Topps has ridden that wave, bringing in record sales of $567 million in 2020, a 23 percent jump over the previous year. Now Fanatics faces the question of whether it can sustain momentum given the trading card industry’s susceptibility to booms and busts.
The nearly century-old Topps has been through both. The company was started in Brooklyn in 1938 as Topps Chewing Gum, an effort to revive a struggling family tobacco distribution business. A little over a decade later, it began to package its gum with “Magic Photo Cards,” which featured Babe Ruth, Cy Young and other baseball stars. It started its annual set of baseball cards in 1952.
In 2007, Topps was acquired for $385 million by Tornante, an investment firm founded by Michael Eisner, the former Walt Disney Company chief executive, and the private equity firm Madison Dearborn Partners. Under its new ownership, Topps started Topps Now, which sells of-the-moment cards to capture a defining play or a pop culture meme. It also began to offer its cards as NFTs.
Mr. Eisner said in a statement on Tuesday that “the strong emotional connection between Topps collectibles and consumers of all ages” would make it “a jewel in the Fanatics portfolio.”
Topps’s plan to go public had valued its entire business at roughly $1.3 billion. That deal included its confectionary brands like Bazooka gum and its gift card business, which Tornante and Madison Dearborn continue to own. The candy and gift card unit brought in a third of Topps’s sales last year, according to an investor presentation prepared for the transaction. It has been renamed Bazooka Companies.
Tornante also maintains the rights to produce movies and television shows based on Topps brands, including the video game franchise MechWarrior/BattleTech and Garbage Pail Kids, a series of sticker trading cards introduced in 1985 as a parody of Cabbage Patch Kids.
Kevin Draper and Katherine Rosman contributed reporting.