[khaake]

By Ben Henry

Baseball's heating up and the NFL is in full swing. And for any normal person, those two sports would be enough. Not me. I've been revving up for the NBA since mid-July, and though we're still a month away from the pre-season, I made it down to my local shop this afternoon to get my hands on the new basketball cards. No luck. And not only no luck, but I was told that they're not even going to stock the Topps flagship set this year. What?!?

How can my local shop not even deign to carry Topps Basketball? It's no secret that I'll travel to The Dugout in Brooklyn for their selection of new cards, but I was doing that by choice. Now it looks like it will be by necessity. What is going on here? Aren't the guys down at the local place at least somewhat interested to see if the Topps designers lowered the airbrush boom on Kevin Garnett, Zach Randolph, Al Jefferson and Ray Allen? Aren't they interested to see how Topps will handle their promotional machine now that their poster boy Greg Oden is out for the season? Don't they want to be able to claim big Bill Russell pulls from their stores? It just doesn't make sense.

Oh sure, they'll carry other Topps products, like Finest and the other high-end lines. And they'll also carry Upper Deck's various lines, including Ultra (with their hot, controversial 'blank backs' errors).

But no Topps? To be honest, I'm a little shocked.

I guess I shouldn't be. The way basketball card sets are set up is really atrocious anyways. It's understandable that dealers wouldn't want to buy in on a product where a) the main spokesman is already out for the season, b) it's out so early that most collectors will already have the set before the season starts, and c) there are so many other product lines out there that skipping one or two—especially the lower-end ones—won't significantly add to (or potentially
diminish) the bottom line. It's easier to stock up on the rookies-based sets and the middle of the pack sets like Finest, maybe even skip the real high-end stuff that you might sell a couple boxes of and then get stuck with a few boxes you can't move. That's the way I'd see things if I were a dealer.

The real question is: Is this a nationwide trend? Are there many dealers out there who refuse to sell the low-end stuff? If so, card companies may push low-end sets as retail-only. That makes sense, right? Big box store shoppers can afford to tack on a few bucks for a couple packs, and it's not like the store managers and owners are sweating bullets if they can't move sports cards; they're more interested in pushing TVs.

So how can we put dealer faith back into the flagship sets? Actually, I'm not so concerned about Upper Deck, but I'll include them here for the sake of argument. I would say that sustaining collector interest is the biggest factor for dealers, regardless of sport, right? That's why card companies put out so many different product lines, spaced somewhat evenly throughout the year. That's why Topps comes out with their new designs way the heck in advance and that's why there are gimmicks and promotions and (carefully calculated) 'error' cards and everything else: it's all done to maintain the constant flow of customers to dealers, because without dealers (generally), the hobby would be very small (I'm not in the opinion that sales from big box stores could carry and sustain the hobby).

Like I said before, I'm not so concerned with Upper Deck because it always seems like they have the stuff together (and because they have more spokesmen than there are professional players), so I'll use Topps as an example. Here's what I propose, and this is strictly for
basketball: make the flagship set bigger.

I'm talking about two series here, folks. Series One with 250 cards to be released in September, before the season starts, and releasing Series Two with another 250 cards in January. What would be wrong with that? Two series was standard practice for basketball sets from 1991 until 1994, wasn't it? And while those may have been gluttonous days for sports cards in general, I think with a little study of the situation and learning from their mistakes, you could put together one heck of a set for collectors today.

Start by spreading out the rookies; don't put all of them in the first series, and don't heavy up on them in the second. Next, include league leaders and playoffs subsets in Series One and All-Stars and Combo cards in Series Two. Finally, you have enough room to not only include every player on every team and coaches, and rookie variations, but also select international stars playing overseas. I want to see cards of guys in the Israeli league, guys who are starring in Italy (just to find out why Marbury wants to go there after his Knicks contract expires), Spain and China. Especially China. I'm just speculating here, but I'd say that cards of Chinese nationals in the mainstream American card set could work wonders for strengthening ties between the NBA and the China National team.

Also, toss in a few random autographs (maybe in an Allen & Ginter kind of way, including autos and relics of the international guys and a few retired players), a nice parallel set (if one exists) and not too many inserts, but enough to keep pack- and box-buying interesting. Including a nice mix would allay dealer concerns that they'd end up with a stack of unsold product at the end of the year (as later series sometimes do not sit well with short-attention-span collectors).

Finally, work on the collating within boxes and packs. Don't make it that you can get the whole set from one box, but also don't make it so that you have to buy three or four boxes to complete the set. Nobody likes opening packs and getting doubles of cards they just got a few packs ago from the same box (or triples). 36 packs a box is great, but make it 36 packs and seven or eight cards a pack plus an insert and that would work.

These ideas may seem revolutionary, but they really aren't. I'm just asking for more.

Ben Henry, cardcritic@gmail.com, is a recovering baseball card addict. More of his commentary can be found on his card blog aptly titled The Baseball Card Blog.

The opinions offered in this column do not necessarily reflect those of Beckett Media.