Immediate gratification is now possible for baseball card collectors thanks to the Topps Company. They’ve given an update to the old-school classics for this year’s season with its new initiative, Topps Now.
The company originally started selling baseball cards 65 years ago as a way to increase candy sales. Topps would place a few cards in a pack along with a slab of bubblegum. The candy would leave a sugary residue and a sweet scent on the cards that featured the faces of greats like Mickey Mantle, Gil Hodges and Roberto Clemente on the front and statistics and fun facts on the back. As card collecting became a must for many young fans of America’s national pastime, it was the trading cards – not the sweets – that became the main business for Topps.
But with the rise of the Internet came the wide, immediate and effortless availability of practically any information a fan could want. And so came the waning popularity of baseball cards. Which is why Topps is trying something new with Topps Now. Starting with this current MLB season, they’re taking the great moments from yesterday’s games and turning them into cards available for purchase the next day. For a brief 24-hour window, the cards will be available online for $9.99.
And just leave it to the “Amazin’ Mets” to provide one instant, seemingly designed for this newfangled take on trading cards. On May 7, Bartolo Colón – a then 42-year-old starting pitcher with a non-traditional athletic physique – hit a home run against the San Diego Padres: his first ever in the Major League. Mets play-by-play announcer, Gary Cohen, called it, “one of the great moments in the history of baseball.” Almost 9,000 Topps Now cards with Colón’s improbable hit emblazoned on the front were sold. That’s over 5,000 more than the next most popular card.
And though Topps has already found some success with this new iteration of baseball card, not everyone is buying. One collector called Topps Now “a bit of a gimmick.” For traditionalists like him, a new exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art may be more their style: Starting today, the museum is honoring “The Old Ball Game” with nearly 400 baseball cards exploring the history of New York baseball from 1887 to 1977.
