Topps Cashing In on Year of the No-Hitter

It’s the year of the no-hitter in baseball — and that’s fine with Topps, which has found a way to make a quick buck on the sport’s more notable moments.

Borrowing a concept similar to NFTs (which Topps also sells), the trading card company sells cards that commemorate individual moments, and are only available for 24 hours.

The six no-hitters this season — which is two shy of tying the full-season record set in 1884 — have made for standout moments amid the daily flow of Topps Now releases. The first four released garnered 19,528 total sales of the series’ base-level $9.99 cards.

Topps also sells more expensive autographed cards. Following Yankees pitcher Corey Kluber’s no-hitter on Wednesday, the company issued at least seven Kluber cards celebrating the feat, ranging from $9.99 to $999.99.

The company has been able to leverage what looks like a bounceback year for MLB.

• ESPN’s “Sunday Night Baseball” viewership was up 34% over the 2020 average through its first six telecasts.
• Opening Day set an all-time record for MLB.tv, the league’s streaming platform, with 121 million minutes watched.
• The season’s first 18 days racked up 1.3 billion minutes watched on the service, a 12% uptick from 2020 and 43% higher than 2019.

Topps went public last month through a SPAC merger at a $1.3 billion valuation. It reported $567 million in total sales in 2020.