Topps announces new rules for redemption cards

Topps acknowledges that redemption cards are “a pain” for collectors, so it’s taking steps to make the process more painless.

Topps announced Monday that it has reduced its number of redemptions owed to collectors from 70,000 to below 10,000.

It is also changing its expiration window for redemptions from 10 years to two years and back-dating the program to all redemption cards where the product year is 2021-22, 2022 or more recent. The 10-year expiration window will apply regardless of the expiration date on the card.

Also See: Topps releases results of first randomness test to ensure cards are distributed fairly 

Topps says the amount of redemption cards going into products is down substantially and added, “We plan to make even more progress in the near future.”

Topps also revealed Monday the results of a randomness examination it conducted to ensure collectors that its manufacturing process, packaging and distribution of cards is random.

Fanatics CFO Greg Abovsky said improving redemptions is also a chief initiative of the company.

“You expect transparency, you expect [card companies] to be responsive to consumers’ needs, you expect them to [fullfil] redemptions,” he said. “… 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.”