The Topps Company, Inc. is an American confectionery and sporting goods company. While today they are known best for sports cards, bubble gum, and other confections, their history is deeply intertwined with the history of baseball cards. In late 1951, Topps acquired the rights to produce baseball cards exclusively and issued the iconic 1952 Topps baseball card set the following spring, which helped popularize the modern baseball card craze.
Topps began publicly trading on the NASDAQ stock exchange in 1972 under the ticker symbol TOPP. During their early years as a public company, Topps stock remained relatively flat as the baseball card and confectionery businesses were stable, if unspectacular. Several key events over the next two decades would significantly impact Topps’ stock price.
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, the popularity of sports memorabilia and collectible cards skyrocketed. This collector boom, fueled by the massive popularity and cultural impact of the 1975 Topps design featuring player photos rather than illustrations, led to unprecedented demand and profits for Topps. Between 1978 and 1981 alone, Topps’ stock price more than quadrupled from under $10 per share to over $40. As the collector frenzy began to fade, Topps’ stock retreated back under $20 by 1984.
At the same time in the early 1980s, Topps faced growing competition from newcomers like Fleer and Donruss looking to break into the lucrative baseball card market. This oversaturation and loss of exclusivity led to market fragmentation and lower profits. From 1984-1987, Topps’ stock price drifted downward, closing 1987 at just under $10 per share.
In 1992, Topps stock got a major boost with the company’s acquisition of the Bazooka and Garbage Pail Kids brands of collectible sticker products from American Greetings. This diversified Topps beyond sports cards and helped grow profits. Topps shares surged past $20 that same year on the news. Increased competition and legal battles over sports licensing rights prevented further gains, and Topps remained stuck between $10-15 through most of the 1990s.
A major turnaround began in 2000, when former Disney executive Arthur Shorin was named Topps CEO. Shorin shifted Topps’ focus from physical sports cards to digital platforms and invested heavily in e-commerce. This positioning allowed Topps to benefit tremendously from the collector boom fueled by the rise of online auction sites like eBay in the early 2000s. Between 2000-2005, Topps’ stock price skyrocketed over 700% from under $5 per share to over $40, reflecting this digital transformation and surge in profits.
In 2007, Madison Dearborn Partners acquired Topps in a leveraged buyout that took the company private for $980 million, or $38.25 per share in cash. Topps stock was delisted from the NASDAQ in May 2007 in anticipation of the going-private transaction. Over the next decade as a private company, Topps continued innovating, launching successful digital platforms, apps, and new brands. Mounting debt from the leveraged buyout weighed on profits.
After over a decade off the public markets, Topps made its return to trading with an IPO on NASDAQ under the new ticker symbol TOPP in October 2021. The IPO priced at $12 per share, valuing the company around $1.3 billion including debt. Topps debuted slightly below the IPO price but quickly gained traction, more than doubling to over $25 per share by December 2021 amid growing collector interest and optimism around Topps’ digital potential long-term.
Increasing economic uncertainty, high inflation, and the broader market sell-off in 2022 has taken a toll. From its February 2022 high over $20, Topps shares crashed along with the rest of the stock market, closing under $10 in June 2022. While still well above the IPO price, Topps is down over 50% from its 2022 peak and trading at around $9-10 per share as of Fall 2022.
Going forward, Topps’ stock price performance will likely be determined by macroeconomic conditions, trends in the collectibles industry, the evolution of digital platforms and NFTs, and the company’s ability to pay down debt and grow profits consistently. For long-term investors, Topps remains an intriguing play on the intersection of sports, pop culture collectibles and digital media if the economy stabilizes. But further stock volatility can be expected in the current environment. The next chapter in Topps’ history as a public company is still being written.
In summary, The Topps Company’s over 70-year evolution from baseball card pioneer to public company has seen its stock price rise and fall drastically at different points, reflecting broader collector trends and company performance. From near extinction in the late 1980s and 1990s to huge gains fueling the early 2000s digital boom, Topps’ public investors have experienced a wild ride. Returning to public markets in 2021, Topps now aims to leverage its brand equity and innovation into long-term shareholder value. Only time will tell if today’s investors will achieve profitability equal to those who gambled on Topps decades ago.
