Topps Becomes Exclusive Baseball Card Provider

The New York Times reported yesterday that the Topps Company has been given the exclusive right to make and distribute cards for Major League Baseball, eliminating all competition from other card companies, primarily Upper Deck.

The new goal between Major League Baseball and Topps is to focus on younger fans and to use the cards as a way to bring them into the game.  I find this to be a very admirable goal, but wasn’t that the basis for baseball cards this entire time?  Unfortunately, with so many cards out now that offer so many different things (autographs, parts of game used jerseys, holograms, etc.) and prices moving into a territory that makes them undesirable for kids, MLB may have missed the boat.

Baseball card collectors in 2009 are 60+ year old men, which unfortunately for baseball also appears to be their main demographic (ever notice how many Cialis and Viagra commericals there are during a regular MLB game?).

What Topps must do now is make cards affordable again for kids.  Don’t focus on making them collectors items, which is what they have done.  Kids should want to buy baseball cards because they are fun to look at and trade, not because they are worth $5 today but could be worth $5,000 in the future.  That mode of selling has caused baseball cards from the 1970s, 80s and 90s to be basically worthless.  So many kids and collectors heard stories of mothers from yesteryear throwing out their kids’ Mickey Mantle and Ted Williams rookie cards that would be worth as much as a New York City apartment today and now the market is flooded with cards from the last four decades.

Make baseball cards fun again.  $0.50 to $1.00 a pack, maybe even a stick of gum.  It worked in the past and then the card companies exploded the market with unaffordable pieces of history, instead of pieces of fun.