Topp Company history

Berger would work for Topps for 50 years (1947–97) and serve as a consultant for another five, becoming a well-known figure on the baseball scene, and the face of Topps to major league baseball players, whom he signed up annually and paid in merchandise, like refrigerators and carpeting.

Starting in 1950, the company decided to try increasing gum sales by packaging them together with trading cards featuring Western character Hopalong Cassidy.

Entry into the baseball card market In 1951, Topps produced its first baseball cards in two different sets known today as Red Backs and Blue Backs.

Currently, a pack of 1952 Topps baseball cards is worth at least $15,000.

Topps takes aim at competitor Fleer’s Dubble Bubble with Bazooka, tagged as “The Atom Bubble Gum.” The chewy pink pads will be wrapped in jokey comics, starring eye patch-wearing Bazooka Joe and his motley crew, beginning in 1953.

Topps also began to compete with the Park-hurst Company for market share in hockey card business; Topps introduced a set limited to players from the Boston Bruins, Chicago Blackhawks, Detroit Red Wings, and New York Rangers in 1954.

Although its football card line would not reappear until the college All-Americans series of 1955, Topps issued football cards every year thereafter.

In 1956, Topps sold its first NFL set.

By 1959 demand was so low that Topps couldn't sell ten of the cards for a penny.

After its 1961 baseball cards welcomed the American League’s two new teams, the Angels and Senators, its ’62 set includes the National League’s expansion Mets and Colt .45s (Astros three years later).

Football and hockey cards were also selling, particularly after Parkhurst discontinued its hockey line following the 1963-64 season.

The Shorins, in recognition of his negotiation abilities, sent Sy to London in 1964 to negotiate the rights for Topps to produce Beatles trading cards.

Since 1966, Topps has manufactured its gum at its plant in Duryea, Pennsylvania.

Since these were only mildly successful, another full set of basketball cards was not produced until 1969.

After being privately held for several decades, Topps offered stock to the public for the first time in 1972 with the assistance of investment banking firm White, Weld & Co.

The cards were released in several series over the course of the baseball season, a practice Topps would continue with its baseball cards until 1974.

In 1975, the Fleer trading card company filed a $17.8 million federal antitrust suit against Topps and the Major League Baseball Players Association.

1980: Arthur Shorin, son of cofounder Joseph Shorin, becomes chairman and CEO.

In August 1981, Newcomer’s ruling that Topps and the Players Association had violated antitrust violations was overturned.

After these experiments failed to bring NBA card sales to an acceptable level, Topps left the basketball card market in 1982 and did not return for ten years.

The company returned to private ownership when it was acquired in a leveraged buyout led by Forstmann Little & Company in 1984.

The new ownership group again made Topps into a publicly traded company in 1987, now renamed to The Topps Company, Inc.

Krause, David S., “Baseball Cards Bat .425,” Money, June 1988, pp.140-146.

Beginning in 1989 with the entry of Upper Deck into the market, card companies began to develop higher-end cards using improved technology.

At the peak of the baseball memorabilia market, Topps sales rose 28 percent for the fiscal year ending February 1990.

Moreover, to compete with Upper Deck, which was offering trading cards of a higher quality, Topps introduced premium Stadium Club baseball packs in 1991.

However, after being deluged by all of the new cards marketed by Topps and other companies in these years, collectors staged a rebellion of sorts in 1992, and overall sales for the sports card business dropped 20 percent.

But the company’s most profitable line remained its baseball cards, consisting of four brands: Topps, Bowman, Stadium Club, and Stadium Club Dome; these brands were augmented in 1993, when the company premiered its Baseball’s Finest line.

The baseball strike that began August 11, 1994 didn’t help matters.

In July 1995 Topps acquired Merlin Publishing International Limited, a leading U.K. publisher and seller of sticker and album collections, for $46.2 million.

Topps established additional subsidiaries in Canada and Mexico during fiscal 1996 and in Brazil and Argentina the following year.

In April 1998 Topps closed its manufacturing facility in the Republic of Ireland, where it had been producing gum.

Most important, Topps began to profit handsomely from the Pokémon craze among children with the introduction of trading cards, lollipops, and other products during 1999.

Topps expected to ring up Pokémon-related sales as high as $100 million for the 2000 fiscal year.

In March 2001, for example, the company initiated a series of unique auctions on eBay: oneof-a-kind collectible items from its business files, including contracts and cancelled checks to players, signature cards, and the original photos used on cards.

the topps company home page, 2002. available at http://www.topps.com.

On the other hand, if a player opts out of group licensing, as Barry Bonds did in 2004, then manufacturers who depend on the MLBPA system will have no way of including him.

On October 12, 2007, Topps was acquired by Michael Eisner's The Tornante Company and Madison Dearborn Partners.

In 2012, Topps began creating digital sports cards, starting with the Topps Bunt baseball card mobile app.

Following the success of their assortment of digital trading card apps, they once again expanded their marketplace for digital collectors a few years later, releasing a Marvel trading card app in the spring of 2019 and their Disney trading card app in November of that same year.

In March 2020, Topps announced a collaboration with WAX.io to make their cards tradable on the blockchain.

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