Feeling bad for the folks at Topps just about now

The soundtrack of my childhood includes the clickety-clackety noise your bicycle tires made when they had baseball cards clothes-pinned to them. Sure, it was (mostly) boys who  collected baseball cards. And (mostly) boys who traded baseball cards. And (mostly) 

boys who flipped baseball cards. And (mostly) boys who chewed (or attempted to chew) the miserable thin flat slab of bubble gum that came with a packet of baseball cards. But us girls like baseball cards, too. Especially for that clickety-clack sound. (

This girl also liked to use them as flashcards to teach her baby sister to recognize baseball players. That baby sister was plenty smart, and could soon identify the Red Sox rosters of the early-1960s. Among her first words: Gary Geiger. (Geiger was a middlin' Red Sox outfielder of the era. "We" acquired him as part of a trade for Jimmy Piersall, of all people.)

Those clickety-clackety-ing baseball cards were sold by Topps, which since 1951 has had a deal with Major League Baseball to produce baseball cards - which have become, of course, a big deal collectible item. 

Since 1951. Take it from someone who's been around from a bit before 1951: that's a long time. And now Topps has been dumped.

Memorabilia leviathan Fanatics, continuing its push into the collecting space, has cemented a deal with Major League Baseball and the MLB Players Association for the exclusive licenses to produce baseball cards. (Source: ESPN)

They've also acquired rights to other major league sports, but collecting basketball, football, and hockey cards has never been the "thing" that colleting baseball cards was, is, and ever shall be, even while the sport seems to wane in popularity.

I actually have no idea whatsoever whether kids still collect baseball cards, but I'm guessing that they're no longer available in little five-packs that you buy for a nickel at the corner market ("spa", in Worcester parlance) or the local drugstore. And I'm guessing that kids don't flip them, let alone attach them to their bicycle spokes. And I'm guessing that the collectible market has gotten so insane that most of the folks who buy cards do so as an investment. They're hoping that they end up with something that, down the line, ends up like the rookie Mickey Mantle card - "the Mona Lisa" of baseball cards - which sold last year for $5.2 million. (Compare this to Mantle's highest salary of $100K, which he made in his final two playing years, 1963 and 1964.)

So I'm guessing that cards these days come in fancy packaging that enables the owner to hang on to a pristine-condition card that's going to be worth something someday. 

According to the memo, Fanatics' deal with MLB and the MLBPA is more than 10 times larger than any the union has ever agreed to. The memo also states that the deal, when combined with other recent deals, is expected to generate roughly $2 billion by 2045.

Lots of money out in them thar' baseball cards alright.

Fanatics - natch - also has the rights to sell MLB NFT's (non-fungible tokens, which I first typed in there as "non-fungible tokes", which I'd sure need a few of in order to get myself to purchase an NFT).

This has got to be a crusher for Topps, as baseball was its flagship business.

Sure, they still have a few other irons in the card collecting fire, like Women's Lacrosse and Major League Soccer. And they'll always have the Garbage Pail Kids, which I suspect kids, rather than those hoping for a big score, still collect .

Anyway, this announcement has scuttled Topps' plan to go public, which I'm sure has all the Topps' investors and execs (not to mention any rank and file employees who may have earned a bit of coin from the company's going public) tearing their hair out. (Topps had a $1.3 billion pre-IPO valuation.) And I'm sure that all that hair-tearing out was accompanied by plenty o' swearing.  

The baseball license Topps holds doesn't disappear overnight. They have a few years, and there are details like not being able to sue the team logos on their cards in the meantime. But what a blow. And Topps was reportedly blindsided by the deal. Which means that Topps folks were asleep at the wheel or, more likely, MLB and the MLBPA are scummy snakes in the grass.

I do feel bad that the folks at Topps lost out on a lucrative IPO. Especially if the little guys there were in line for an extra special payday. But IPO aside, I feel bad for those at the top of  Topps who were blindsided. For everyone on down through the ranks who had anything to do with the baseball end of Topps' business: account managers, product managers, marketers, designers, printers, et al. 

Life sure was a lot simpler back when half those Topps' cards ended up clipped to bicycle spokes...