Major League Baseball is dropping Topps as its vendor of baseball trading cards, “ending a relationship that’s been in place since 1952,” CNBC reported on Thursday, August 19, 2021, although the current licensing agreement that runs through 2025 remains in place. So Topps will sell baseball cards for 4 more years.
It’s about money, of course. Under its deal with Topps, the league and players got royalties. Topps will be replaced by a new company which the league and players’ association will partially own.
A planned merger of Topps with a SPAC (special purpose acquisition company, the latest Wall Street gimmick, read about them here) immediately crashed.
Topps isn’t some mom-and-pop outfit, although it started out as a family business (history here). Its corporate chairman is Michael Eisner, who was Disney’s CEO.
My brothers and I collected baseball cards when we were kids. We played with them, so they weren’t in mint condition, and some were dog-eared, which would have limited their collectors’ value. That box disappeared during our parents’ last move, presumably stolen by the movers.