[Cozumeleno]

Ken beat me to it, but my guess was that Topps wasn't even fulfilling the orders themselves and that the item could just have sold out due to his recent popularity.

This isn't to say that the kid doesn't have a right to feel cheated since they took the order at the time. But I can't believe that a Murphy bat elsewhere can't be had for $175.00. If I were Topps, I'd find a way to fulfill the order.

As an aside, Topps is actually a really great company in my book. For my first job out of college, I worked at a very small charity for an extremely rare disorder that was a regional branch of a larger 'parent'. We had like three full-time employees, annual revenues of like $100,000, and were complete nobodies.

We had a sports auction every year and without fail, Topps would send us hundreds of unopened packs (newer, but premium stuff like Chrome, etc.). We didn't have any connections or anything - just sent a random letter to them every year. I'm sure other people may have horror stories about them, but I always thought that was a really stand up thing to do.