Lizard's Rant

Continuing the ongoing mess that is the Topps sale, Upper Deck upped the ante on Monday Upper Deck filed a $427.3 million offer with the Securities and Exchange Commission and claimed that they will be able to overcome any antitrust issues that may arise from having one company own both baseball licenses. By law Topps has 10 days to review the offer and state their intentions to their shareholders.

But this blog isn’t Forbes.com, and I don’t want to spend too much time reviewing the business side of things anymore. Either Topps is going to UD or Torante, and both situations don’t look all that appealing to collectors. I’m more concerned about the long term impact on the hobby, and whether or not this is a sign that our hobby is on it’s deathbed. After reading about this latest offer on Beckett, I migrated over to Beckett’s forums to see what the serious collectors thought and I learned quite a bit.

#1 We’ve already seen this happen with Hockey, and the results have been bad
I never really made the connection, but hockey collector “nucknoel89″ chimed in with great insight about what would happen if UD dominated baseball like it does hockey:

“This is my first time posting on the baseball side but I felt I had to. I hope for your guys’ sake that UD doesn’t buy out Topps. I’m not sure if you have other card producers besides UD and Topps but for us on the Hockey side, having UD as the only maker has been a disaster. When UD has the monopoly, they stop caring. Product quality goes down, CS is crap, etc. Agian, for your sake I hope this doesn’t go through.”

Oh, and there have been about 8,000 Sidney Crosby cards produced the last few years.

#2 People hate Upper Deck
I’ll admit, I have yet to read Card Sharks: How Upper Deck Turned a Child’s Hobby into a High-Stakes, Billion-Dollar Business, but I didn’t realize just how much collectors really hate Upper Deck and despise the idea of a Topps acquisition:

“If UD does buy Topps, I’ll never buy one of their new cards, and will end up becoming a vintage collector only. That is how much I dislike Upper Deck and their products.”"Actually, I think Upper Deck kicked the presses back on with the 1989 Griffey and Murphy error…it worked in the beginning for Upper Deck…I’m sure it will work now.”

“Bad. Bad. Bad. Monopolies are not good for the consumer. Competition is a good thing and it helps keep companies honest, sort of. To only have one company producing baseball cards would kill new card sales, especially since UD has the worst reputation in the card business. If it does happen, DLP should get the license back. UD would think they had the consumer by the you know what, but I think ultimately they would not do well to be alone.”

“The hobby’s modern armageddon is upon us I guess. I’m thinking many of us will become Pre-2007 ‘vintage’ collectors. The only 07 product that interests me this year is/was Topps Heritage. I gave up on UD a few years back when they screwed me.”

“hopefully Topps doesn’t accept this offer. if they do, it’ll be the worst move ever. i like the diversity among choices in the hobby. they better let DLP back into baseball if this goes through cause UD will be able to drive this business by themselves, having control of baseball, hockey, and basketball at all once. it would ruin sports card collecting all together to have one major company, even if they use the Topps and Fleer name, putting out all the trading cards for 3 of the 4 major sports. i really hope it doesn’t come to this.”

“Richard McWilliam is an idiot. A flat-out monkey with a lobotomy in a suit. This assumption of course is based on him implying that he has only known about the redemption problems for a matter of months…not years. Any CEO so far removed from customer complaints and glaring problems is an idiot. It’s truly that simple. So, he’s either an idiot, or a liar…I’m certainly not spinning a bottle to see where it lands next with this guy”

“For the few of you Upper Deck defenders, read this book [Card Sharks]. It will make you realize how incredibly shady, and borderline illegal, Upper Deck’s business tactics have been, especially those of CEO Richard McWilliams. Upper Deck’s takeover of Topps would be a hobby disaster.”

You get the idea.

#3 People think Beckett’s coverage is boring
I knew that I felt Beckett’s coverage was boring (one of the reasons I started this site and this blog), but I didn’t realize that the feeling was so mutual among collectors. Check out these comments:

“Kevin [Beckett Baseball Editor]…I really hope Beckett has a spine here and reports to potential pitfalls of this deal. The potential positives of this deal aren’t even close to the potential negatives. If Beckett chooses to “stand pat” on this issue and just report PR schlock, you could very well be looking for a job, along with the herd.”

“If it does happen, Beckett Baseball could become Upper Deck Baseball Magazine. Imagine all of the stellar reviews they would give their releases!”

“The Upper Deck / Topps situation certainly deserves more than that…like perhaps some reporting, some investigation, some ‘who, what, why, where, when, how’.”

“There is a difference in reporting the news, and investigating the news. By the time Donruss’ demise made Beckett’s pages, we all knew about it. Beckett should start digging deep into stories that affect our hobby and our wallets. I guarantee the magazine’s circulation would improve dramatically if the editors and writers would investigate controversial issues, instead of simply covering (old) news and pleasing the advertisers.”

“Beckett does NOT investigate. It reports what the manufacturers want it to report, and does so as positively as possible at all times. Every ‘Product Review’ is outstanding. Every ‘Editorial’ is glowing. Members here don’t like that.”

What will happen? Who knows. What I do know is that the whole baseball card hobby is in big, big trouble and that everyone is fed up. No one with any business sense would try to enter the industry and compete right now, but it would be nice to see a rich white knight who loves cards sweep in and try to make it right. As long as sports exist there will be a natural base of collectors, so the potential is certainly there for cards to be a great hobby again. At some point someone will get it right and fix everything. We just might have to go backwards for a while longer before that happens.