Will Topps Baseball Cards Hit the Bottom?

That's me at Don's Collectibles -- it's a baseball & sports card collector's heaven on earth.

Topps will be losing their rights to make baseball cards. After 70 years and countless memories, Topps will be losing their rights to Fanatics. Fanatics make sports apparel. Any sports apparel nowadays. But their clothing is the most generic anyone has ever seen. It’s literally the sports logo on a shirt of the team’s color. Snazzy, right?

I bet their baseball cards will be a picture of the bust of a player on a gray background. No team, no name, no stats on the back, just a gray card with the bust of each player. They’ll also get the rights from Panini to do NFL and NBA cards. Not to completely slander Fanatics, they deserve it, it is reported that Fanatics offered 10 times more money than the MLBPA and MLB ever saw from the baseball card department. Also, this is a great way for Fanatics to reach more people and expand their business.

While on a family vacation, driving home, my family and I decided to stop by a town called Strasburg in Pennsylvania. My father and I went a store called Don’s Collectibles. I was immediately enchanted by the store. Memorabilia of all sorts was packed into this store from the floor to the ceiling and back. Signed baseballs, posters, baseball cards, old baseball cards, gloves, framed photos and more baseballs. Among the memorabilia, I saw a signed baseball by Tommy Lasorda, and, if you’re a reader of this blog, you know I met Lasorda at a baseball game a couple of years ago. While buying five packs of baseball cards, because, you know, you gotta, I had a great conversation with Don about the Topps situation. It lasted a few minutes and it gave me a lot of insight which I included in this blog. His address: Don's Collectibles at 13 E Main St, Strasburg, PA. Great store. Visit it when you get the chance.

What Fanatics is doing is what pretty much all of us saw Jeff Bezos and Amazon do. They’re wiping out the competition. If the person who’s behind all of these brilliant moves goes even further, for example, sponsorships of sorts or deals with video games, which could propel business even further.

Topps did the latter when it was still thriving. A baseball video game, MLB the Show puts things called moments in the game each week, and when you complete the objective in these moments, they give you a player or players. These moments are short, like, “Tally one hit” or “Hit one home run” or “Strike out 3 batters.”

Topps is definitely not going to hand over this contract so easily unless Fanatics already has this through the deal with MLBPA and MLB. A question that’s begging to be answered is “Where do Topps and Panini go after this?” Without baseball cards, Topps is a name that will fade quickly. Don’t even talk about Panini, taking away football and basketball is like throwing them in the gutter unconscious, they’re gone unless someone throws them a lifeline, but it needs to happen fast because I know that about 50% or more of the readers reading this blog didn’t know that Panini was anything more than a meal. Unless Topps wants to create bowling, cornhole throwing, and underwater basket weaving cards, and that’s a huge success, then a miracle would have to happen. Some may believe that throwing a wallet at a problem will solve it, some don’t.

Me? I believe that it depends on the problem, and I also believe in salvaging what you can, so you don’t lose all of it. I think a fat cat should waddle over, consider the Topps situation, and throw their wallet at it. Look what Bezos did with Whole Foods when they were sinking. He waddled over and threw a lifeline. Now look at them – business is booming! A little advice? I believe that all smart people should invest in Topps baseball cards. Look at cards from the ‘50s, one card, of an average player is going for at least $5 or $10. That’ll get you some money in the future. Everyone wants Topps to persevere through this (mainly because I’m scared of what Fanatics is going to do to baseball cards) but because Topps made countless memories and because everyone loves a legacy. If everything stays as it is now with Topps, then they’ll complete 75 years of the leading baseball card brand. I hope they’ll go for another 75.