Big news (and not just Fanatics taking over the MLB card contract)!

The big news last week was the announcement that after 2025, the Topps company would no longer hold the license to manufacture major league baseball cards. For traditionalists, this is a huge development; Topps has made baseball cards since the early 1950s and while it has some other brands (like Garbage Pail Kids), this is the end of an era for a baseball brand that is celebrating its 70th anniversary this year.

The merger between Topps and Mudrick Capital, which was expected to mean a huge influx of capital for the company and tremendous opportunities for NFTs and other innovative ways of creating baseball content, was summarily terminated by the mutual agreement of both parties.

I would expect that we haven't heard the last of the impact of this development. The part of me that is a traditionalist mourns the demise of the Topps brand; I haven't seen anything yet about the impact of this decision on Topps's archives. An article on Monday also raised the possibility of litigation because the Topps deal with Mudrick assumed the continuation of the licensing deal, and Topps had not been made aware of any discussions between MLB, the player's union, and Fanatics. So we may not heard the last of this tale.

That said, as someone who is always interested in making something old into something new, I'm intrigued by where Fanatics might take the baseball card business. It could lead to crass commercialization, or it could lead in intriguing directions.

It's also possible that if the deal goes through and the card business goes to Fanatics, there will be more space for card artists to grow their part of the space. There are already quite a few artists-cardists, whom I've profiled in this space-who may find more opportunities to show their crafts to people who appreciate the history and artistic heritage of baseball cards.

Which leads me to my other big-or sort of big-announcement, which is that I've opened an Etsy shop where you can buy signed and numbered copies of my original cards. I'm exploring the possibilities of combining card paintings with data visualization to explore new ways of representing baseball statistics. We will see where that goes. But for now I'm going to be offering the cards at very reasonable prices, with a view to defraying my costs and possibly some fundraising, if there is enough interest,. The shop is called Section 514 Cards, after this blog. It's kind of bare bones now but I expect to add more cards soon. I hope you enjoy it and that together we can continue to explore and push the envelope of what baseball cards can do to help us memorialize the game.