If this is the end for Topps ...

 

I received an email yesterday evening from one of the bloggers from the old-guard. He doesn't blog much anymore but occasionally comments on my posts and he wanted to let me know the news:

"MLB will end 70-year deal with trading card company Topps," the email said.

I'm not sure why he sent it to me. Maybe he hoped I'd write about it? Maybe he thought I didn't know yet? In that case I'm assuming he doesn't visit Twitter, because, gracious, beginning late afternoon, Twitter was in an all-out frenzy over the news that Fanatics has pushed out Topps by arranging licensing deals with MLB and the MLB Players Association (as well as the NFL and NBA), effective 2023 (player association) and 2026 (MLB).

 

If you're on Twitter, you know the deal. Everyone was airing their hopes and fears about the future of Topps/the hobby in the form of opinions. But none of them were facts. Because nobody knows what's going to happen.

What will cards look like in 2026? People actually had thoughts on this. I don't even know if there will be cards in 2026. I don't know if there will be anything in 2026. We just were hit with a worldwide pandemic that knocked every facet of society sideways and nobody knew it is was going to happen two months before it did. I'm not going to attempt to say how the Fanatics takeover is going to affect collecting five years from now.

Because I don't know, I don't know how to react. People were sad. I can't be sad, I don't know what's going to happen. People were mad. I can't be mad. People were saying they'd never buy a Fanatics card. I can't say that, I barely know what Fanatics is and I certainly don't know what a card created by them would look like. Will Fanatics buy out Topps? I don't know. Will the Topps name remain? I don't know. Will flying monkeys distribute our cards out of their butts five years from now? I don't know. Could happen. Look at all the stuff you're doing now that wasn't even in your head two years ago.

 

Mostly I'm ambivalent about the news, because ...

Really, when it comes down to it, I don't care. Is Fanatics, who MLB probably hooked up with so it could tell them what to do better than it could tell Topps what to do, going to improve things that much? I don't like modern cards very much anymore and they're getting worse, and Fanatics would have to overhaul a lot of what is known as a modern card for me to look up from vintage collecting and notice.

Expressing what I think might happen is not my thing. I'm not a speculation guy. I try not to talk about things I don't know about (although I'm sure I have). I do not have knowledge or interest in business or economics. My eyes glaze over when people start talking about it. If something big like this happens and I want to get some perspective, I go some place like this (seriously, check it out), where people know what they're talking about -- at least the best they can about something that hasn't happened yet!

 

So, if you've come here seeking knowledge, sorry, I don't have that.

 

But if you've come here wondering what I hope will happen if indeed this is the end for Topps (and I have my doubts), then you've come to the right place.

 

Here is what I hope will improve if Topps is out of the picture:

 

1. The website

I'm just your average online consumer and Topps' inability to construct a logical, operational website has mystified me for years. My daughter helped overhaul her company's website during the course of a week. That isn't even her field, yet she was able to come up with something that runs a lot better than the Topps site. All these years later, the website seems an afterthought to Topps.

2. Release times

Who knows what an actual yearly baseball card set will look like in 2026, will there even be anything called flagship? But if there is, and if it is divided up into series over the course of a year, I would hope that the new outfit will allow for photos to be available of players who have switched teams before they publish the cards. None of this photoshopping in Series 2 when it is released in late June, nearly 3 months after the season began.

 

 

3. Distribution

 

I'm told that Fanatics is a wizards at distribution, so I imagine cards would be a lot more available than they've been during the Topps reign, particularly over the last four years or so. I wouldn't be surprised if the inability of consumers to get their hands on cards over the last year-plus helped spur MLB to find someone else.

 

I have often wondered why Topps cut back availability of cards to mostly big-box stores. As a child of the 1970s, I could find cards everywhere and I've written about that before. Not even a dozen years ago, I could find cards at places like Fay's (well, it was probably a former Fay's at the time). And it was maybe just a few years before when I was finding cards at bookstores.

I realize the retail landscape is much different now and better distribution won't necessarily mean being able to walk down to the gas station and get cards. But I would hope if a new company wants to sell cards, it will make sure they are available always and everywhere (including your own website!!!!). I may not know business, but I do know that's good business.

 

4. Better ideas for insert themes, etc.

I will agree with all of Topps' critics and say that Topps has leaned far too heavily on its own history over the past 20 years or so. What was once a great idea with the Heritage brand morphed into a  frankenstein monster that Topps doesn't seem to be able to stop.

 

Stuff like this is pointless and maybe one of the best reasons for somebody new running the show.

I think Topps is the best card company that ever existed and I give it a lot of leeway because it has produced many of my all-time favorite sets. But the amount of times it repeats themes, reruns its own cards and designs, rehashes concepts, just looks bad. It makes me think they've run out of ideas. And when I see Topps trot out the 1987 design over and over and over like a dementia patient who can't remember they've told the same story 45 times already, I am stunned that such a well-known company would look that clueless.

 

5. More Inclusion

My guess is this might not improve with a change in ownership. I've loathed the tendency to pack every set with rookies and stars since the '90s. There is almost zero need to have more than two cards of any player in a set, and for someone like me who believes a card set should accurately represent your average baseball team or season, stuff like this is super irritating. I love my Dodgers cards. I don't need a 25-card Cody Bellinger insert set every other year.

I would like to see cards of middle relievers and back-up catchers again.

6. Acknowledge your most dedicated collectors

Maybe this isn't anything MLB wants to do either, since the most dedicated card collectors are probably not full of people in the age 18-34 bracket. But these are my hopes and dreams, so I say it would be nice to acknowledge the set collector a little more. Maybe produce packs that contain nothing but base cards (the horror!). Parallels and inserts are nice but they are also an obstacle for the set collector ... and it's a primary reason why I don't bother attempting to collect a modern set anymore. I can't be the only one.

 

7. Hire some photographers

This is more talk from the old fogey, but photographers need to be employed just like people in any other profession. Far too many of them have lost their jobs because companies decided a person's phone can take "just as good" a picture.

But they can't. Getty Images, which Topps relies on almost solely for photos now, does a great job and has their own terrific photographers. But one source, no matter how vast their resources, still feels like one source over the course of dozens of sets per year, year after year.

One of the great things about Topps back before it scrapped hiring its own photographers is that it produced photos that nobody else had. Yeah, a lot of them were players standing still with a glove over their head. I don't care. It was a shot I couldn't find anywhere else, and it made that card unique, even if there were 47 other pitchers with gloves of their heads in the set.

I know nothing about the inner workings of Topps, but is it possible that it just didn't invest enough in its own people and that's why they're in this situation?

 

 

8. Produce cards on real cardboard again

Just a thought.

 

So that's a lot of dunking on Topps, which is already having a bad week. Sorry about that. I probably should be criticizing MLB, and its attempt to control every thought about it (maybe I will in the future).

Who knows what's in Topps' future. I'm not going to pretend to give you an answer. Maybe Topps morphs into an all-Bowman set. Maybe, and this would be cool, it leans all the way into its situation, completely embraces nonsports and produces a bunch of crazy sets that makes me feel like I'm buying Wacky Packages and Star Wars cards again.

I don't know.

NOBODY KNOWS.

And it doesn't matter for me anyway. I won't be collecting much of this stuff in the future. Maybe none of it. It's going to be 100 percent nostalgia very soon.

Stay away from my vintage cards.