People across the trading card industry have been asking the question for months: “What will Fanatics do with Topps?”

So far, we’ve seen almost nothing on the consumer-facing side of the business. Products and retail sales have remained mostly the same since Fanatics, the licensed sports merch giant, paid $500 million for Topps in January after undercutting its card licenses last year.

One small change has emerged: Topps Now is likely to see faster turnaround.

Topps since 2016 has marked special, unique and sometimes goofy moments in baseball via an on-demand card-printing platform called Topps Now. The program has proven to be a financial success, generating millions of dollars in sales for cards that are available typically for just 24 hours.

According to an industry source, Fanatics is studying how to make Topps Now cards available for sale within a few hours after the event rather than a day or two later. How that will be accomplished remains unknown. Topps hasn’t responded to several requests for comment, and Fanatics isn’t saying much about its plans.

Trading cards for decades have traditionally been sold in packs or boxes in stores and, since the 1990s, online. The Topps Now cards are purchased online (or via resale sites like eBay) in singles or batches.

Topps rolled out the on-demand business after losing its NFL card licenses and the move has replaced the lost football revenue. The real-time printing unit makes cards of things such as a rookie debut, first home run, no-hitter, record-setters, awesome plays, veteran player debuts with new teams, or even a feral feline on the field.

A recent example of that success is the Topps Now card of Miguel Cabrera getting his 3,000th hit on April 23. The basic card was priced at $9.99 and the print run – Topps posts the print runs of all the on-demand cards a few days after the sales window ends – topped out at 13,493 cards.

Cocktail napkin math shows that to be $135,000 in revenue. Topps doesn’t make its financials public, so there is a bit of guesswork involved as it’s unclear if the print run reflects sales or could include cards that Topps holds onto for its archive and may send to the player, etc. Bulk orders come at a steep discount, but Topps doesn’t disclose single sales versus multi-card orders in the print run totals.

Topps previously has said MLB on-demand card print runs average between 500 and 1,000 cards. Some are far lower, and some are much higher.

Three Cabrera cards have had big Topps Now print runs: His August 2021 card commemorating his 500th career home run had a print run of 13,704. A limited number of more expensive autographed cards generated tens of thousands more dollars for Topps.

An April 2021 Topps Now of Cabrera hitting the first home run of the season, in a snowstorm, had a print run of 11,821 cards. Topps has done 34 on-demand Cabrera cards, including 21 for his unique moments. The rest were autographed versions of a basic card, or part of a multi-player card.

Cabrera’s first Topps Now card was in June 2016, showing him hitting a 454-foot home run. That one had a print run of 430 cards.

The biggest Topps Now print run came last season when highly-touted Tampa Bay prospect Wander Franco made his MLB debut with a home run – good for 61,305 on-demand card.

Topps prices the basic on-demand card at $9.99, but occasionally sells autographed and relic cards at much higher prices and in specific numbers – the artificial scarcity strategy used by the trading card industry to drive interest and sales.

That includes 1-of-1 cards priced around $2,000 for some cards. In the case of the Cabrera 3K hit card, Topps sold out of all the autographed versions that started at $179.99 and topped out at $2,500.

Buyers of the $10 card get them in a couple of weeks by mail. The signed cards take up to 20 weeks to ship, per Topps.

The Topps Now archive shows nearly 14,000 cards, of which almost 10,400 are MLB cards.

The rest are from other sports or even outside of sports.

In January 2021, for example, it sold 91,169 Topps Now cards of U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders at the presidential inauguration, wearing the famous winter gloves, at $9.99 each. That’s the biggest print run of any Topps Now card.

The #ToppsNOW Bernie Sanders card clocks in at 91,169 cards printed, our highest to date!

Did you collect one?! Check out the rest of the Inauguration #ToppsNOW print runs here: https://t.co/Poj0MOlHO3 pic.twitter.com/cTNEPVOtaM

The inauguration cards also included big sellers of Vice President Kamala Harris (17,016 cards), Amanda Gorman (14,716), Lady Gaga (8,271), Jennifer Lopez (6,659) and Garth Brooks (6,303). President Joe Biden’s most-popular inauguration card sold 8,925 copies, but the three separate Biden cards sold almost 23,000 combined.

A 2020 card of 16-year-old Youssoufa Moukoko becoming the youngest player in Germany’s top-flight Bundesliga has a print run of 43,697 cards. In Formula 1, a Topps Now card of Max Verstappen winning the 2021 driver’s world championship had a print run of 29,562.

Within MLB, there are non-player cards that sell in strong numbers.

Earlier this season, a Topps Now card commemorating San Francisco Giants coach Alyssa Nakken becoming the first woman to work as an on-field coach during a game has a print run of 9,674 cards. And Rachel Balkovec, who became first woman to manage an affiliated minor league club as the Yankees’ Class A Tampa Tarpons skipper, had a Topps Now card print run of 5,423 cards this season.

Today, we honor Alyssa Nakken for becoming the first woman to coach on the field during an @MLB game with a #ToppsNOW card. Congrats to Alyssa & the @SFGiants on making history!

Get Alyssa's Topps NOW card here: https://t.co/SWUXkBY7dk pic.twitter.com/WqQrZPd1Uy

The No. 2 seller among Topps Now MLB cards is of Dr. Anthony Fauci of pandemic fame throwing out a ceremonial Opening Day pitch for the Washington Nationals to start the abbreviated 2020 season. It had a print run of 51,512.

In other Topps Now non-player cards, one of a floofy cat on the field at Coors Field a year ago had a print run of 2,958 cards, and then a tabby on the field at Yankee Stadium had a print run of 3,836 cards.

There is no limit of how many different Topps Now cards the company will make available for sale on a given day, but it’s typically just a handful. The company has said it’ll offer up cards after any day MLB plays games, and now could make them available same day as part of Fanatics’ push for a faster turnaround time.

Beyond baseball, Topps does on-demand cards for Major League Soccer, Premier League, Bundesliga, UEFA Champions League and Overtime Elite. It also creates Topps Now stickers for the National Hockey League, whose traditional trading card license is with Upper Deck.

Past properties Topps has produced on-demand cards for include Bowman Next prospect cards for baseball, basketball and football; Showtime Boxing, UFC, WWE, Star Wars, American Cornhole, Europa League, and the defunct AAF and XFL spring football leagues.

“The Topps Now program has grown steadily year over year and has become a staple program for the organization (and it also changed the trading card industry),” Topps spokeswoman Emily Kless told The Athletic in 2021. “It has provided a way for Topps to document the game every single day, where as our flagship product (Series 1) documents a year in MLB history. Topps Now has also grown in a way that has attracted partnerships, such as including Topps Now cards in Sony’s MLB The Show.”

One longtime card industry insider explained the importance of Topps Now for the company and wider industry.

“Topps Now has carved a great place in this hobby. Regardless of how one collects, when something big happens in baseball, you immediately know that a Topps Now card is going to be made and collectors are excited to get that,” said Susan “Sooz” Lulgjuraj, a longtime card collector who has worked for both Topps and card valuation specialists Beckett, via email.

She was at Topps when the project launched and saw how it helped the company after loss of the NFL licenses, which are now with rival card maker Panini.

“If Topps doesn’t lose the football license, Topps Now may never exist because it forced people to think beyond what they were already doing,” said Lulgjuraj, who is now with Goldin Auctions. “Topps Now forged the way for other e-commerce offerings such as exclusive products, Project 2020, Project 70 and so on. Topps Now really changed the way Topps does a lot of its business by becoming a more robust e-commerce company and not strictly relying on brick-and-mortar and distributors for all of their revenue.”

Who buys Topps Now cards and why?

As with just about every sports collectable, some buyers are speculators hoping for a future resale payday. Others may just be fans of a team or player and want all the cards that Topps produces on-demand, in traditional store shelf retail, or even digitally instead of cardboard.

Topps sometimes includes a rare version of its on-demand cards with orders, giving the product a little of the feel of opening a pack and finding a great card. Still, most trading cards, whether from a pack or on-demand printing, end up with little to no resale value. They’re called commons for a reason.

There are thousands of Topps Now cards listed on eBay, some highly graded and listed for a premium over raw cards.

The trading card market has been white-hot for a few years – Is it a classic bubble? We’ll see! – and collectors and investors are buying Topps Now cards directly and then reselling them, with some priced at more than $100,000 on eBay. A set of six Shohei Ohtani autographed relic Topps Now cards is priced currently at almost $250,000 on the site – with 35 people shown as watching the auction listing.

(Top photo: Courtesy of Topps)