General Forum

Does this mean they've been spending too much on the buybacks?

on the flip side.. this means we may never ever never-ever get a redemption filled now 

And that is different from before? LOL

I hear alot of smack talk on hear about Pannini but yet they make some BEAUTIFUL cards especially some of their game used and Autograph stuff the only thing that sucks for me about them is not having that MLB license so NO LOGOS    As far as ALL the companies with their Sport MONOPOLIES I think each of the companies should be allowed to produce A (1) set with no more than 3 parralels and no more than 3 insert sets. 

  As far as Topps they suck on so many levels not the least of which is their biasedness against the Cubs !  100 years of History at Wrigely Field set and it doesn't even contain 100 cards  let alone MORE not even a card for when the Cubs finally installed lights at Wrigely !! 

 This year they make a Walmart Exclusive with  Kris  Bryant   and everybody know there are NO Walmarts allowed within the city limits of Chicago !  So for a company that has been saying it has worked towards getting kids back in the hobby to grow it again they can sure use help at the top with Brains ! Kids aren't going to have access to cars and money to make sets of Bryant inserts and a bunch of other problems.  Take away competition and you will ALWAYS take away quality.

Yeah, what OCHawkeye said.  I have no words.

When Topps got the MLB Exclusive License in 2010, I said it would either destroy the baseball card hobby or the Topps Company. I said then that it would take 10 years if MLB didn't add another licensed company at the end of the exclusive deal. Instead, MLB extended the exclusive deal before the 1st one was over. Look where we are now! I think the Topps Now program is hurting Topps more than the massive amount of garbage they are putting out in packs though. What hurts them the most is the sheer volume of what Panini has taken over! It only took Panini about 5 years to shut down Press Pass and take over everything PP was doing. But Panini is basically putting out the same stuff as Topps, just with a wider range of sports/non-sports now. They are going to crash too if they don't tone it down.

Panini is a bigger company than you might think. They've been putting sets out just as long as, and maybe longer than Topps. I remember going to Spain as a kid and collecting Panini soccer stickers in the early 70's. And, they've been doing tnat in every country in Europe since then or earlier with sports and non-sports sets. They have a division in Europe, and South America that prints children's magazines (like highlites, highfive, or mad magazine here in the US), comics and graphic novels. I willing to guess they have a several hundred million dollar company in about 100 countries on the planet. Panini is not going any where for quite some while because of their diversification. Topps is going to have a hard time competing with that.

I do know how big they are and how long they've been around. I was only talking about Panini America, not Panini as a whole. There's pretty much nothing that can shut the whole company down b/c they are practically worldwide. If portions of the company start to fail, they can back out of certain areas with a consolidation. Then they can re-group and try again later with a different approach.

I've seen it with one of my work accounts. They are in the textile industry and have been around for over a century. They had to downsize in staff in the 80's and then again in the early 2000's after the US Textile industry basically crashed. They have since rebounded so much (partially from buying several companies in other countries to make them a truly global company) that they've spent at least a hundred million dollars renovating and remodeling all of their plants in the area over the past decade, including the Corporate Office. They've even started a health initiative among their employees with the addition of a Health Clinic and a Fitness Center that are free to all employees. If you've heard of Sunbrella outdoor fabrics, that is the company I am talking about and they make many other products for other textile companies such as thread and yarn. They are also the company that made the fabric for the flag the US put on the Moon in 1969!