Topps baseball cards are created and distributed by The Topps Company, Inc., which is based in New York City. The Topps Company was founded in 1938 and is currently headquartered at One Whitehall Street in Manhattan.
The company maintains offices and production facilities across the United States to handle all aspects of design, production, marketing, and distribution for their baseball card and other sports card products. Their main production facilities are located in Asheville, North Carolina and Doral, Florida.
In Asheville, Topps operates a 550,000 square foot production plant located at 19 Industrial Park Drive. This facility houses all of the printing, die-cutting, and packaging operations required to produce baseball cards and other trading card products on a mass scale. Over 500 employees work at the Asheville plant, which has the capacity and machinery to produce over 5 billion cards per year.
The Doral, Florida facility, located at 8959 NW 41st Street, focuses more on sales, marketing and artwork production for new card designs rather than the large-scale printing done in Asheville. About 200 employees work out of the 150,000 square foot Doral plant, which houses offices for Topps designers, artists, and sales representatives. New card concepts are created, tested and finalized here before being sent to Asheville for printing.
In addition to these main production sites, Topps maintains numerous smaller regional offices across the U.S. to oversee distribution and sales operations. They have distribution centers located in Commack, New York; Broomall, Pennsylvania; City of Industry, California; and Memphis, Tennessee that receive shipments of new baseball card products from Asheville. From these distribution hubs, individual boxes and cases of cards are then shipped to dealers and retail stores all over North America.
International production and distribution is handled through Topps offices in London, United Kingdom and Hamburg, Germany. Topps works with various licensed printers in Europe and Asia to produce cards for non-North American markets depending on language needs and distribution channels. While the New York headquarters maintains ultimate control, these international branches are responsible for marketing, sales and localized production in their respective regions.
As the longtime market leader in American sports cards, Topps has maintained this extensive North American production and distribution network since the baseball card boom of the 1950s. Locating the main printing facility in Asheville gives them access to experienced labor as well as lower costs compared to operating solely in large metro areas. Meanwhile, sites like Doral and the distribution centers allow for closer coordination with merchandisers, licensing partners and customers.
This complex infrastructure has enabled Topps to remain the dominant force in U.S. baseball cards for generations. With facilities spread across the country and world, they are well positioned to swiftly produce massive print runs of new designs and ensure widespread availability of their products throughout baseball’s season and beyond. The New York headquarters ties it all together, overseeing creative development, business operations and strategic planning from Manhattan.
