Sports Card Dealers
BREAKING NEWS: Fanatics conducts randomness test to prove its Topps cards are packaged, distributed fairly
When a collector pulls a rare, valuable, high-end trading card, it is supposed to prompt a celebration of sorts among the lucky collector and other hobbyists.
Instead, it sometimes sparks controversy and the opposite reaction, with collectors and others often accusing the card manufacturer of loading certain boxes and card packs with high-end cards and directing them to preferred collectors, breakers, hobby shops or retail outlets.
These accusations often lead to skepticism and widespread angst throughout the hobby, with criticism and distrust directed toward the card manufacturers.
Topps and parent company Fanatics Collectibles are trying to put a stop to such controversies and ensure collectors and customers that its cards are indeed distributed randomly with no high-end cards purposely placed in certain packs or boxes.
At its annual Topps Industry Conference on Monday, Fanatics CEO Mike Mahan unveiled the results of a recent randomness examination conducted by an independent auditing firm of Fanatics’ manufacturing and distribution process. It is believed to be the first-ever randomness test conducted in the hobby.
“For years, the folks who like to wear the tin-foil hats would talk about breakers or top hobby shops or famous people, celebrities getting specially designed, loaded boxes, and we started thinking about how to address that,” Fanatics CFO Greg Abovsky said in an interview with SCD.
“The goal is to give people comfort that this doesn’t exist and that the process is random and we are not directing specific boxes and specific high-value cards to any specific hobby participant, to a breaker, to specific hobby shops to specific celebrities.”
Fanatics contracted auditing firm KPMG International to exam its policies, procedures and processes to make sure it is distributing its Topps and Bowman cards and products randomly.
KPMG examined Fanatics’ collation and packaging processes from Feb. 9 through March 31 and concluded that its processes and controls provided “reasonable assurance” that high-value cards are being inserted into products randomly and randomly distributed to customers.
“We believe that the results of the examination will provide collectors with confidence that the process of packaging and distributing our cards is random and management and our employees are unable to direct high-value cards to specific customers,” Fanatics CEO Mike Mahan said in a statement and at the Topps Industry Conference.
A copy of Fanatics’ statement and the KPMG examination report is available at topps.com/reportandassertion.
KPMG examined all of Fanatics’ manufacturing, distribution and packaging policies, process flow diagrams, risk and control metrics, facilities, and met with employees involved in the manufacturing process to make sure they are following all procedures properly.
“It was quite an extensive process and they obviously gave us a clean bill of health, which is great, but it kind of goes hand-in-hand with our desire to get better every day, every month, every year to listen to collectors and address their concerns and questions,” Abovsky said. “And I would say, unlike some of the other people in the industry, other competitors of ours who seem not to care about the collectors, we do care and we want to show that we want to elevate the hobby. We love the hobby so this is a step that we took. ”
Fanatics had been considering conducting a randomness audit since last year to help combat controversies and questions that erupt on social media when breakers, top hobby shops or well-known collectors pull rare, high-value cards.
“You kind of forget that this is all done by statistics and you pull up your TikTok feed or your Instagram and you see a top breaker pulling a crazy card [and you see], ‘Oh my god, this whole thing is rigged, breakers are getting all the top cards,’” he said. “… First of all, they are ripping through dozens of boxes, dozens of cases, hundreds and hundreds of [packs], and they do find high-value cards. … But what they are forgetting, obviously, is that it’s all statistics and random.”
Abovsky said it is very difficult to prove, or disprove, that high-end cards are packaged and distributed randomly without conducting an intensive audit.
“The way to prove that is to say that you designed a process which ensures randomness, which ensures that you are not able to distribute specific high-value cards to specific people, and then are you following all that,” he said. “Are you following that process? Are you following all those controls? Are they being addressed?”
The randomness audit was part of a larger initiative by Fanatics to clean up the hobby and protect against breakers and dealers scamming collectors, issues that have been more prevalent since the boom years during the pandemic.
When Fanatics purchased Topps and acquired the MLB license to produce baseball cards, as well as the future rights to produce NFL and NBA cards, it pledged to develop policies and procedures that would ensure fairness and protect the integrity of the hobby.
“We have always been about transparency, and that also involves, owning up to your mistakes,” Abovsky said. “And you have seen us do that. We don’t get everything right. There is always human error that can creep in, and when we do screw up, we own up to it, we apologize, and we make it right. We believe that’s how business should be run, and the hobby is no different a business than the way that other top brands in the world run their businesses, whether it is Apple or Tesla or whatever.
“You expect transparency, you expect them to be responsive to consumers’ needs, you expect them to [fulfil] redemptions. … First of all, you probably hope there are no redemptions at all; sometimes they are unavoidable. But when they are unavoidable, you expect those redemptions to be fulfilled in a very timely manner. That is one of the other things we actually have been spending a lot of time on. … We want to do everything that is in our power to elevate the hobby and drive more transparency there and to show that we are trying to get better every day. We care about our consumers.”
That was the message that Fanatics and Topps delivered to collectors, dealers, hobby shop owners, breakers and other hobbyists at the annual industry conference. It plans to conduct similar audits each year.
“The message is rest assured, your chances of finding a high-value card are the exactly the same chances of anybody else finding a high-value card—a celebrity, a breaker, a specific hobby shop,” Abovsky said. “It’s all random, it’s all equitable and fair, and it’s all transparent. The odds are the odds.”
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Jeff Owens is the editor of SCD.
