One of the most prominent people in sport card history says the recent events in the hobby can be summed up in one word.
Greed.
Mike Cramer, who was the founder, President and CEO of Pacific Trading Cards, says that what happened to Panini this week is nothing new to the industry.
“We went through the same thing,” Cramer said of Pacific’s exodus from the NFL card market in 2003. “The letter that we got (from the NFLPA) is probably the exact same one as the letter Panini got.”
Cramer worked in the industry during six different decades. He started by selling Topps baseball card sets nationally through mail orders, and eventually began producing and packaging cards. Pacific would ultimately be granted full licensing to produce NFL, MLB and later NHL trading cards until he sold the company and retired in 2004.
Since then, Cramer has remained in the hobby as a collector. He recently wrote a book called Cramer’s Choice, Memoir of a Baseball Card Collector Turned Manufacturer. The book, published by McFarland, will be available in the fall and pre-orders have been very strong.
After several years as an NFL card licensee, the NFLPA pulled the plug on Pacific in 2003. At the Kit Young Hawaii industry conference in February of that year, Gene Upshaw, then President of the NFLPA, made the decision to terminate Pacific’s football license after sports card shop owners complained in a roundtable session that there were too many brands and products in the market, making it difficult for them to carry a complete line.
Within hours, Cramer was busy with his executive team restructuring his company and making the difficult and painful decision as to which employees would have to be laid off and how the company would move forward without the NFL.
“The feeling of what happened to us and what Panini is going through is the exact same,” Cramer said.
Pacific was very successful post-NFL with their line of NHL hockey cards, as well as CFL and wrestling cards. When the 2004-05 NHL lockout happened, Cramer made the decision to sell his company and retire. He sold his company and brands to Playoff, which was later bought by Panini. Some of Cramer’s brands became staples in Panini’s line of products, including Pacific’s popular Prism brand, which was rebranded as Prizm.
Cramer does not think the situation with Panini and the NFLPA is over.
“When it happened to us, I didn’t go back and fight it like I probably could have,” Cramer said. “I was burned out at the time and I didn’t have the energy to go through that.”
Panini appears to be fighting the NFLPA’s sudden decision. An attorney for the company told the Action Network Wednesday that they’ve filed a demand for arbitration with the American Arbitration Association.
Cramer also compares the current hobby landscape to what was going on in the 1980s, when he was producing baseball legends sets before Pacific landed full Major League Baseball and PA licensing.
“Everything is going to Fanatics, but at what point is someone going to come forward with a class action lawsuit?,” Cramer asked. “The situation is very similar to what was going on in baseball when Topps had an exclusive license. Eventually, it was a class action lawsuit that opened things up for Donruss and Fleer to come into the market. Now, Fanatics owns Topps and its brands, so everything has kind of come full circle.”
Fanatics wasn’t scheduled to take over the NFL/NFLPA licenses until 2026. The NFLPA’s letter to agents indicating its planned move to Fanatics sent another a shock wave through the industry.
Crowded Market In 90s
Over the last 30 years, the NFL football card market has now gone from a saturation of brands to having, as Cramer says, “all of their eggs in one basket.” In the 1990s, the NFLPA and NFL had trading card licenses with Topps, Upper Deck, Fleer, Pinnacle, Donruss, Pacific, Collector’s Edge, Action Packed, SkyBox, Playoff, AW, Pro Line, Pro Set and Wild Card. Now, the pendulum has swung the other way and there is just one company making fully licensed cards.
“The greed really kicked in during the 1990s,” Cramer said. “For a while in the 1990s, they made a lot of money, but it didn’t last long. They got greedy and had too many companies making too many products. As the market shrunk and the overall sales declined, the licensors were unwilling to take a cut. What it all comes down to over and over again is big money fighting over big money.”
Instead of having multiple companies, the NFLPA will only be dealing with one company in a monster deal.
“With Fanatics is controlling the entire industry, the licensors have painted themselves into a corner,” Cramer said. “Nobody really knows how much money Fanatics has or how they are going to do it. What is going to happen if Fanatics finds out they bit off more than they can chew?”
Cramer drew the comparison with Starter.
“Do you remember Starter?” he said. “They had the rights to everything. They made all the uniforms and made jackets and other items, and then they got in financial trouble.”
Another area that has not been widely discussed during this deal has been the network of distributors that supply card products to hobby stores. Many shops and distributors are still trying to figure out how the new supply chain will work long term in the hobby.
“If Panini is no longer making NFL cards, that’s a big part of their business,” Cramer said of the distributors. “Fortunately trading cards is just part of the business for most distributors, but it’s a big part. The distributors are out there in limbo.”
Regardless of the changes that are occurring, and regardless of the future successes or failures that Fanatics may encounter, Cramer is not worried about the hobby.
“One thing I wrote about in my book in the prelude is that the card business has been around for 150 years,” he said. “Companies have come and gone over time, and the people in the business come and go. But what stays the same is that there are collectors who want sports cards. As long as there is that demand, someone will be making them.”
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