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Cards 'n' Collectibles: Topps creates online card 'stock market'

Tuesday, November 14, 2000

By NICK ROUSSO
SPECIAL TO THE POST-INTELLIGENCER

The concept was inevitable, but that doesn't make it a good one.

In a partnership with eBay, the Topps Co. is creating a new product called eTopps that mimics the stock market in the way securities -- sportscards -- are bought and sold.

ETopps is a new brand of cards for which Topps.com will function as the primary market, and a special section of eBay will function as the secondary market. The cards are real, printed on actual paper stock, but the rest of the game is Dow Jones fantasy.

Cards will be sold individually, by specific player, in "Initial Player Offerings" at prices determined by player popularity and demand, as Topps perceives it. If Alex Rodriguez is $5, for example, then Al Martin might be a dime.

Initial sales will take place at Topps.com. After that, cards will be bought and sold on the eTopps trading floor on eBay, with prices fluctuating just as they do on Wall Street.

Everyone participating in the program will have access to their portfolio as provided by Topps. Buyers and sellers will transact electronically.

No wax packs, no bubblegum, no middleman, no fuss.

The person behind eTopps is executive vice president Scott Silverstein, a Brandeis-educated lawyer and business whiz who, for most of 1999, oversaw Topps' Pokemon activities. Silverstein now runs the sportscard division and is bullish on his new device.

"We believe eTopps will substantially broaden the card market beyond current collectors, to include Rotisserie game players, sports fans in general, and even their kids," Silverstein said.

More details:

  • Quantities of each card will be announced in advance and vary by player. For now, Topps isn't saying whether that means one million Rodriguez cards and 10 Martins, or one million Martin cards and 10 A-Rods. Nor has the company suggested what the initial prices might be.

  • Once cards have been produced, buyers will have a choice regarding physical possession. The cards can remain under Topps safekeeping, or be delivered to the owner with anti-counterfeiting holograms in "tamper-evident" cases. The way the system is set up, however, there is little incentive to take possession.

    "We are encouraging people to build a portfolio and keep the cards in house, and continue trading them," Topps spokesman Clay Luraschi said. "The only reason people would want to take them is to have them graded. That goes hand in hand with today's hobby; if you think a card is highly collectible, you get it graded, hoping it adds value."

  • Cards left with Topps can be sold on the trading floor located at eBay.com. Cards delivered to their owner are not eligible to be sold on the trading floor.

  • Topps guarantees mint condition of the cards left in its possession.

  • Portfolios will detail ownership of cards being held by Topps, their purchase price and their current value based on recent trades on the trading floor.

    Topps will conduct a "soft" launch of eTopps in December with football cards, followed by a full-scale baseball release in March. The collaboration with eBay is seen as key to the product's success.

    "Our partnership with eBay has two main components," Silverstein said. "They will create and host the eTopps trading floor as a special category, where only these cards will trade, and they will support the eTopps program with marketing muscle, both to their enormous customer base and through advertising on portals such as AOL."

    ETopps has gotten a cold shoulder from some. Brick-and-mortar retailers fear on-line trading sanctioned by Topps will siphon off customers. The way Topps spins it, people who like eTopps will be want to go out and buy other cards.

    "It's going to help the retailer and the hobby-shop owner," Luraschi said. "It's going to attract people who aren't collecting now. They're going to see this and say 'This is a really cool thing,' and in turn, they're going to go into shops and buy a pack of Bowman or a pack of Stadium Club."

    The real problem with eTopps is written between the lines: that trading cards are commodities, and that these ones, in their blatant mimicry of the stock market, are good investments.

    I'm here to tell you, let the buyer beware.

    Nick Rousso can be reached at nickrousso@aol.com

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