Last summer, Topps celebrated 70 years of making baseball cards.
Things were great for Topps. The National Sports Collectors Convention was an enormous success for Topps in the midst of a pandemic-fueled trading card boom in August, and the company announced their second quarter earnings: a 77.7% increase in net sales to $212.2 million.
However, in late August shortly after The National, news broke that shocked fans and collectors: Fanatics was buying their way into cards. And Topps was being effectively shut down in baseball (and football… and basketball… ).
Fans and collectors feared this may be the death of the iconic brand that has been associated with the national pastime since Mickey Mantle’s rookie season.