Kinda Upset and Disappointed at Topps

So in, 2007, after reading the baseball card blog, I decided I would start buying and opening individual packages of baseball cards again, and see if could collect an entire set, just like when I was a kid. I picked up the baseball card fever a few years before that, when my parents emptied their attic and brought me all the cards that had been stored there, and I found they were in pretty good shape. I had essentially collected cards from 1976-1982, primarily baseball and football, with some basketball and hockey thrown in as well.

Once they brought those cards down, I spent an entire December holiday working on reorganizing them to figure out what I was missing. I spent the next year or two scouring ebay like a maniacal fool looking for the necessary cards to complete those sets. I was not savvy or smart enough to figure out what I should be paying, I was just sucked into the ebay mentality of bidding, and refusing to be outbid. It was fun, until I was getting hosed on overall value. (Note, I am not collecting as an investment, but rather because I enjoy the hobby and stockpiling more shit on the shelves in my office in what I long to do.)


I also got this hair brain notion that I would also buy complete collections, either on ebay, or from other online stores, for every year since I was born. A legacy I could leave my kids to argue over when I am dead and gone. I have at least one complete collection of Topps standard baseball cards from 1980 on through last year. It would be virtually impossible to try to collect every single line of cards produced by every single manufacturer out there, especially since the industry proliferated in the 1990's, and the market just became flooded with utter crap. When I went back into this hobby, I said, I am going to stick with the classic Topps cards and nothing else. You gotta make some choices, and that was mine.

I also purchased (and probably overpaid again) a slew of cards that a friend of my parents had purchased over time. It was thousands of cards, of not much value. Quite frankly, I have no idea how he accumulated them, since he did not have full sets (maybe he was buying packs too), and he ordered them alphabetically by team, rather than by card #, by year, by manufacturer, which is obviously the only way to catalog cards. But I digress..


So for the past few years, I have a pretty consistent arguement with my wife, about whether I really need to buy individual packs during the season, when I can usually pay $50 at the end of the season, and just purchase a complete set that is factory sealed and will probably have more appreciable value in the long run than individual cards. I have to admit, I enjoy the feel of the cards, being able to see the player stats, what players actually look like and just the sheer joy of the hunt. If I get a factory set today, I never break the plastic and would never take a card out to look at it, so it achieves different levels of satisfaction, and if that is my worse vice, then so be it.

I am disappointed that trading cards are not more readily available nowadays, because kids have no interest or incentive to purchse them today, which does not bode well for the future of the industry. Back when I was buying as a kid, every single corner drug store had cards in or near the candy aisle, or by the register, so it was natural for the kids to gravitate to them. I realize today that there are probably a hundred or more types of collectible and trading cards on the market, and it would be impossible for the two remaining manufactures Topps and Upper Deck, to offer all their cards in a single store, but I do think they can do more to get back into the mainstream with some intelligent marketing. Today, I can only consistenly get baseball cards in Walmart, Target or Toys R Us, which means I need to make a special trip just for cards which is not very convinient, but again I digress.

Anyways, for the past 3 years, Topps has used a nice card stock, with a glossy picture on the front and a glossy image on the back where the players stats and maybe some career highlights are printed. Each season is broken up into Series 1 (Cards #1-330) and Series 2 (#331-660), and the cards had always been very consistent in their presentation. I started purchasing the 2009 series 1 cards in February this year, and everything was exactly as I expected. Then a few weeks ago, I purchsaed a few packs from Target and as I opened them up, they looked completely different. The card stock, was now a lower quality and the finish was not as sharp. As I turned the card over, I was horrified, the backs no longer had a high glossy finish, but were rather dull and difficult to read, very similar to the cards from the 70- 80's of my childhood.


I realize their is a recession going on, and Topps, like any other company, has the right to change to change their product whenever they want for whatever reason they wish (though I assume this is a cheaper card stock, and shocking it had no impact on the retail cost of the card), but it really seemed unusual to do this in the middle of a production run. So now I have some cards that have the shiny, glossy finish, and other cards in the same series that are dull and flat. That really kinda pisses me off.