Topps out---Fanatics in

[whitmm]

Originally Posted by Timsterino

In this instance don’t underestimate the importance of the intellectual property. Brand recognition is important, especially in this scenario.

How important is it when you have exclusive licensing for everything? This essentially eliminated the biggest competition in Panini and Topps from the market. And Fanatics already has more brand recognition than Leaf or Onyx.

[Handsome Wes]

Wow…. All three major sports hop in bed with a manufacturer that…. hasn’t yet produced one card.

[MoreToppsPlease]

Originally Posted by progers9119

This is simply where I disagree. If you want the hot rookie card of whoever in 2026, you'll have one choice. Fanatics.

Panini didn't have any heritage when they stepped into the market with their NT, Prizm, Optic, Select etc. The market established love and recognition for those product lines within a short window of time. No one cares/cared when buying their 2019 Zion that Panini didn't produce the 2005 CP3 or 2003 Lebron James.

I wager it won't matter if the product is called Fanatics Series 1 or Fanatics Shiny Stuff.

Agreed. Furthermore, as shown in the recent YouTube of the video game market…and experienced many times with cards…and especially with grading…it’s not difficult to manipulate collectible markets when investors are or could be present.

[SleepyWill]

Originally Posted by progers9119

This is simply where I disagree. If you want the hot rookie card of whoever in 2026, you'll have one choice. Fanatics.

Panini didn't have any heritage when they stepped into the market with their NT, Prizm, Optic, Select etc. The market established love and recognition for those product lines within a short window of time. No one cares/cared when buying their 2019 Zion that Panini didn't produce the 2005 CP3 or 2003 Lebron James.

I wager it won't matter if the product is called Fanatics Series 1 or Fanatics Shiny Stuff.

I for one am looking for to purchasing 2026 Fanatics Shiny Stuff Series II.

[k13]

Originally Posted by progers9119

This is simply where I disagree. If you want the hot rookie card of whoever in 2026, you'll have one choice. Fanatics.

Panini didn't have any heritage when they stepped into the market with their NT, Prizm, Optic, Select etc. The market established love and recognition for those product lines within a short window of time. No one cares/cared when buying their 2019 Zion that Panini didn't produce the 2005 CP3 or 2003 Lebron James.

I wager it won't matter if the product is called Fanatics Series 1 or Fanatics Shiny Stuff.

Yeah and panini sold terribly.
All their basketball products were on discount including original prizm for $50 and that's with a monster rookie class.

The hobby is not that accepting.
It took Panini years to finally gain some popularity even with a sole license.

In hockey Panini and Topps were never won over with the public even with superior sets.
No one cared about chrome and prizm just Young Guns.

Baseball rarely has hot rookies so couple years of that everyone can just stuff it to fanatics because rookies move this hobby otherwise you have 2020 update.

[Bcwcardz]

2026 is when they fully get the rights of everything. What’s the trading card world going to look like then? It’s crazy hot now but a lot of us have lived through the ups and downs of the hobby. I don’t know what these jokers are gonna do but we are stuck with them for new cards. If they screw it up then what? They have 0 track record in trading cards. Good idea.


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[nikpounder]

Originally Posted by SleepyWill

Just from a pure business perspective, it makes zero sense to gain the rights and not purchase both Panini & Topps out right.

It would make sense for Fanatics to purchase Topps due to its' brand recognition and past catalog of products. I think Upper Deck would also make sense due to their agreements with Jordan, Tiger, Lebron - and I think they still own the IP for Fleer.

[HeritageKing]

Originally Posted by nikpounder

It would make sense for Fanatics to purchase Topps due to its' brand recognition and past catalog of products. I think Upper Deck would also make sense due to their agreements with Jordan, Tiger, Lebron - and I think they still own the IP for Fleer.

Will the buying of topps name including dumping all the redemptions that people are owed like UD did with Fleer. How much money does topps save just waiting out redemptions until the end? Can you image how it look getting a substitute for your 500 dollar redemption from topps 3 months before the close house?

...and what of etopps and all those cards?

[JRX]

It only makes sense to buy topps if you want to reuse their old designs, but maybe Fanatics feels that's what needs to change. They're relying on you having no other options so you'll buy whatever they make.

[Technochocolate]

Just now realizing: in a world where the MLBPA/MLB are about to go to war, where they hate each other....the one thing they both agreed on was this deal. The thing that compromises their fans, that the one thing they're lock step on.

With a 20 year deal, I don't think anyone's getting bought, with the possible exception of Topps. With that time commitment, you want to build your own brand usually.

The one exception might be retro products like A&G and Heritage. Collectors love nostalgia, but only actual nostalgia instead of fake nostalgia (see how Fleer Tradition and UD Vintage never quite caught on). There might be some profit to be had in buying the rights to keep the Heritage line going. And A&G can easily become a multisport product. Outside of those 2 however, I can see the logic in Fanatics attempting to erase them from history.

[JRX]

Its really a forever deal, the three unions aren't going to split up for different companies 20 years from now. This is it. Also, isn't heritage almost run out? Are people really looking forward to 80s and 90s heritage sets or was topps plan to go back to 52 and do it all over again?

[Timsterino]

Originally Posted by whitmm

How important is it when you have exclusive licensing for everything? This essentially eliminated the biggest competition in Panini and Topps from the market. And Fanatics already has more brand recognition than Leaf or Onyx.

You may want to take a marketing course or two. Brand recognition matters. Fanatics isn’t a legacy brand in the trading card space. You are comparing them to Leaf and Onyx. Enough said.

[Timsterino]

Originally Posted by progers9119

This is simply where I disagree. If you want the hot rookie card of whoever in 2026, you'll have one choice. Fanatics.

Panini didn't have any heritage when they stepped into the market with their NT, Prizm, Optic, Select etc. The market established love and recognition for those product lines within a short window of time. No one cares/cared when buying their 2019 Zion that Panini didn't produce the 2005 CP3 or 2003 Lebron James.

I wager it won't matter if the product is called Fanatics Series 1 or Fanatics Shiny Stuff.

Silly take. The comparisons are invalid. The brands, copyrights and intellectual property matter.

[JRX]

Originally Posted by Timsterino

You may want to take a marketing course or two. Brand recognition matters. Fanatics isn’t a legacy brand in the trading card space. You are comparing the. To Leaf and Onyx. Enough said.

Yes, but they will be the only brand and will probably get lots of cross marketing from all three sports. With the league and players having ownership stakes you'll see ads for Fanatics cards at every arena/stadium and those ads will be visible during the telecasts as well most likely.

[NYRE2PECT]

Originally Posted by Handsome Wes

Wow…. All three major sports hop in bed with a manufacturer that…. hasn’t yet produced one card.

These are wild times. My goodness. One collective whoosh and the industry will consolidate.


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[SearchPatrol]

I just think many of you are looking at this all wrong. I like to look at this as COMC in the hobby. Does Fanatics really want the overhead that comes with designing, printing, and boxing up cards? I don't think so, like COMC doesn't want to open packs and list them on the site. Let other do that. Let Phil open a $400 box and send the cards in and take all the risk. I think this could easily be the most exciting thing to happen in cards since Upper Deck in 1989. Fanatics could go to Topps, Panini, Upper Deck and others. You want to make LICENSED MLB cards go right ahead, but you have to do this OUR way. I could see a situation were all 3 make MLB LICENSED cards. It could be wonderful!! And, they wouldn't have to buy any card company. Now some will clearly lose in this deal, but I think collectors that want more options will be winners.

[pewe]

Originally Posted by MoreToppsPlease

Developments in quantum double roughly every 18 months now, so they’ll need luck to keep up.

All hashing algorithms are always going to be vulnerable eventually. Wallets are vulnerable.

Producing “quantum safe” tech or algorithms on an ongoing basis just means there will always be an arms race.

Totally… BTW if you are interested, this is a fun primer on quantum supremacy vs. cryptography: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1804.00200.pdf

Let’s say you are too pessimistic and it’s more like 12 month doubling. Because we get advances in number of qubits AND algorithms in parallel.

Well, use of many crypto functions scale in difficulty at exponential rates. For instance the difficulty of solving asymmetric encryption (pretty common) with conventional P-space computers (ie what we use today) is N/2, whereas an NP-space quantum computer would solve it in N^(1/2).

Moving to larger bit-space is relatively easy, so staying ahead is also relatively easy.

This is before we even consider moving to NP-hard space. Which is not really required, yet, but could be to remove quantum mathematical advantage. Or at least until we can operate multidimensional qubits

BTW my real concern is at the national level arms race: decrypting the HUGE surveillance data warehouses… that’s where we need to see how quickly quantum supremacy starts allowing old communications to be simply decrypted. Hopefully we are genuinely staying 30+ years ahead, rendering the accessible time window of our personal and government secrets to be a moot point.


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[Cards and 401K]

Montgomery Club memberships thru 2025?

[Pacmeyer]

Originally Posted by SearchPatrol

I just think many of you are looking at this all wrong. I like to look at this as COMC in the hobby. Does Fanatics really want the overhead that comes with designing, printing, and boxing up cards? I don't think so, like COMC doesn't want to open packs and list them on the site. Let other do that. Let Phil open a $400 box and send the cards in and take all the risk. I think this could easily be the most exciting thing to happen in cards since Upper Deck in 1989. Fanatics could go to Topps, Panini, Upper Deck and others. You want to make LICENSED MLB cards go right ahead, but you have to do this OUR way. I could see a situation were all 3 make MLB LICENSED cards. It could be wonderful!! And, they wouldn't have to buy any card company. Now some will clearly lose in this deal, but I think collectors that want more options will be winners.

Strange take. Fanatics shoveling massive dollars for rights, all to provide customers more choices in the end? That's not how monopolies behave. With all of its exclusive deals, Fanatics is shaping up to be exactly that.

[nikpounder]

Originally Posted by JRX

Yes, but they will be the only brand and will probably get lots of cross marketing from all three sports. With the league and players having ownership stakes you'll see ads for Fanatics cards at every arena/stadium and those ads will be visible during the telecasts as well most likely.

Not only ads, but actually for sale at the stadiums. I didn't realize Fanatics ran some of the stores at Chase Center, Oracle Park and Levis Stadium until this deal was done.

[SleepyWill]

Just imagine how many releases there will be in 2026+ . . . .

Topps Series IV
Sapphire PT Deux
Dynasty III
Stadium Club Chrome Sapphire Finest Flashback

[SleepyWill]

Just imagine how many releases there will be in 2026+ . . . .

Topps Series IV
Sapphire PT Deux
Dynasty III
Stadium Club Chrome Sapphire Finest Flashback

[nikpounder]

Originally Posted by SearchPatrol

I just think many of you are looking at this all wrong. I like to look at this as COMC in the hobby. Does Fanatics really want the overhead that comes with designing, printing, and boxing up cards? I don't think so, like COMC doesn't want to open packs and list them on the site. Let other do that. Let Phil open a $400 box and send the cards in and take all the risk. I think this could easily be the most exciting thing to happen in cards since Upper Deck in 1989. Fanatics could go to Topps, Panini, Upper Deck and others. You want to make LICENSED MLB cards go right ahead, but you have to do this OUR way. I could see a situation were all 3 make MLB LICENSED cards. It could be wonderful!! And, they wouldn't have to buy any card company. Now some will clearly lose in this deal, but I think collectors that want more options will be winners.

I could see them doing this too as Fanatics deals with the risk of the licensing payments owed to the leagues and also deals with the licensing management with the various card companies.

[jjcan]

Originally Posted by JRX

Yes, but they will be the only brand and will probably get lots of cross marketing from all three sports. With the league and players having ownership stakes you'll see ads for Fanatics cards at every arena/stadium and those ads will be visible during the telecasts as well most likely.

Agree, The Brand is Fanatics. Fanatics Brand is worth 18+ Billion Dollars.

If Amazon made cards tomorrow and called them Amazons best NBA, Prime metal cards, and sold them by the pack, set, slabbed, on card autos.

There would be people lining up to buy them. All the ones who decided not too that's ok, they would just market to new people who would.

Fanatics, will pump their BRAND of cards with any branding (homegrown or bought) since they own it all by 2026.

Imagine: Shoei Ohtani and Tom Brady show cards in their hands in 2026 that read FANATICS FRESH CARDS plus right behind them is NFT marketing, digital art marketing, and shoe marketing, and jersey marketing. All games played are pumped by Fanatics memorabilia collectibles.

Topps can try and compete with any licenses they get from single players, non logo stuff and keep their branding if they want, might need it for non sports, entertainment stuff.

Sure it would be easier for Fanatic's to buy the IP and BRANDING of Topps or Panini. But if they don't, then Chrome, Prizm, Heritage Flawless, NT, will just fall on the wayside of Exquisite, SPX, BRANDING not used by Upper Deck now.

Fanatics has 3 years to figure this out, You do not think they will? They are going to IPO also, you think they won't figure out how to market, increase BRANDING, incorporate this with their distributors, dealers, online teams?

Topps and Eisner had time to figure out how to ramp things up and look where this has gotten them? They barely have a seat at the table now, and that's a SAD statement.

[mfw13]

Originally Posted by whitmm

How important is it when you have exclusive licensing for everything?

Because having an exclusive license doesn't guarantee that people will buy your products. You still have to create products that collectors want to buy and price them appropriately.

Yes, people will have to buy a Fanatics product if they want current year cards.

But at the same time, the hobby has so much history, and so many products already out there, that people will have plenty of other collecting options if they do not like Fanatics products or price points.

Speaking just for myself, only 5-10% of my annual hobby spending is on current year releases.