Topps sent a cleverly worded statement to some Amazon sellers in early September, stating the company had a policy against listing any of their MLB products on the #1 e-commerce website.
The selling ban covers new and old Topps unopened MLB items. It presumably does not include single cards or used goods, although those aren’t top sellers. Topps made it clear in their statement that sellers are allowed to sell other Topps licensed brands on Amazon.
It’s unclear if and how the selling ban will be enforced. Amazon will not ask sellers to remove items until Topps or MLB takes further action.
The NFL supposedly also has a selling ban on eBay and Amazon.
From March 2017-July 2017 I sold over 1,000 boxes of 2016 Topps Opening Day Baseball on Amazon. If a strict ban was in place I would not be able to sell those boxes.
I only have about 50 Topps MLB boxes currently listed for sale on Amazon. Aside from 2016 Opening Day, Topps products aren’t something I regularly sell.
Big sellers like Wowzzer can potentially sell over 100 boxes a day during peak times. There were days I sold over 40 boxes in a 24 hour period and I never had an extensive inventory.
More than likely Major League Baseball is pushing its licensees, including Topps, to tell retailers to not list on Amazon.
MLB is too scared to battle Amazon on their own because Amazon has more money than they do. Without more effort, like MLB and Topps taking legal action, Amazon will not kick Topps items off willingly.
Topps will quietly blame MLB for the ban, but the card company should take ownership of its dealer network. It includes their own website that was hacked in late 2016.
One of the top sports card online retailers, Blowout Cards, also saw their website hacked and customers were hit with over $100,000 in chargers.
Not to be outdone, the self proclaimed Godfather of Group Breaking, Firehand Cards, had their website hacked.
Group breaker DNT Sports Cards was caught swapping out cards during a break in 2017.
Many group breakers took park in illegal online raffles, dubbed razzes, during the early years of online breaking.
When was the last time you went into a Target or Walmart and all the packs didn’t feel fondled, searched and molested?
If Topps won’t allow boxes to be sold on Amazon they need to start coming up with some better options for potential buyers.
Many of the 1,000+ Topps boxes I sold on Amazon were to women who may have turned around and given the cards as gifts or to children. Topps needs to make it easy to reach these potential customers if a ban on Amazon is enforced.
