What Topps Gets Right (and Wrong) on Social Media.
Ever since the Fanatics takeover, there’s been a lot of talk about “Ten-Xing” The Hobby. Ten-Xing what, I still don’t know. Personally, if they meant multiplying the number of current collectors by ten, then that’s unrealistic. Yes, I want more folks to enjoy my Hobby, but having ten times as more folks in it is just naïve and improbable and would lead to Junk Wax Era-levels of production – as if that’s a bad thing.
With that said, if generating new collectors is a noble goal, then getting potential collectors into cards in the year Two Thousand Twenty-Five involves a competent social media campaign. So, how is Topps doing on that front? It’s mixed.
First off, let’s concentrate on what Topps is doing right. Topps’ You Tube page has done a laudable job profiling collectors and spotlighting Hobby shops. For example, Topps recently went to a Hobby store in Indiana. We got to see the different sections of the store (wax on the wall, showcases full of cards, boxes full of singles, et al), and the owner showed-off his world-class collection of Michael Jordan cards. It seems like the kind of place that, if I’m ever in Indianapolis, I should check out. Good on Topps for highlighting places like this.
(I will forgive the shop owner’s false insistence that the 1984-85 Star Co. Michael Jordan is MJ’s “true rookie.”)
Now the bad part. Have you seen Topps’ and X.com feeds lately?
Sheesh.
The trouble with Topps’ social media campaign could be highlighted by a recent “2024 Card of the Year” poll on their Twitter feed. (Sorry Elon, I’m still calling it Twitter.) All four nominees are ones-of-one, three of which are “true” ones-of-one (i.e. not a parallel one-of-one). As of the end of the poll, and as of the time I am writing this, none of three of the “true” ones-of-one have emerged publicly – despite some lucrative bounties placed up on them.
By the way, the four nominees were: 1) The 2024 Topps Chrome Update Rookie Debut Patch Autograph of Paul Skenes, 2) The 2024 Topps Shohei Ohtani 50/50 Logoman Patch card, 3) The 2024 Topps Now USA Basketball Triple Autograph of Steph Curry, LeBron James, and Kevin Durant, and 4) the only parallel in the group, an Autographed SuperFractor of FC Barcelona’s Yamine Lamal.
The problem with this pool is, since they’re all ones-of-one, there is no way any collector can reasonably collect them. Even if money were no object, you’ll never find these cards, much less be able to collect them. Which begs the question: Can it really be a “Card of the Year” if you can’t collect it?
A scroll through Topps Twitter feed provides much of the same. You can divide Topps’ Tweets into one of three buckets.
Bucket #1: The “Look at all the ones-of-one you can find (or wish we made), but probably won’t, in our new products!” bucket.
And then there’s Bucket #3: The “Look how much these Topps cards sold for!” post – as if these cards would sell for a fraction of the prices listed now.
Now, in and of themselves, there’s nothing wrong with spotlighting some aspect of an upcoming product. But that’s the thing. Information wise, you really won’t find much else about upcoming products on Topps Twitter, except for the big hits and ones-of-one. What about the rest of the product? You know, the parts of the product we can actually collect?
The problem with Topps’ Twitter is they’re not promoting the card collecting, they’re promoting gambling.
I’ve said this before, and I’ll say it again, if you’re trying to get more people into The Hobby, you can’t treat newcomers like a bunch of chumps. The constant posting of BIG MOJO HITTZZZZ!!!, and unrealistic sales figures gives folks a sense of false hope. Now, unless Fanatics’ “Ten-X” strategy is to convert The Hobby from collecting into gambling – well, even more overt than it has been – then fine. I for one stopped collecting Topps products years ago and am more than content backfilling my collection with older sets. But if Rubin and co. really want to grow The Hobby, then they need to start doing something they’ve had no prior interest in doing. Start creating collectors.
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It’s a question as old as The Hobby itself. Are sports cards an “investment?” Ask a hundred people in The Hobby and you’ll get a hundred different answers. There are some cards that are, and always be good investments. A 1952 Topps Mickey Mantle (regardless of condition) is a good investment, as are other vintage baseball rookies – especially in high grades. A 1986-87 Fleer Michael Jordan is also a good investment, as is the 1979-80 Topps/OPC Wayne Gretzky. Since ninety to ninety-five percent of the players featured will never amount to anything Hobby wise, a case of Bowman Draft is not a good investment – at least if you open it.
So, are cards a good investment? By one measure, not really. For the year ending December 31st, 2024 the Sportscard Investor SCI500 Index was up … a paltry 3.4% for the year.
(Before I continue, yes, I’m using that Sportscard Investor. And while I think Geoff Wilson and his army of “influencers” are, by and large, not good for The Hobby, I will give the devil his due. Wilson has constructed a useful tool that broadly measures the sportscard market in its totality – not unlike what the S&P 500 does for stocks. There are cards from all the major sports from all eras, with a few nonsport cards thrown in for good measure. I mean, see for yourself.)
Since inflation grew at a rate of 2.9%, if you invested in sports cards, in real dollars (e.g. inflation-adjusted dollars) you essentially broke even for 2024. And this is before you factor in eBay fees, postage & handling, and other overhead costs. In which case, you probably lost money – again in real terms. Now if you had invested in an exchange traded index fund tied to the S&P 500, you would have earned a return of 24% for the year ending 2024. This on top of the 25% you earned in 2023.
Again, I’m not saying cards aren’t an investment, but if investing (as opposed to collecting) is the reason you’re in The Hobby, maybe you need to rethink your choices. Because there are much, much, better places to invest your money.
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Over the past few years, Topps has done a good job culling its bloated product lines. Fire, Gallery, Bowman Platinum, Gypsy Queen, Bowman Heritage, and Topps Chrome Ben Baller Edition are some of the brands that have been discontinued. One set that ought to join them is Topps Archives whose 2024 edition just came out.
What exactly is the purpose of Archives? This is a question I’ve been asking for close to a decade now. We already have Heritage; do we really need what is, for all intents and purposes, Heritage-Lite? This year’s model features the designs of 1961, 1970, and 1994 Topps, the first two had already been used for Heritage – the 1970 design only five years ago! Why are we seeing these designs again?
Archives in its current form debuted in 2012 and for the first few years I’ll admit, I kind of liked it. And then it got old, quickly. Designs started to get repeated (2013 and 2017 Archives both featured the 1982 Topps design). Designs that had just been seen in Heritage started showing up in Archives and designs that had just been seen in Archives began showing up in Heritage. How many times do we really need to see the same 1960s, 70s, and 80s Topps designs?
I always thought Archives should be a brand that comes back during anniversary years (e.g. for Topps’s 65th, 70th, and 75th anniversaries). That was the point behind 2011 Topps Lineage, which was essentially an Archives set, but was largely panned by collectors for using a unique design.
But between Heritage, Archives, the annual Junk Wax Era bloat fest insert in flagship, the topps.com exclusive Throwback Thursday mini-sets, and others, Topps has beaten all the old designs into the ground like a dead horse. They need to give some of them a rest come up with something new. They can start by sending Archives to the shredder.
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2025 is going to be an interesting year in The Hobby, a year of transition, I believe as the pandemic-era boom begins to slow, and those who got in begin looking for the exits. If you were around in 1992-3-ish, 2025 will be a lot like that. 2025 Topps Series One just came out, and I’ll have plenty to say next month.
Keep on rockin’ in the free world.
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