My Topps Memories Won’t Fade
When Fanatics revealed that it had purchased Topps last summer, I was initially stunned. Memories of collecting baseball cards as a 12-year-old flashed through my mind. Back then I would ride my bike to Wildt’s Delicatessen in Cedar Grove, N.J., and buy a pack or two. I’d throw out the gum and check out the cards, some of which would have that fine gum powder on them. It was 1967 and I recall getting duplicates of Dick Groat and Mayo Smith all too often. These are great memories that I will always cherish.
Now that I’m an old man I find myself saddened by this development and wondering what the future will be for this iconic company.
Fanatics is an $18 billion online retailer run by CEO Michael Rubin. It has been growing at an extremely rapid pace in the sportswear arena and is now determined to be a major player in collectibles, sports betting, and broadcasting.
Not only has Fanatics secured trading card rights for Major League Baseball, but also for the National Football League and the National Basketball Association. It has the money and it wants to dominate.
Topps was planning to go public through a merger with Mudrick Capital Acquisition Corp., a special acquisition company that values the sports card giant at $1.3 billion. The deal was supposed to close no later than this fall. Then along came Michael Rubin, who proceeded to blow it up.
Fanatics’ move proves once again that you can’t assume anything will last forever in the business world. New people are constantly moving into positions of power and are determined to make their mark. You don’t do that by sitting back in your fancy leather chair, making phone calls to your stock broker and maintaining relationships by taking key customers out to fancy lunches or dinners, of course.
Moving forward, what’s the future for Topps? No one knows yet. I stopped buying or completing Topps baseball card sets three years ago. I retired six years ago and decided to instead concentrate on slowly auctioning off my sets. I also was disappointed to see that Topps stopped putting a player’s complete statistics on the back of each card.
Fanatics isn’t saying anything about its plans, which is its prerogative. Topps has 80 years of history. So it would be hard to believe that Fanatics would destroy or damage the brand.
Right now, more questions than answers rule the day. But Fanatics has a lot of experienced people on its staff. I’m sure they’ve already crunched a lot of numbers and made plenty of internal projections. These people know that the whole hobby is waiting for their next move. If they make the right decisions, fans of all ages will spend their money buying the new sets that will be coming out in the years ahead. If they mess up they will hear about it very quickly (thanks to social media) and adjust just as quickly. In the meantime, card buyers of all ages will wait and watch. Wouldn’t you closely observe the evolution of a business (sports cards) that’s projected to reach $98.7 billion by 2027, according to Verified Market Research?