The Chris Moeller Archives

Card sharks

I was a big baseball card collector back in the day. From the ages of seven to seventeen (1982-1992), I accumulated thousands of cards. It was a passion that went unparalleled in my life until I switched almost exclusively to boardgame baseball in high school (APBA-- American Professional Baseball Association). Then it was on to college exams and a career in journalism, and finally, at the age of 28-- girls.

The cards began losing their luster for me during high school, when the industry was enjoying its golden age in sales and revenue. It was easy to blame the end of my pastime on the rising price of cards, but it was more of the natural end to my childhood that did it, and as it should be. This is not one of my adult pursuits.

The mainstay brand of baseball cards since 1952 is Topps, out of New York City, and last week, Major League Baseball announced it was entering into an exclusive licensing agreement with the company, and not for the first time incidently. A court decision in favor of the Kellogg's food company in the 1970s brought an end to the first Topps monopoly. Slate's Dave Jamieson is absolutely correct that this new deal is a bad one for the industry of card collecting as it has always thrived historically when there is competition. Too many companies and too many collectable sets may have meant that the companies had to share in the profits, but it was great overall for the hobby-- and for the sport-- to have such a deep market. This trend bears out going back even to the boom in tobacco cards during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

The Topps deal is bad for baseball cards, and even more so for baseball, because of the message that's being sent with it from the commissioner's office. This is an exclusivity arrangement that cuts out other popular and innovative brands like Upper Deck (which had been giving Topps more than a run for its money with its popular product), and just as importantly, cuts out the Players' Association. The agreement then seems quite purposeful when we consider that the next labor negotiations loom in the not-too-distant future, a new union chief is taking the reins this year, and baseball cards have frequently been a bone of contention between owners and players.

I'm surprised other commentators, including Jamieson, have not picked up on this angle of MLB's motivation. In Jamieson's article, former pitcher and player rep Jim Bouton touched on how young players of the '50s and '60s, often still in the minor leagues, lined up to sign exclusivity agreements with Topps. With little business acumen and perhaps a little too eager to see their faces appearing on bubble gum cards, the players were often signing away plenty of their own profit potential. Up until the mid-'60s, players were giving away their image to Topps for just $5, plus $125/year for each year they played in the Majors and appeared on a trading card. Capable players with even a decade or so of National and/or American League service were retiring having made less than $2000 for their image on baseball cards for their entire career. Meanwhile, Topps was raking in tens of millions of dollars in profits.

Enter Marvin Miller.

The revolutionary labor leader introduced "group licensing agreements" on behalf of the players in the late '60s that allowed competitors for players likenesses to match offers, and the profits from baseball cards and other products featuring the union logo became the union's war chest. When the players were forced out on strike by the owners in 1994, the union had amassed a rainy day fund of $175 million upon which to fall back. Think that type of player profit doesn't mean just a little bit of leverage for the union? In 1994 or now?

Topps fought to maintain their monopoly every step of the way, threatening lawsuits over almost every new business agreement signed by the Players Association in those early days, but the dour predictions of Topps' financial fate proved to be just as inaccurate as so many of the club owners' predictions over the years. The owners had likewise paid only lip service to free enterprise in their dealings with the players, but the new business arrangements actually wound up creating better products and record-breaking profits for all parties involved.

I don't know what Major League Baseball thinks it has to gain now by returning to a licensing monopoly. History doesn't exactly provide assurance that club owners are wizards at maximizing their own profit potential. They've fought many of the changes that proved to be the most lucrative over the years, from broadcasting games on the radio to increased players salaries; and more recently, Topps has hardly proven itself to be the innovative leader of its industry besides. Topps president Michael Eisner claimed last week that the industry has been hurt during the last 30 years by "a nonexclusive world that has caused confusion for the kid who walks into a Wal-Mart or a hobby store," which is a statement absolutely advocating the overturn of the court decisions that opened up the market to begin with, and that falsely equates the success of Topps Company, Inc. with the success of the card industry as a whole. With this, Eisner is attempting a nostalgic appeal to Baby Boomer stock traders, and more power to him, but something tells me these new exclusive Topps card packs of the 21st century won't still cost 25 cents. Be careful not to buy into the appeal to sentiment and nostalgia. Nobody except Topps executives has ever looked back with fondness at the 1950s and 1960s for the reason that Topps trading cards didn't have any competition on those days.

The Upper Deck company still has an agreement with the players union for licensing. In fact, they re-upped with the union just last month, but their agreement was not one that involved exclusivity, which is probably why we're seeing the announcement of the Topps deal precisely when we are. Upper Deck will now no longer be able to use the logos, trademarks, or the "intellectual property" of the individual teams or the league in their cards or other products. What will the players be wearing in their Upper Deck photos then, asked the New York Daily News last week, "Snuggies?"

On a sidenote, I propose then that Upper Deck's first published trading card set in 2010 be "The Outlaws of Baseball" series, featuring the action-shot rebel images of these epic stars now segregated from the game-- Shoeless Joe Jackson, Pete Rose, Curt Flood, Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa, Alex Rodriguez, Manny Ramirez, even Marvin Miller. Major League Baseball and its partners shouldn't mind at all if other companies want to memorialize these figures as baseball, and by extension, their business partners want nothing more to do with them. (Negro Leaguers should be fair game legally, also.) Dress 'em up as cowboys, outlaw bikers or such in a collection of cards people will be talking about and collecting for generations.

Make no mistake, this agreement was a shot across the bow at the players union, with the owners expressing in effect that they'll be pushing for new restrictions on players salaries and freedoms in the coming labor negotiations despite record league profits as recently as last year. MLB collects the bounty of another exclusivity agreement with their Topps partnership, and this one comes at the expense of the players and the union. With monopoly back in, though, the incentive for creativity and innovation in the card industry goes out, which will be to the detriment of baseball card collecting, baseball, and ultimately, to America at large.

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"Mad Men" star Jon Hamm, a St. Louis native, appeared on Conan Tuesday night, discussing his participation in the celebrity softball game at last month's MLB All-Star Game. Don't miss the Season 3 premiere of "Mad Men" Sunday night on AMC.

posted by CM @ 1:20 PM