I'm going to start this series off slowly. I have yet to fully organize my thoughts, finish my research, write my letters, yell really loud, and put it all together. So lets start at the beginning and maybe go back to it from time to time.
I just finished a great article written fairly recently by Brian Tedardis at Sports Card Radio entitled Card Tank: The Topps Company. It is really well written and after reading it scared the pants off me a little to think just how true the points Brian makes are. But we'll talk about a lot of that in another post.
First a little history for histories sake. In early August 2009 it was announced that Major League Baseball and the Topps Company had come to an agreement to an exclusive 3 year deal for making Baseball cards.
It was a little surprising. OK for me it was a lot surprising. The time from the mid 1990's to the mid 2000's was a time of Baseball card gluttony. There were at times so many products coming out there were stacked one on top of another. It was almost too much to take in. But while the industry was bogged down in what seemed like a quagmire of choices, one thing emerged from that time. Innovation. This era produced the relic, autograph and parallel card. The foil stamping and serial numbering. The SP and the SSP. The redemption, the chrome, the printing plate, and the 1/1. It's from this era that everything you love or hate came from, unless you just love vintage, but you know what I mean here.
I can remember back in 2003 standing at the counter at Don's Sportscards looking at the shelves and shelves of baseball card boxes and not being able to decide what I wanted. And I remember bitching to Don about how there was just too much product. And I'll stand by that. There was absolutely just no way a collector could collect it all. And I remember a couple of years ago after Topps' exclusive license took hold looking at those same shelves and thinking how bare the cupboard looked. From one extreme to the other. I have to think there can be a happy middle ground.
Alright next time I'm going to talked about what Topps and the MLB said about the deal and what really happened having 3 years to look back on.
Oh and I've started a little poll on the side bar feel free to vote your heart. Cuz I like pie too.
cb out
Blog about collecting stuff, the hobby of collecting stuff, mainly trading cards, and other things.
I read that "Card Tank" article you linked to, and now I'm depressed. He's right, Topps has NO incentive to innovate. Our only hope is that Panini just decides they want to do baseball cards and sends a dumptruck full of money to the MLB offices when the Topps deal expires.
ReplyDelete