The Topps Co. this week will begin a new strategy for its custom sports card creation business, taking production fully in-house and offering licensed league marks for the first time.
Allowing individual fans, particularly youth sports organizations, to create their own sports trading cards isn’t new, and for years many outlets have offered products of varying levels of quality. But as many forms of commerce move toward greater levels of user customization, Topps is now seeking to expand its own position in custom cards.
The company will cease relationships with third-party suppliers it has used for custom card production and fulfillment, and for the first time will allow official logos from Major League Baseball and Major League Soccer. Previously, use of any professional or major college marks of teams, conferences or leagues had been generally prohibited in custom cards on copyright grounds.
The changes did not require entirely new rights deals with MLB or MLS, but rather a reworking of existing relationships. The new product will allow users to have a baseball card of themselves or someone else that looks exactly like a current pro card, complete with team logos and the same design templates.
The custom cards will be sold in packs of eight for $9.99 each, and, as before, users can upload pictures and text to create their cards. The new pricing is a reduction from prior structures that began at $12.50 for a pack of five or $4.95 for a single card.
Three card designs will be offered initially, mirroring 2015 professional card set releases for MLB and MLS and the company’s popular 1952 MLB set that catapulted Topps to national prominence and helped set the foundation for modern trading cards. Other card designs will be added later.
“This is going to have exactly the same quality, look and feel as our professional sets,” said Jeff Heckman, Topps manager of marketing and product development. “We think this is the right time to really play in a big way in this space. The idea of a custom card is not new, but we think we can really advance this.”
The inclusion of the copyrighted baseball and soccer marks is seen by Topps as a significant step forward.
“That’s a pretty powerful change,” Heckman said. “Before, that was always prohibited, and I think it held us back in this area. But now, you can look forward and see this custom area ultimately moving toward all sort of other areas such as framed keepsakes, posters and the like.”
The custom card initiative will be promoted extensively within youth sports organizations, a fertile target market for this type of product, and Topps has begun to forge official relationships with groups including Ripken Baseball. The Class A Aberdeen (Md.) IronBirds, another Ripken property, will also partner with Topps to help promote the new product.
