Was fortunate to attend the annual Topps executive Q&A last night at The National. It’s a very cool event where they bring out their most senior execs to answer questions for a small group of collectors- maybe 100.

This year the execs were Mike Mahan (CEO of Fanatics Collectibles), Nick Bell (CEO of Fanatics Live and Collect), Avery Jessup (chief commercial officer for Fanatics Collectibles), David Leiner (president of Topps), and Clay Luraschi (chief product officer for Topps).

Most interesting nuggets I heard:
* Last year Topps had 70K redemptions outstanding, today they are down to 8K
* They are looking at ways to potentially protect against CT scanning boxes to find hits, but Mahan said he thought that story was overblown
* They said more licenses beyond Premier League, WWE and NBA are coming, but didn’t say what

I got to go last year too and it’s fascinating to hear the questions of these passionate collectors and the unfiltered answers of the Fanatics execs.

They also do trivia and try and stump Clay by asking him the value of random cards vs the Beckett guide. He never misses!

One guy won a 1961 Topps Mickey Mantle!

I enjoyed this article about the merch/collectibles being sold at MSG as Billy Joel wraps up his final shows there.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/25/style/billy-joel-concert-merch.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare&sgrp=c-cb

From Nat Turner on X: So far, one of the highlights of the National for me is a shop owner coming by PSA to submit a 1998 Metal Universe Gem Masters 1/1 basketball card that a customer in his shop pulled out of a pack last week. Easily a $20k+ card that hadn't seen the light of day in 25+ years.

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Wish Nat included the picture. Wonder what it’ll grade? Really cool that so many amazing cards are still hidden in old packs.

https://x.com/natsturner/status/1816447462099284425?s=46

Smart activation from @PSAcard. Grading can be a frustrating, confusing process, so tips from their team should be super helpful. I’m going to try and check this out.

Anybody auto hunting? Some big names on here.