human cave in Europe. This is the first evidence of humans hoarding useless junk merely for the pleasure of looking at it. I'll try to find the article..... not exactly the article I was looking for, but close enough. This is about a cool looking rock. The article I remember was about agates/shale/etc.

NFTs are not fulfilling man's material instincts!

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart...cks-180961865/

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G930A using Tapatalk

[whitehse]

I will admit I am a vintage card guy but still have room for the shiny stuff on occasion. When I heard that Topps was losing it’s license, I do have to say there was a great deal of sadness that came with this news. I was raised on Topps being THE card company because it was the ONLY card company. Even when Fleer and Donruss came along in 1981, I collected those cards but Topps was still the top dog. Sure, being a vintage guy, I love Bowman, had Play Ball and Diamond Star cards in my collection and even added some Fleer to the mix but the affinity was always for the Topps brand. And since we cannot ignore the elephant in the room, Topps almost always had that value above most other brands in the business for the most part.

I like many others here on the Net54 boards am probably a dinosaur in the collecting card business in that I have stuck with my vintage sets and really have no need or desire to dive heavily into anything new. If I was being honest, I just don’t have interest in today’s players and certainly will not be shelling out large amounts of money for cards of guys I just really do not care for. For guys like me, the loss of the Topps license likely will not effect us very much but the reality is that likely Topps exiting the sports card business is much like the loss of a family friend. Someone who has been there one’s whole life and now will be summarily dismissed much like those family friends who have grown old beyond their years and everyone wonders whatever happened to them.

I am going to miss Topps but not for the fact I will no longer be able to purchase memories in packs of cards but for the fact a company that was there for me as a nine year old kid, a company who’s products helped me to learn to read and understand statistics and showed me what my childhood heroes really looked like is being dismissed. Is this Topps fault? Sure, they need to share the blame as they failed to change with the times but the real culprit is what is killing sports in general. The culprit is greed and the need to capitalize on an investment and make money for the stockholders while making the collectors pockets as light as possible. I understand it all but that doesn’t mean I have to agree with this process or be happy with it.

As for me, I am going back to my Sibby Sisti, Oscar Zamora and Fergie Jenkins cards while trying to finish my 1975 and '65 Topps set for the third time.

At least I still have these memories.

[conor912]

NPR called me last night to get my take. We talked for a good 20 minutes, so I was a bit disappointed to see how little made it into the article, but I suppose the laymen just need a bird’s eye view.

https://www.npr.org/2021/08/20/10295...facturer-topps

[Tabe]

FYI, it was just announced that the group buying and taking Topps public has backed out. I would be stunned if this new Fanatics group doesn't now swoop in and buy Topps and their production and thus continuing the Topps name.

[Snowman]

Originally Posted by Tabe

FYI, it was just announced that the group buying and taking Topps public has backed out. I would be stunned if this new Fanatics group doesn't now swoop in and buy Topps and their production and thus continuing the Topps name.

It does seem like the obvious play here. It's also probably the best outcome for the hobby.