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Collecting and Selling Sports (and Wrestling!) Cards


Kevin Wilson

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1 hour ago, RIPPA said:

 

I'm not sure how exactly Topps would be able to compete even if given the chance.  MLB was essentially handing themselves the license - there's no scenario where Topps can outdo that.

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36 minutes ago, odessasteps said:

When they were taken over by Eisner . I had remembered they were either bought from bankruptcy or a hostile takeover, but i guess my memory was faulty.

I see.  Yeah, he still owns them but just lost a gigantic amount of money this week.  He was in the process of taking Topps public and that's now gone.  He paid $385m in 2007.  I'd be shocked if he could get $100m for it now.

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The news is so fresh in some ways there are more questions than answers, especially without an official press release on it and exactly what baseball cards will look like over the next five years. For example, right now players can still sign cards for other companies, I assume that will still be possible if Topps wanted to go that route. They just can't use the logos. The 2023 to 2025 years are vague. Still a lot to iron out. I've never been loyal to any one card company, I have a fair number of Topps Tier 1 autograph cards as I like their look/cost but beyond that I have cards from every company. I wouldn't say I am excited about the change but its too early to really know the impact until Fanatics starts making cards and we see their structure/prices/look.

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This might have more of an impact to collectors than Topps frankly.  Panini is the brand for people who collect NFL and NBA cards because of how they are treated like a premium product.  Especially people who are investing in these cards.    Almost too premium as most of their product is not even close for normal people to collect.       Topps baseball doesn't really have that same level except for a few scenarios.  I can't imagine that Fanatics is going to process their baseball cards one way and their football/basketball cards another way.

 

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On 5/13/2021 at 11:33 AM, hammerva said:

In the "This is Why We Can't Have Nice Things" category

I kind of knew we would fuck up this sports card boom but didn't think it would be this way

 

Good riddance.  Trading cards are a loss prevention nightmare.

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For anyone that still sometimes collects WWE cards, the new company making cards for them (Panini) is going to try to make sure you stop. Panini got the WWE rights to start this year from Topps (Topps will have it right back in a few years), and their first release is next week. Right now the boxes are selling for about $850, and still only contain two autographs just like the Topps boxes that cost around... $60. This is what the cards look like:

3bHbI4L.jpg

The big signers for the set include Austin, Batista, Undertaker, HHH, Bret Hart, and Hogan. Look, the "Prizm" name is one that sells well and there is value outside of autographs with all the parallels but it feels like just a crazy price increase for a really over-saturated market, as Topps pumped out a lot of WWE sets the last few years. I imagine there will be a lot of bad breaks for this box and I am curious to see if they can maintain this price point going forward. There will likely be retail (Target, Walmart, etc) boxes as well that will be cheaper but they will be really hard to find and probably won't have guaranteed autographs.

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Honestly, Fanatics (who now own the Topps name) is doing everything it can to push out Panini completely to be the sole provider of all licensed sports cards by making offers that sports/sports associations can't refuse. Now that they have UEFA, within a few years the only major sport still with another company will be NHL, which deals with Upper Deck (Panini still has NASCAR for now also). Fanatics/Topps already made a new deal with WWE so WWE will go back to Topps as soon as their Panini contract is over.

As a card collector, I don't like it. Panini deals pretty much solely with stickers, and I prefer on-card, plus I don't like the idea of one company having a monopoly of the sports card market. Companies like Leaf will still exist, selling cards without official licenses, but it isn't the same. 

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