The end of an era for collectors: MLB ends 70-year-old card deal with Topps

• Major League Baseball is reportedly ending its 70-year-old relationship with baseball card company Topps.
• The deal with Fanatics, an online sports apparel retailer, essentially makes Topps obsolete.
• Topps has created some of the world’s most iconic trading cards, including the 1952 Topps Mickey Mantle, one of which recently sold for $5.2 million.

A Fanatics rookie card just doesn’t have the same ring to it.

The baseball card industry was dealt a shocker on Thursday when Major League Baseball decided to end a 70-year-old trading card deal with Topps in favor of Fanatics, an online sports apparel retailer, which MLB owns equity in.

The agreement, first reported by the Wall Street Journal, also comes with Fanatics reaching agreements with the player unions of MLB, the NBA and NFL to produce trading cards for a new company that, as of now, won’t come branded with the famed Topps logo, or Panini America emblem, which had deals with both the NBA and NFL for their trading card rights.

Fanatics’ deal with MLB’s Players Association will begin in 2023, according to the report, although Topps currently has an agreement through 2025. The NBA and NFL deals won’t begin until 2025 and 2026, respectively.

The flip of card branding was met with heavy criticism across the internet. Celebrated baseball card collect Keith Olbermann called MLB commissioner Rob Manfred “baseball’s Jim Jones” and others even went so far as to say they would stop collecting all together with Fanatics at the helm.

It’s tough news for a hobby that saw another life thanks to the pandemic. Baseball cards thrived during periods of lockdown, even forcing some big-box retailers like Target to pull cards off their shelves due to the unruly demand. Card-grading services like PSA had to shut down several of their services due to overwhelming demand from its customers, with a backlog of more than one million cards at one point, according to the parent company’s CEO.

What happens to baseball cards now?

Baseball gets a lot of money

The Wall Street Journal reported that MLBA executive director Tony Clark sent a memo to players saying that the union struck gold in a deal that is more than 10 times larger than any other deal previously agreed to. That deal, along with other agreements the MLBPA has reached, will result in nearly $2 billion through 2045.

Topps had paid the MLBPA more than $20 million in 2020 as part of a licensing agreement, according to the report.

In the deal with Fanatics, both MLB and the NBA will allow the company to use their logos, however, the NFL has not reached a deal where logos can appear; just player images and likenesses.

It’s the end of an era

Since the early 1950s, Topps and baseball went hand-in-hand. Perhaps its most iconic collaboration, the 1952 Topps Mickey Mantle rookie card, is a cash-grabber, with one selling for a record-breaking $5.2 million earlier this year.

Topps has morphed through several phases during its partnership. As popularity in trading cards increased, so did production which effectively created what is called the “Junk Wax” era, a period in the late 80s and early 90s where trading card companies mass-produced products that flooded the market and effectively made cards worthless.

Only 2 years after selling for $2.88M, a 1952 Mickey Mantle card has changed hands again.

This time, entrepreneur Rob Gough has bought the card for $5.2M.

At $5.2M, it's the highest price ever paid for a trading card — beating the $3.4M Mike Trout rookie card. pic.twitter.com/1ku1kZHPxh

— Joe Pompliano (@JoePompliano) January 14, 2021

In the years since the Junk Wax period, Topps has brought the game closer to fans by creating boutique trading cards, which started with inserting game-used relics into packs. This includes things like baseball bats, jerseys, and a piece of a corn stalk from the Field of Dreams game between the Chicago White Sox and New York Yankees earlier this month.

Prices have effectively priced out kids collectors and now packs of Topps cards go for around $8, with resellers hijacking prices much higher on some of the company’s more high-end products.

Topps already feeling the blow

Topps, currently valued at $1.3 billion, has executive star power; the company’s chairman is former Disney CEO Michael Eisner. However, Fanatics has grown into a behemoth in the sports world, owning all of MLB’s e-commerce rights, and it has an eye for venturing outside of sports apparel and into sports gambling.

The company, founded by Michael Rubin, co-owner of the NBA’s Philadelphia 76ers and NHL’s New Jersey Devils, is currently valued at $18 billion.

As for Topps, they’ve started to feel the ripple effects of the announcement.

On Friday, Mudrick Capital Acquisition Corporation II called off its SPAC merger with The Topps Co. by “mutual agreement” due to the 70-year trading card deal coming to an end.