What's in the Cards for Topps?

By Mira Serrill-Robins

BOOM AND BUST. Tracy Hackler of Beckett Media, which publishes magazines on sports collectibles, thinks a sudden influx of investment-minded card collectors in the 1980s also is to blame. They quickly abandoned collecting when they sensed poor profit opportunities, and that hurt sales, Hackler figures. "For the 50 years [prior to the boom], collecting cards was almost entirely a pursuit of passion," says Hacker. Then, in the '80s, "it became a get-rich-quick scheme. The number of manufacturers and cards multiplied, then almost as quickly as those people came in, they left."

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Analyst Dennis McAlpine of McAlpine Associates agrees. "There were too many com