Topps to be replaced as the BB Card Manuracturer

[Tabe]

Originally Posted by JustinD

Apologies, I did not read the mlbpa note. It leaves me to wonder if they will issue multiple licenses for additional cash even as it says exclusive as they have no history of exclusive deals. If the players see additional cash not taken it could cause more problems than on the mlb side. I don’t see this working in a positive way to give exclusivity to a private company with zero production or distribution experience outside their own sites.

MLB and MLBPA have ownership in the new company. They gave themselves the exclusive license. The NFL and NFLPA have ownership, too. NBAPA does, too. So Panini can kiss their NFL license goodbye as well. The players from the NBA and NFL have already signed deals with the new company.

And these guys have 4 years to figure this stuff out. I expect distribution and production to be minor issues at best.

[BobC]

So the question becomes, does Fanatics find and hire their own, new staff and people to start to work on the upcoming design, production, and distribution of baseball and other sports cards in the coming years, or do they start to go after and poach as many Topps people as they can, or lastly, do they wait till this new licensing goes through and wipes out Topps' attempt to go public and just swoop in and buy them out for pennies on the dollar (and get all their employees that way)?

[Snowman]

If Fanatics is smart, they'll try to acquire Topps as well. I think a Panini acquisition would be less likely though. Or perhaps they'll just enter into some sort of licensing agreement with all the card manufacturers that effectively just allows them to skim profits by being the middleman to all the players associations. To me, this looks like it's all coming from the players themselves. They see the money being thrown around in the hobby and they want more of it. Every time a modern card sells for a million dollars, they probably complain about not getting a cut of that. Card prices are probably going up. At least for the distributors and card shops that is. No more buying a case from Topps for $4,000 and reselling it for $20,000. They're going to squeeze the middlemen out and take over that role. That's my guess.

[packs]

I think they would have to buy Topps to maximize profits. Topps doesn’t only trade on commodity. Topps trades on brand recognition too. Donruss and Pannini baseball cards aren’t worth anything and it’s not only because they don’t carry logos.

[mrreality68]

Originally Posted by packs

I think they would have to buy Topps to maximize profits. Topps doesn’t only trade on commodity. Topps trades on brand recognition too. Donruss and Pannini baseball cards aren’t worth anything and it’s not only because they don’t carry logos.

Agreed the Brand Recognition and value of the Topps name and intellectual properties exceeds the others and not even close

[MooseDog]

I would suggest the days of cardboard pictures of players are numbered. The Fanatics market is not for us old guys. Millennials love to gamble in all forms and I see Fantatics getting heavily into the NFT market. The commissions and fees alone would probably dwarf card sales.

[Snowman]

Originally Posted by MooseDog

I would suggest the days of cardboard pictures of players are numbered. The Fanatics market is not for us old guys. Millennials love to gamble in all forms and I see Fantatics getting heavily into the NFT market. The commissions and fees alone would probably dwarf card sales.

That would be a colossal mistake. NFTs are not the future of this hobby. I have no doubt that they will try to push it, but it won't succeed. They'll win over some crypto enthusiasts who just want to invest in what they hope is the next digital frontier, but it's a massive failure to overlook the psychological aspects of what it means to be a collector in the first place. People who collect, which are still the core of this hobby and always will be, have emotional and physical connections to their collections. You can't just separate that aspect and send them all pictures of fake cards instead. The only people who would buy NFTs are people looking to invest who don't take the time to understand the roots of this hobby that actually make the grass grow. It might survive as an adjacent or tangential product, but I just don't see it ever actually taking over as the primary sports collectors' product.

[Casey2296]

Originally Posted by MooseDog

I would suggest the days of cardboard pictures of players are numbered. The Fanatics market is not for us old guys. Millennials love to gamble in all forms and I see Fantatics getting heavily into the NFT market. The commissions and fees alone would probably dwarf card sales.

They're already there, fanatics owns a majority stake of Candy Digital.