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Tom BoblittI had a few. Oddly enough, it's a BAD experiment. Topps issues these IPO's. For like $4-$10 you buy an electronic card which is then put into your portfolio. They do have a pretty dynamic market for moving the cards between portfolios through the guise of ebay or of Cardtarget (which, by the way IS an efficient marketplace from what I've seen--for eTopps). Much like the shiny card market, once you buy the cards, 5-10% of them go up. Typically the Ben Roethlisberger rookie card or Lebron James, etc. Which, in most, if not all cases, are like a TRUE IPO where you get few if any shares. The other 90-95% of the cards decrease in value. Mike has some fantastic statistical tools at Cardtarget. Just take a look at the graphs of the sets or what the IPO price WAS versus what the current price IS. Really neat experiment but a failed one. Topps has noted problems with eTopps in their investor notes almost quarterly. They've had a HUGE contraction in the market from the 2002 or so timeframe when they were issuing 3000+ of each card. They still had demand and sold out and those cards are basically worthless now. Now they do 500-1000 of each card. The physical cards are very nice quality but a single card, encapsulated for $4-$10 is pretty expensive overall--especially when you have to PAY to take them 'in hand'.
I wonder about the 'Partial Shares Market'....I think Mike is selling to an audience already accepting of losing money on the secondary market on 'shares' of cards just like they lose money in their eTopps portfolios. At a certain point, when an issue has been devalued enough, can someone come in and buy up all the shares and have a valuable prewar card at 50% of the 'issue' price? That would leave Cardtarget still having the $$ to purchase more vintage cards to continue the Market. This seems to be a similar model as eTopps. Not to disparage Mike because I think Cardtarget does a great job at what they're doing and the people who buy these shares are doing so willingly, fully understanding of the potential risk/reward.