Going to the Polls - A Look Back at Topps Exclusive License Part 5

This will probably be the last part to my series, unless I get a response from the Commissioner Selig or Tim Brosnon.  But when I started my look back/bitch about the last 3 years in the kingdom of Topps I added a side bar poll.  Two actually.  I wanted to know what you thought.  Because ultimately that's what its all about what we want.  I opened the polls for 2 weeks and probably should have pointed them out more as only 37 votes came in, but that's still not bad.

The first question I asked was did you want to see Topps get another multi-year exclusive deal. Here's the results.

DO YOU WANT TO SEE THE MLB GIVE TOPPS ANOTHER EXCLUSIVE MULTI-YEAR DEAL?

Overwhelmingly you guys said no.  Who you like to see get a license is a  whole other matter, but it also interested me to see that about a quarter of you that voted said you would like to see Topps reign as MLB's exclusive baseball card maker.  I wonder if Topps was having employees stuff the ballot box?   Also interesting was that out of the 72% that said no 43% of you really don't want Topps to be exclusive again.

I also asked if you thought that Topps' exclusive license hurt the hobby and industry.  I also added if you liked pie and according to the results alot of you do.

DID TOPPS EXCLUSIVE MLB LICENSE HELP OR HURT THE INDUSTRY?

I'll assume that the 21% that said it helped it also voted yes for another exclusive deal.  There were even a few you were honest and Didn't know or care.  But the majority of people who voted and didn't take the funny choice, I'm not blaming you I'd have picked I like pie too, said that it Hurt the industry.  

I'm pretty sure you can guess which way I would have voted, but in case you don't I'll tell you.  I too don't want to see Topps reign alone anymore.  So that begs the question who would I want to see get a license?  Well who I would want to see and who's most likely to get one are different answers.  I think if any company is going to get a license it'll be Panini.  I'm not a huge fan of Panini, but I'm not a hater.  And to be honest I would love to see a nice Donruss set again.  I kinda miss Diamond Kings.  And we can most probably rule out Upper Deck.  Besides suing itself out of existence Upper Deck had that whole license infringement back in 2010 and couldn't come up with the money to pay the NFL for a license so I think it's safe to say we won't be seeing any Upper Deck baseball anytime soon.  So who does that leave?  ITG, Leaf, or some new upstart?  Maybe. 

Did the Topps Exclusive License help or hurt the industry.  Well that's a tough one and it all depends on how you look at it.  We are now down to 3 big companies.   I'm still counting Upper Deck in the mix for now.  And if Upper Deck had got a MLB license back in 2009 would it be in the trouble it's in now?  Who knows.  But the one thing we can say is the card market got smaller as a whole.  I'm sure Topps pocketbook fared very well, I think that was kinda the point.  But the industry includes the hobby shops and consumer and while I haven't talked to a ton of people, the over all sense I get is that collectors are buying less and that hobby shops have less to sell with fewer products.  And after an initial release if a product is hot a lot of times the price skyrockets.  2010 Heritage and Gypsy Queen anyone?  That's bad for both consumers and hobby shops.  One it cost us more money to go after cards and so we buy less.  It cost the hobby shops more to keep product in stock if they have to go out on the secondary market and pick more up to keep their shelves stocked and then we buy less so they make less.  I  had a post a few years ago about how bare the cupboard looked at the hobby shop.  It was so true.  And I'm not looking for the days when there was one to two new products a week coming out and filling the shelves, but I know there has to be and can be a happy medium.

cb out.