Collectable shareholders have voted to turn down a $2 million offer for the 1959-60 Wilt Chamberlain rookie uniform.
The company says 82 percent opted to decline the offer from a private buyer that would have netted them a $4.94 profit for each $10 share purchased back on May 5.
The uniform is still trading on the company’s platform with a current secondary market price at $12.80 per share.
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Future breakups notwithstanding, Topps is teaming up with MLB And the MLB Players Association to launch its latest NFT Collection. Based on Inception Baseball, the collection of digital cards will feature motion animations on Topps designs.
“This Topps NFT product comes at a time when so many talented young players are emerging in baseball and provides collectors with a new way to connect with them as their careers take shape,” said Evan Kaplan, Managing Director of MLB Players, Inc.
The 2021 Topps MLB Inception NFT Collection release will take place on the recently launched ToppsNFTs.com – an application powered by the public blockchain platform Avalanche, which Topps says “removes the need for special wallets or token apps and provides a single location to buy, sell and explore officially licensed Topps NFT collections.”
“Our vision is to create a fun, easy-to-use collecting experience on the Blockchain that appeals to all fans whether they have experience with NFTs or not. It’s an extension of the vision we’ve had for digital collectibles in our mobile apps since 2012,” said Tobin Lent, VP & Global General Manager of Topps Digital Sports & Entertainment.
Players who’ve been traded during this season, like Kris Bryant, will be featured in their new uniforms.
Standard and Premium “packs” will be available for purchase on Thursday, September 9 at 1pm ET, with card rarities ranging from Common to Legendary. It’s the second Topps MLB NFT product to hit the market this year and the first on ToppsNFTs.com.
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Don Harrison, owner of the Tenth Inning, a hobby shop in Hampton, VA, has been around long enough to have sold a Ty Cobb card to a young teenager for $30 in 1979 and see the same customer—now in his 50s—return and sell the card back to him for $1,600.
He and another local shop owner talked with the local paper for this story on the hobby’s 2020s boom.
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A new vintage pack break business has opened—this one based in Canada.
Wax Pack Breakers has accumulated an inventory that includes graded sports card packs from the 1950s to the current era in sports as well as numerous non-sports issues.
Owners Michael Yablonsky and Ted Szilagy say they will be breaking numerous rarely seen hockey packs from decades ago including O-Pee-Chee, Parkhurst and Topps on their website, YouTube and Facebook. Spots are sold in each pack at varying price points.
They’re expected to start Wednesday night.
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PWCC’s Market Price Research tool had been a handy source to look up sales of trading cards on eBay, with data all the way back to 2004. The information was free as long as you signed up for an account. The tool has now become a casualty of eBay’s recent breakup with PWCC and is no longer available. Users can still track PWCC’s sales but the sitewide eBay research link is gone.
