Last week brought the arrival of my 2021 Topps factory set. What started as a wholehearted quest to build the set evolved, as it usually does, into a $50 purchase from Target.com. This pattern has held true the last several years as the price of hobby boxes has increased and the collation of those boxes has seemingly gotten worse and worse – or at least my luck has. Either way, I’m ok at doing basic math and if I can get a whole set for less than the cost of one box, that’s the choice I’ll select – even if I’m giving up the opportunity to pull a plain white swatch of fabric as a relic.
This was the latest addition to my quest to collect all of the Topps baseball sets released during my lifetime. I’ve nearly completed the 41 year run from 1980 to the present, with the exception of a few dozen cards. I always figured this was the type of thing I’d do until my years stop increasing. As a collector, one thing I’m good at is accumulating, after all.
This unofficial plan could be impacted by the biggest hobby news of the year, which you undoubtedly know by now. With the awarding of the exclusive license to produce official Major League Baseball cards to Fanatics, the league has seemingly ended Topps’ reign as its chosen hobby monopolist. There’s a few years left in Topps’ current exclusive deal, but who knows what those will look like in reality, especially since it sounds like their deal with the players association ends first.
All things must pass, right?
While Topps has gotten pretty stale in the last decade (since when is the 35th anniversary of a set special?), for all its warts it is a known commodity. We know they can put out a reliable product, and they’ve done so for 70 years. All I know about Fanatics is that its hard to buy a jersey online from anyone but them now, and while they allegedly sell cards, I’ve never successfully bought cards from their site. This is probably my biggest concern – availability.
I’m reasonably certain Fanatics will figure out a way to put out numerous sets (you’ve gotta milk that license, after all) but I’m less convinced those cards will be able to be purchased by regular people who have day jobs and don’t spend their down time either cultivating bots (disclaimer: I don’t understand “bots”). I fear the role of the retailer as manufacturer is the product of some sort of Jack Donaghy vertical integration hellscape poised to knock out the LCS market when it was just starting to thrive again.
When I first heard the news, I was mostly caught off guard by the implausibility of a season that won’t have Topps baseball cards. It never even occurred to me that this was a possibility. I don’t know why I was so naïve- if baseball has proven anything during the Rob Manfred years its that tradition simply can’t compete with cold hard cash. Baseball cards are small potatoes when viewed against baseball’s other attempts to cash in.
But when I stepped back and considered it, exactly whose tradition is being lost? In a hobby built on nostalgia, the recent MLB monopoly has completely memory-holed the first decade-plus of my hobby life.
Although my first pack was from 1988 Topps – easily the nadir of Topps’ over-produced releases – I purchased far more of everything in my early hobby years. In fact, my favorite cards were almost always produced by Upper Deck and Score. My cardboard nostalgia is rooted in Score’s multi-paragraph card backs and Upper Deck’s holograms just as much as it is in old Topps’ gray card stock and full career stat lines.
Although some of the most iconic card images carry a Topps trademark, those aren’t the images with which I have a personal connection. Long before I lucked into a low grade 1965 Mantle, an ok 1980 Henderson, and a handful of 1985 McGwires, I coveted a 1989 Upper Deck Griffey rookie, a 1986 Donruss Canseco, and the star rookies of the 1984 Fleer Update set (those still evade me).
Topps wasn’t the only show in town in my formative years, so what am I mourning? A trademark? Another round of the same rookie reprints, only featuring a new reverse? Or another weird anniversary of a mediocre set? Have I been Stockholm Syndromed by Topps largely churning out official “nostalgia” for the last 12 years? I suspect that notion of nostalgia, and Fanatics’ desire to hold on to the deep pockets of older collectors will result in either the purchase of Topps or the licensing of the Topps name for production of a baseball flagship set. After all, it is instantly recognizable for every collector – you can’t just create that our of whole cloth.
If the brand doesn’t survive, or if it survives in name only, my run of Topps sets will likely end in a few years and I’ll have the rest of my years to yell about how I wish someone would make another 792-card single-series set that features pinch hitters, quad-A guys, and multiple relievers from each team. That’s the Topps that I first knew, and the version I liked the most. Its one that’s been dead for most of my adult life.
I hope the new brands entering the hobby will be innovative. I hope they will write real copy, take their own photos, and generally focus more on quality than churning out a new version of the same damn thing year after year. Beyond that, I hope they’re able to be found in stores, and that they continue to grow the excitement that has invigorated the hobby over the past several years. I also hope Topps doesn’t ruin it all by churning out uninspired dreck and cranking up the presses while they run out the clock.