MLB ends baseball card deal with Topps

Topps, the industryleader for baseball cards for 70 years, will soon no longer have the rights to print Major League Baseball cards. The league and the players’ union made a deal with Fanatics Inc. this week for the company to exclusively produce MLB cards.

Topps printed its first baseball cards in 1951 and has had an exclusive deal with MLB since 2010. That deal expires after 2025, and MLB’s deal with Fanatics, a source confirmed, begins in 2026.

Fanatics is owned by Michael Rubin, the billionaire entrepreneur from Montgomery County, Pa., who holds a minority stake of the Philadelphia 76ers. The company declined to comment.

Fanatics is the dominant ecommerce brand for sports apparel and is the official online retailer of five major American professional sports leagues. Earlier this week, Fanatics joined Jay-Z in bidding for a sports-betting license in New York state as the company continues to expand beyond selling apparel and memorabilia.

Topps helped make baseball cards iconic as it put stats on the back of its cards in 1952 and produced rookie cards for everyone from Mickey Mantle to Mike Trout. The company, vice president of product development Clay Luraschi said earlier this year, has a responsibility to teach the game of baseball to young fans. Soon, that responsibility will fall to Fanatics.

The trading card industry boomed during the pandemic as collectors rediscovered the hobby or dug even deeper into it while the world was shut down.

Cards started moving like stocks as values for rookie cards and rare vintage cards spiked on resale markets such as eBay.

“The current marketplace since COVID has been freaky. It’s just been completely overwhelming,” said Steve MacKenzie, who owns Horsham’s Knuckleball Sports Cards. “My sales since last July when I reopened my store have probably tripled since before COVID.”