Thursday, August 6, 2009

Topps Exclusive MLB Licensing

By now most of you have heard that beginning January 1, 2010, Topps will be the exclusive card company of MLB. This means that Topps has the exclusive rights to creating baseball cards, stickers and specific other products featuring MLB players, team names and logos. The first exclusive card set to be released by Topps will be the Topps Baseball Series 1 in February 2010.

Just the other day I was talking about Panini having the exclusive rights to NBA licensing and now Topps signs one with MLB. What is next Upper Deck working to sign an exclusive NFL license? I understand that this is just business and some people claim that this will help stimulate the trading card market as well as “cut the confusion” for collectors, but honestly it also isolates a segment of the collecting community and in the end may cause some collectors to either leave the hobby or adjust their purchasing habits.

Fortunately Upper Deck still has the MLBPA license so they can continue to create sets using MLB players, just not team names or logos and Donruss loosing the MLB license a few years back has not stopped them from putting out baseball sets. Hopefully I am wrong and this does not affect the hobby in the end.

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