Panini has lost their MLB license as of today 7/31/23 discussion thread.

[abide]

This has been coming for a while, and now it's here, Panini has lost their license, and can no longer sell cards with MLB logo, team names & logos, players currently playing in the MLB

Panini products going forward will only have retired players, and players not yet in MLB, and the dreaded photoshop removal of logos.

Fanatics using the Topps brands it acquired, is now the only license. The monopoly has begun.
Prices on historically favorite products such as Topps Flagship, Topps Chrome, Bowman, Bowman Chrome Prospects, Heritage and so on TBD
Fanatics execution of it's plan to grow card sales by 10x .... TBD

Will you be buying unlicensed Panini product? Wax? Aftermarket?
If you're a Topps Chrome set builder, Will you continue to buy the Fanatics product if the hits become 300% harder to pull [such as 2023 Topps Flagship?]
or if the product doubles in price, reminding us of the prices paid in the aftermarket for Walmart blaster boxes during covid?

[doniceage]

I will never buy a Panini product again because they truly did me dirty on a expired redemption. Some guy in a office valued a Steve Young auto patch at 300 reward points. Heck, you cannot even get a base numbered hall of fame card for that LOL. Called numerous times and they tried to make me feel like I was lucky to get anything. I wish they would have kept their license just like others that have lost theirs in the past fleer, Pacific, Fleer, Donruss, ITG, to just name a few. It is hard to survive in the hobby when you do not have a license but it can be done. Best of luck to them for the sake of their employees who work for them. As you have seen in the last few years many jumping from this company and others to other companies in this market.

p.s. I do not see how fanatics can grow card sales by times 10 but maybe I am just crazy.

Don

[hobbyfan]

This has been coming for a while, and now it's here, Panini has lost their license, and can no longer sell cards with MLB logo, team names & logos, players currently playing in the MLB

Panini products going forward will only have retired players, and players not yet in MLB, and the dreaded photoshop removal of logos.

Fanatics using the Topps brands it acquired, is now the only license. The monopoly has begun.
Prices on historically favorite products such as Topps Flagship, Topps Chrome, Bowman, Bowman Chrome Prospects, Heritage and so on TBD
Fanatics execution of it's plan to grow card sales by 10x .... TBD

Will you be buying unlicensed Panini product? Wax? Aftermarket?
If you're a Topps Chrome set builder, Will you continue to buy the Fanatics product if the hits become 300% harder to pull [such as 2023 Topps Flagship?]
or if the product doubles in price, reminding us of the prices paid in the aftermarket for Walmart blaster boxes during covid?

I picked up a couple of packs of Topps Series 2 and 3 Topps Heritage the other week at Walmart. Couple of weeks later, the Series 2's are gone, and the Heritage cards are gone. I think the speculating jackals are back, but they're ignoring, speaking of Panini, Chronicles football and Select basketball, at the moment.

[ethunder]

I hate to see only one company with a MLB license. Cards without the logo are just not the same. I do miss all the brands that are long gone. I’ll probably keep buying Topps unless the price goes up since I’m happy getting base cards to put a team set together. I would be impressed if they increase sales by that magnitude!

[ronfir]

I picked up a couple of packs of Topps Series 2 and 3 Topps Heritage the other week at Walmart. Couple of weeks later, the Series 2's are gone, and the Heritage cards are gone. I think the speculating jackals are back, but they're ignoring, speaking of Panini, Chronicles football and Select basketball, at the moment.

I have been by our local Walmart and there dozens and dozens of blasters from all kinds of product. Nobody waiting at the door for the store to open to rush and buy blasters. Maybe it is just our local but for the past three weeks our Walmart has been packed with retail.

[pwaldo]

Fanatics using the Topps brands it acquired, is now the only license. The monopoly has begun.
Prices on historically favorite products such as Topps Flagship, Topps Chrome, Bowman, Bowman Chrome Prospects, Heritage and so on TBD

I'd challenge that Topps Chrome was ever popular in baseball. Even in other sports just 1998 Topps Chrome for football and the original 1996-97 Topps Chrome in basketball up until 1998-99 SP Authentic came out.

The reason I say this is because before 2016 did anyone ever hear the sentence I want Topps Chrome baseball before? What card from the brand was popular? What was the highest selling and most in-demand card you can think of? I'm drawing a blank because nobody really cared for Topps Chrome in baseball up until recently. If you asked collects in 2004 or 2008 what they thought of the brand I honestly think most would ask why was it still around. That and Finest I would have canned after 2000 since they were all about parallels and that died out when autos/game used took over. But yeah this resurgence of the Topps Chrome brand in all sports has been weird to me since from 1996 onward there wasn't much interest (outside of that 1996-97 Topps Chrome basketball release).

[abide]

I'd challenge that Topps Chrome was ever popular in baseball. Even in other sports just 1998 Topps Chrome for football and the original 1996-97 Topps Chrome in basketball up until 1998-99 SP Authentic came out.

The reason I say this is because before 2016 did anyone ever hear the sentence I want Topps Chrome baseball before? What card from the brand was popular? What was the highest selling and most in-demand card you can think of? I'm drawing a blank because nobody really cared for Topps Chrome in baseball up until recently. If you asked collects in 2004 or 2008 what they thought of the brand I honestly think most would ask why was it still around. That and Finest I would have canned after 2000 since they were all about parallels and that died out when autos/game used took over. But yeah this resurgence of the Topps Chrome brand in all sports has been weird to me since from 1996 onward there wasn't much interest (outside of that 1996-97 Topps Chrome basketball release).

A lot of collectors were drawn to collecting / chasing Refractors beginning with 1993 Finest. Topps Chrome was one of the products with refractors since.the first year of the product, which was 1996.
The stock on the early cards was about the same as flagship stock.
The problem with Topps Chrome IMO, is it took them a while to find the right format. They started with 200 cards I think, then grew the set to 500 cards, before shrinking to 220
They thickened the stock in ---? Then they added autograph RC short prints as part of the base set.
The RC / AU short prints were mostly weak, Topps was bad at identifying the best prospects.

I would argue that, at a minimum, 2012 Topps Chrome baseball was a hot set, with the first / RC Topps Chrome Mike Trout card [even though Trouts real RC was 2011 Flagship update], and many parallels,
and the Yu Darvish RC and many parallels
and the Bryce Harper RC and many parallels
and overall, 50 RCs in the set, some others who seemed to have potential such as Yoenes Cespedes, Trevor Bauer

[pwaldo]

I would argue that, at a minimum, 2012 Topps Chrome baseball was a hot set, with the first / RC Topps Chrome Mike Trout card [even though Trouts real RC was 2011 Flagship update], and many parallels,
and the Yu Darvish RC and many parallels
and the Bryce Harper RC and many parallels
and overall, 50 RCs in the set, some others who seemed to have potential such as Yoenes Cespedes, Trevor Bauer

Yeah I agree that 2012 Topps Chrome was pretty hot. It had Bryce Harper autograph rookies and at the time the rookie class wasn't too bad. Over time it has become pretty awful. But that 2012 Topps Chrome Trout wasn't hot at the time and is another recent increase. Even his 2011 Topps Update rookie took forever to reach $10. I remember Target having reduced mega boxes that had a whole bunch of stuff including 2011 Topps Update and 2011 Bowman Chrome hobby packs in them and they sat forever. They even had to reduce them to move them all. Should have bought every since one of those but oh well at the time nobody wanted them either.

[abide]

this was expected, but it tooker longer than I thought it would, Panini making an antitrust claim vs Fanatics

https://www.sportscollectorsdaily.co...trust-lawsuit/

[pwaldo]

this was expected, but it tooker longer than I thought it would, Panini making an antitrust claim vs Fanatics

https://www.sportscollectorsdaily.co...trust-lawsuit/

Good

The only company I despise more than Panini is Fanatics. Hope they destroy each other.