What Is Topps?

Toppsstarted in 1938 in Brooklyn, New York, as the Topps Chewing Gum Company, founded by four brothers — Abram, Ira, Philip, and Joseph Shorin. It entered baseball cards in 1951 and struck gold in 1952 with a 407-card set now considered the hobby's foundational modern release. Topps went on to hold Major League Baseball's trading-card license almost continuously for the next 70 years. That run ended in 2021, when MLB announced it was awarding its exclusive card license to Fanatics starting in 2026 — a move that collapsed a $1.3 billion deal to take Topps public and led Fanatics to buy Topps' entire trading-card business for about $500 million in January 2022. Topps cards are now a Fanatics brand; the original company's candy business split off separately and kept running under a new name.

Topps' first successful product wasn't a card at all — it was Bazooka Bubble Gum, introduced after World War II. Trading cards started as a way to sell more gum: a card packed inside each nickel pack gave kids a reason to keep buying. Topps issued its first baseball cards in 1951, but the set that defined the format arrived in 1952 — 407 cards with a bigger, more colorful design than anything on the market, including a rookie card for Mickey Mantle that's become one of the most valuable pieces of cardboard in the hobby. Collector demand for cards eventually outgrew the gum: Topps discontinued the stick of gum packed with its cards in 1992 after collectors complained it stained and warped them.

• Near-monopoly, then competition. Topps controlled baseball cards almost exclusively through the 1970s. A 1980 antitrust ruling (Fleer v. Topps) opened the market, letting Fleer and Donruss produce competing baseball card sets starting in 1981.
• A brief shared license. From 2006 to 2009, MLB licensed cards to both Topps and Upper Deck rather than one exclusive maker.
• Exclusive again, 2010-2025. Topps regained sole MLB trading-card rights in 2010 and held them for the next fifteen years, alongside long-running MLBPA and, at various points, NHL and WWE licenses.

In April 2021, Topps announced plans to go public through a merger with Mudrick Capital Acquisition Corp. II, a special purpose acquisition company, valuing Topps at roughly $1.3 billion. Four months later, in August 2021, Fanatics announced it had secured long-term exclusive trading-card licenses from MLB and the players' union — rights Topps had held for decades — with the MLBPA deal starting in 2023 and the MLB license itself starting in 2026. Losing baseball's exclusive license gutted the SPAC deal's valuation, and the merger fell apart.

Rather than compete with the company that had just taken its signature license, Topps sold. On January 4, 2022, Fanatics announced it was acquiring Topps' trading-card and entertainment business for approximately $500 million, bringing on around 350 Topps employees and folding the brand into Fanatics Collectibles. Topps' separate candy and gift-card businesses — Bazooka gum, Ring Pop, Push Pop, and similar lines — were not part of the sale. They spun off into a new entity, Bazooka Companies, retained by Topps' prior ownership group (Michael Eisner's Tornante Company and Madison Dearborn Partners). The candy still exists; it just isn't the same company as the trading cards anymore.

1. A Fanatics brand, not an independent company. Since January 2022, Topps trading cards ship under Fanatics ownership. Topps' MLB license formally began its 2026 term under that same Fanatics umbrella, closing the loop on the license that triggered the sale.
2. Still the name on the pack. Fanatics kept the Topps brand on physical cards, digital products like Topps BUNT, and classic product lines — the flagship set, Chrome, Heritage, and others — rather than retiring it.
3. Not the candy company anymore.If you see Bazooka gum, Ring Pop, or Push Pop today, that's Bazooka Companies, a separate business with no ownership tie to Fanatics or Topps trading cards.
4. Vintage Topps cards are unaffected.A 1952 Mantle or any older Topps card's authenticity and grading have nothing to do with who owns the Topps name today — ownership changes only govern new print runs.

Confirm the exact card with Identify & Research — free-path first (on-device OCR, catalog match, and fingerprints). For Topps' free-to-play digital MLB app, see What Is Topps BUNT?. For the company that acquired Topps and now runs its physical and digital card business, see What Is Fanatics Collect?. For the other major manufacturer that went through its own Fanatics licensing shakeup, see What Is Panini?, and for background on Topps' flagship product itself, see What Is a Topps Card?, or open the full guides library.