Why TOPPS NOW is the Best Brand of Sports Cards in the World

In this episode of the Powers Sports Memorabilia Show, we dive deep into why Topps Now is the best brand of sports cards in the world. Unlike traditional card releases like Prizm or Topps Chrome, Topps Now delivers cards the day after a major sports moment happens—whether it’s a no-hitter, a debut, or a record-breaking performance. We explore how Topps Now taps into the emotional connection we have with sports, offering instant gratification and capturing iconic moments in real-time.

We’ll discuss the exceptional imagery, like the triple Olympic shot with Curry, LeBron, and Durant, and how these cards mirror the quality of Topps Stadium Club. Plus, we’ll break down why Topps Now is a great entry point for those looking to start a sports card business—buying in bulk, grading for value, and flipping for profit.

But it’s not all sunshine and rainbows. We’ll also tackle the criticism—are these cards a bad investment? Why do some hardcore collectors dismiss them? And what about the high price point? Tune in to get the full story on why Topps Now is redefining the sports card industry.

https://powerssportsmemorabilia.com/

Transcript

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SPEAKER_01 0:00

Today I'm going to make the case on why I think the Tops Now brand is the best product line right now for sports cards in the entire world. Yes, you heard that right. I absolutely love the TopsNow brand. And we're going to talk about my reasoning why I think this is the coolest product lineslash brand, whatever you want to call it, for sports cards right now. And then at the end, for all you haters, I will talk about the downfall of Tops Now as well. So we're going to talk about both sides of the equation to get both sides equally as angry. Alright, first off, this is my number one reason why I like the TopsNow brand. You don't have to wait a whole year for the cards to come out. They come out the next day. Something cool happens in the world, boom. The next day, TopsNow has a card that you can buy. And I don't know about you, but most of the sports cards that I like to buy, they make me feel good. Right? So I something happens with the Bobby Witt or the Kansas City Royals or whatever we got going on here. If he has a big day, the next day I can buy that card and get the immediate dopamine serotonin release that makes all of us happy, right? Unlike kind of Prism and Tops Chrome, where it just comes out once a year, right? Tops now comes out all the time. So if you have a specific event that happens for your favorite player or your favorite team, the very next day you can get that card of that moment. That that is just so cool. It's so basic and so simple. I don't know why it took the sports card industry so long to kind of get to that point. But that is just amazing. Think about how cool that is. That's absolutely amazing. Second point that I like to bring up about tops now is they do have some really great imagery on there. And as we all know, the image of the card is very, very important. Very similar to uh Stadium Club. I love the Stadium Club imagery, but I I really, really enjoy some of the picks that they put on there for the tops now. Take, for example, the triple shot after the Olympics with Curry, LeBron, and Durant. They also had some other ones out there with just Curry. That was a really great image. These are awesome picks. Like whoever's picking the images for these ones is doing a great job on that. Um, but just great imagery that they choose to put on their cards. All right, number three, it captures moments. This is what sports memorabilia is all about. How does it make me feel? And what what is the actual relationship that I have to this item? Take, for example, a no-hitter gets thrown, right? You are at that game. The very next day, you can buy a sports cart of that no-hitter. The incredible, right? Uh, player makes their MLB debut. This is like a player that you are been following for whatever it is, they have a good day and they make a card for him the next day, other MLB debut. Paul Skeens had one done. That is so cool. That is what it's all about because it's an immediate connection to that card. Because you were at the game or you watched it on TV, or he's your favorite player for your favorite team, whatever it is. That's what it's all about. If we do a big release like Topps Chrome or Prism, like they're not gonna have all these specific moments in their actual sets, like it the brand is just not gonna be able to do that because they only have so many cards that they can put in there. So that's why I really like the tops now, is it's just captures all those moments, and moments are what sells in sports memorabilia. That is that is it. That is the reason why an emotional connection to that player or that team, or some sort of connection to that moment. That that's it. How does it make it make us feel when we look at this item? Is it something that we want to buy? Does it give us something back? You know, does it make us feel happy? And that's really what the Tops Now brand is really focusing on, and why I think it's been so successful. Uh, number four, and this is uh, I don't know if anybody's really talked too much about that, but if you wanted to get involved in the sports card business, grading Tops Now cards is kind of an easier way to get started. Most of these cards, if you buy them in bulk at the 20 uh 20 card uh bundle they have there, they're usually run about five bucks each. These usually grade really, really well. I can honestly say that I don't think I've ever gotten a nine on a tops now card. However, they print these is the way they should be printing all sports cards, but they do like a it's like a little, it's like a little glossy surface there, but they grade really well. The corners always seem to be fairly sharp. It's kind of tough to tell on the centering on them because it's just an image on there. It's not like Prism where it has the borders on there. So they generally grade really well. And if you know PSA probably run some special, but typically you can grade these at PSA yourself for what 15 bucks a card. So you're into the card for roughly $20. Most of these as PSA 10s will sell for 40 bucks plus. So, yeah, assuming you know you're gonna pick a good player, a good moment, all that kind of stuff that you actually have to take into consideration. But if you wanted to get into a sports card business and start grading cards and selling them, like this is kind of an easy way to do it. Like if you can pick a good player, pick a good moment. And if you have a little bit of money to get started with the grading and all that kind of stuff, because you're gonna have to wait, you know, generally a couple weeks for the cards to come back to you. Was it about three weeks or so? And then you're gonna have to get them graded at PSA. So that's gonna be another what say two months. So you're gonna be looking at probably about three months that you're gonna have to kind of you know sit on this. So, but it's it's just an easy way to kind of get familiar with the PSA process, an easy way to start grading cards. That way you can really kind of see what a good surface looks like and what a uh you know, sharp corner should be, etc. etc. etc. So if you wanted to get started in grading cards, I think the tops now stuff is kind of an easy way to do that. Number five, as much as the old school nostalgic sports card people maybe don't like the Tops Now brand, it actually is very popular among fans. The the triple Olympic card print run on that one, the one with Curry, Durant, uh, and LeBron that I mentioned earlier had a print run of 588,030. That's a lot. They were selling these things at what were they? Uh gosh, I want to say, were they no, they weren't 15 bucks a card. They were 12 bucks a card, I think it was. 12 bucks a card. Now, of course, you got bulk rates, I think, on those. So, but they did like five, six million in sales or whatever on this. But again, they were offering a potential to get one of those autographed, of course. So, you know, you have a one in 588,000 chance, roughly. Uh, probably a little bit less than that because people are going to be, you know, obviously buying these cards in bulk, so it's not those exact ratios, but you kind of get what I mean there. So it is very popular among fans. Like collectors kind of really like this stuff. Obviously, if they're buying this many, now, yes, they always did have the chance to buy the triple one, so that probably inflated Lumbers a little bit. Um, but I people really like this. It does sell. I sell a lot of the TopsNow stuff. The Caitlin Clark stuff, TopsNow, uh Otani tops now. That stuff is is really, really actually popular, especially with Otani, because he's got so many different moments. And uh, they did a really nice one with Clay Caitlin Clark when she set all the records. So they've got some really good stuff out there that's really popular among the fans, and generally because of the cost of stuff that these are generally kind of selling in the lower price range, they're not super expensive. Like uh, for example, if you wanted to buy some Prism rookie of some guy who's really hot, you're gonna spend a couple hundred dollars on that. It's a lot cheaper uh than that to buy these cars. Uh, number six, you do have a chance, as I previously mentioned, to get autographs in parallels. Not everyone is gonna have uh those sort of uh you know parameters there with the autographs and whatnot, but you do have a chance to kind of get some kind of cool cards there. I've never actually gotten a Tops Now autograph. I'm not that important of a person for them to send me one, but I have gotten one parallel, I think, on Corey Seager. I got a blue of the one after he won the World Series MVP. So that was my um my one big time pull that I got from Tops now. Uh the other stuff I've gotten is all been based stuff. But uh again, it's just the chance of getting it. You're most likely not ever gonna get any autograph stuff on there. But for those of you who do like to quote unquote gamble on some of the stuff, this is kind of a uh it's kind of a fun way to do it because of the actual cards that you're gonna be buying, you're gonna be grading them anyway, assuming you bought 20 of them. So um, you know, you're gonna hopefully make your money back that way, uh, where you can actually grade most of these cards that you're gonna get. So it's not a huge gamble where it's like, you know, you get a pack of 20 random cards, you know. So there is that benefit there of getting a chance at an autograph or a parallel. Number seven, there is a limited availability to these. Now, yes, they will sell on other platforms kind of once uh the sales period is over, but generally you can only buy these for a couple days and then it's done. And they release the print runs and all that kind of stuff, so you can know exactly how many are out there, but it's only available for this certain time frame. Now, again, you'll be able to buy them at other platforms and whatnot, but it is cool, kind of a little limited run. Uh and then only a certain amount of these are actually printed. So, those are my kind of seven reasons on why I really like the Topps Now product line. That it's just every day it's got something new to kind of keep you involved in the sports card business. Very, very cool.

SPEAKER_00 10:43

All right, let's talk about the downfall of Topps Now. Oh my gosh, Matt, you can't, I can't believe you like the Tops Now stuff. All right, so some of the haters will say, Oh, these are just bad investments. You're not gonna, you're never gonna get your recoup your investment.

SPEAKER_01 11:02

Ah you sports car people talk way too much about the values of everything, everything's got a value, and it's just so sickening, it's so nauseating. Oh my god. First off, you don't have to buy something and have it go up in value in order to enjoy it. Let me say that again. You could buy something and not have to worry about the value of it, and you can still enjoy it. So I know you hardcore people are think everything you buy has got to go up in value, otherwise, it has no value. Sorry, man, I hate to tell you, but uh that's not the case. So uh yes, if you're gonna buy a base card of the triple image of Curry LeBron Durant, where there's gonna be 588,030 of these and 587,000 of them are gonna be PSA 10s, yeah, it's probably not gonna go up in value for you. I'm sorry. Oh my gosh. You know, maybe you should just do traditional investments like I don't know, mutual funds that have a proven track record, but I don't know. If you want to do this, that's fine. Uh, another downfall is if you did want to buy single cards from directly from the Tops Now website, they're kind of expensive. Some of them are gonna be like nine bucks for a single card. That's pretty expensive. You'd probably be able to buy these on other platforms after the fact for four or five dollars. So if you don't want to buy a single card like that, you could probably just wait and then buy it on another platform and save a little bit of money. Uh, another downfall is that you know the hardcore collectors, uh, you know, they don't like the Tops Now brand sometimes because um it just prints way too many cards and they're just they're not um you know uh sought after by the the big time um you know uh uh marketplaces like Golden doesn't want to sell a Tops Now, blah blah blah. I don't know, dude. I mean uh to me, iconic is what you like, not what everybody else likes. So for me personally, I like the Tops Now brand. So to me, it's iconic, and that's all that really matters to me. But if you like the Tops Chrome stuff and you want to stick just to that because you really enjoy the designs, how the product is released, uh, etc. etc. etc., then stick with that. But um, I don't know, just telling other people what's iconic, what's not iconic, I don't know. I mean, I think iconic is really up to you and what you decide is is important to you when it comes to a sports car. And I think Tops Now really kind of checks all these boxes. Cheap to buy PSA 10s, um, captures moments, got great imagery. You don't have to wait for the cards to come out. You get a chance at getting some autographs and some parallels, it's got limited availability. If you wanted to start a sports car business, like grading cards and whatnot, this would be an easy way to do it. So it checks a lot of boxes for me. And I just I like the fact that it comes out the very next day. Like you're already thinking about it, and the next day a car comes out and you're like, oh my god, I gotta buy that. I'm still I'm still reeling off of that win, you know, or that big moment. And um, and it makes you feel good when you buy it because that's what we want, right? We want people to feel good, feel good, buy some stuff that they like, and not have to totally break the bank on uh buying you know thousands of dollars of sports cards where you can just buy one card if you want, or you can buy 20. So they've got some really good stuff going on their tops now. It's really fun to kind of get the emails from them. If you haven't signed up for their email uh notifications, you'll get some stuff uh every single day when they come out with stuff. And you know, most of it I don't buy, but again, I bought some of those triple cards for the uh Curry LeBron Durant. Trying to think of what other ones, I think I bought some ones of the Otani 4040 ones, uh, just because I look for big time players and moments. If you get those two things, those are pretty cool to me. So hopefully you guys like this episode on Tops Now. I know some of you guys out there really like Tops Now, and you're just kind of in the closet and you don't want to admit to other people that you like Tops Now. Hopefully, this uh video this uh podcast that gives you uh some sort of courage to come out and say, I like the Tops Now. I will be at the forefront for you. I will be the leader and say, I like the Tops Now brand. So again, don't forget to visit the website powersports.com. Also give us a follow over there on Instagram at powers autographs. I'll see y'all in the next episode.