The Beckett Blog

By CHRIS OLDS | Beckett Baseball Editor

If you thought 2009 has been a wild ride, just wait for 2010.

There have been countless changes in the hobby in the last 11 months just with licensing — the rights to create, market and sell official sports cards.

In January, the NBA chose an exclusive licensee in Panini, dropping Topps and Upper Deck. In August, MLB Properties opted for just Topps to create its fully licensed baseball cards, while a new licensee for Minor League Baseball  has yet to be announced after TRISTAR’s deal expired. And Upper Deck’s exclusive with the Collegiate Licensing Company? It affects every sport and will dramatically curb companies’ options starting next spring. The latest news on Monday is no different –  Players Inc, the licensing group of the NFL Players Association, dropped Topps as one of its football card makers.

All of these things can impact our hobby — your collection — even if you don’t buy one of the sports that is affected. Why? It affects the industry’s players, the companies that bring the cards to you.

Just like the baseball announcement, there are a lot of disappointed collectors with the Topps football news. And yet at the same time, there also are a lot of questions about whether the longest-running manufacturer of trading cards in the United States will create any type of football products in 2010 and beyond. (It doesn’t appear likely — unless you count its Premier League soccer cards.)

Some collectors took that a step further asking whether Topps can make it on just baseball and MMA alone — but that’s where we need to take a step back. There’s no question that baseball, despite its issues in recent years, remains the top dog of collecting. And MMA is the new kid on the block with Topps’ UFC lines among the most popular releases ever considering original costs vs. current values.

However, Topps has never survived on cards alone.

In 2007, before the company went private, net sales of the company’s entertainment products totaled $38.3 million in the first quarter. In that same period, the company’s confectionary sales (that’s right, candy) totaled $42.7 million — and Ringpops are a lot cheaper to make than baseball cards. (Remember that licensing part? It’s costly — just like getting Alex Rodriguez to sign his name a few hundred times. Those things make candy much more powerful when it comes to the bottom line.)

Many a card-centric collector might be surprised by those numbers.

Yes, times have changed since then. But I’m not sure if the country’s sweet tooth has waned as much as interest might have for increasingly expensive sports cards.

Losing football, a definite No. 2 historically for Topps, will undoubtedly hurt. But, again, Topps isn’t just about baseball or Bazooka Joe — that’s why the company has other branches like eTopps, the ToppsVault, and so on.

Among Topps’ non-sport card offerings, for example, are Club Penguin, SpongeBob, WWE, Garbage Pail Kids, Jonas Brothers, Hannah Montana, iCarly, Star Wars and Terminator. And then there are recent lines like American Heritage and the popular Barack Obama set — both products that are undoubtedly cheaper to produce than your typical sports (and probably even some non-sports) sets.

Other recent offerings from Topps include Indiana Jones, Heroes, Transformers, High School Musical and so on. None of these non-sports properties are licenses to sneeze at — they’ve got appeal with those who have buying power. And if there’s one thing I’ve learned in my time here at Beckett is that the money in the industry often follows where the kids are. (And, really, weren’t the kids highly involved in baseball cards during the boom days? Same for comic books in the early 1990s.)

It’s no secret that Topps has shown some interest in the NHL license that’s coming up soon. And, of course, resources that had been tabbed for football could come in handy for the MLB products in 2010. (That’s a thought I like.)

One thing all the Topps football fans should consider — or those bemoaning any other companies whose products got the ax — is that there is still plenty of past years’ cards available and a lot of that wax can sometimes be found at a fraction of the original price.

So, while there’s not going to be anything new, one should be able to get that Chrome or Bowman fix. And how does that influence the hobby? Buying old product doesn’t help Topps, but the glut of recent-year wax should start to dry up — making the hot stuff hotter — and perhaps increase interest in some of the previously marginal products as collectors prefer that to what they don’t see on the marketplace. In turn, that should help the hobby’s dealers — who can buy more new products. (And that’s a move that can allow companies to experiment with more new product lines.)

There have been countless other challenges for the card industry in 2009 — some of them being companies closing their doors, others being battles between its own players in courtrooms over rights, ownership, etc. — and one might expect that we’re not done there yet, either.

Either way, though, the changes of 2009 promise to help create an exciting 2010.

Chris Olds is the editor of Beckett Baseball and Beckett Graded Card Investor. Have a comment, question or idea? Send an e-mail to him at colds@beckett.com.