Publisher Scores With Designer Baseball Cards : Collectibles: An Orange County firm has hit a homer with its line of high-quality, full-color cards aimed at the upscale market.
The national pastime’s lockout nearly threw the baseball card business a curve, but Upper Deck, the hottest commodity in that booming market, already was safe at home.
Baseball card sales are typically slowest just before spring training opens. With the delay caused by the player lockout, some expected the retail card market to suffer a prolonged sag.
However, Upper Deck, the Yorba Linda-based manufacturer of slick--and expensive--trading cards, already had sold out its 1990 inventory even as negotiations between league teams and players dragged on for 32 days.
From its inception, Upper Deck has overcome economic obstacles en route to quick success in a highly competitive field.
The firm burst on the market a year ago, facing an uphill struggle competing with the entrenched card company giants, Topps, Fleer and Donruss. But Upper Deck introduced several innovations, including color photos on front and back, and quickly captured the high-end market with its designer cards.
A full set of Upper Deck cards, if you can get them, commands $55 compared to from $22 to $25 for its rivals.
The baseball lockout may eventually hurt retail card sales, Upper Deck President Richard McWilliam said. But Upper Deck already had orders from dealers that assured a sellout of its entire year’s production before a pitch was thrown, company officials say.
“No other company sells out,” said the 36-year-old McWilliam of Corona del Mar, who played high school and college baseball and has a background in accounting and real estate.
McWilliam was approached in late 1987 by Paul Sumner, who had “a little dream . . . to make Architect’s (sic) Digest-quality baseball cards.”
The 43-year-old Sumner, a Chino resident and at the time vice president of sales at Orbis Graphic in Anaheim, had a background in printing and holography.
With a third partner, Sumner’s boss, Boris Korbel, they set out to produce a prototype card impressive enough to persuade Major League Baseball and the players’ association to grant the fledgling firm a license to produce cards bearing team logos and player photos. Joined by a fourth partner, Richard Kughn of Detroit, Mich., Upper Deck has grown from a small office with six employees to its own printing company employing 250.
But breaking into the big leagues was not easy. When Upper Deck cards were shipped to retailers for the first time in March, 1989, the competition already had been on store shelves for three months.
By introducing several new features--color photos front and back, a hologram scheme to prevent counterfeiting and high-grade paper stock--Upper Deck immediately drew rave reviews and unprecedented demand. It virtually created a high-end market.
A Topps 16-card pack retails for about 50 cents at most outlets, but the suggested 99-cent Upper Deck 15-card pack routinely is sold for $1.50 and more. At times last year, they were going for as much as $3.
“It really did take off right from the start,” said Bob Lemke, publisher of Krause Publications’ Baseball Cards, a 310,000-circulation magazine that lists card prices in the resale market. “They are just far and away superior in terms of value.”
Although precise production figures are not released, Topps, which is in its 40th year of baseball card production, claims to have sold 1 billion cards last year.
Upper Deck says it purposely limited its initial 1989 production to 1 million sets of each card, which drove up demand. (Subsequently, Upper Deck printed more cards that were sold in complete sets, rather than in packs of 15 cards each. The company has declined to reveal how many sets were produced.)
“We’re not really looking to manufacture Upper Deck cards to meet demand,” said Donald M. Bodow, the company’s marketing vice president. “We don’t want our cards to be generally perceived as being as easily available as a glass of water. They are being perceived as true collectables.”
The privately owned Upper Deck does not release its sales figures.
Philadelphia-based Topps Co. Inc., the industry leader, recorded $198 million in sales in the year ending Feb. 25, 1989, more than half of which was from baseball cards. The company, which also produces candy and gum products and non-sports trading cards, is ahead of that record pace this year.
The baseball card market continues to grow each year, leaving plenty of room for newcomers such as Upper Deck, industry officials agree. Estimates of card and memorabilia sales range from $400 million to $600 million a year, Lemke said.
Although Upper Deck’s McWilliam declined to say how much in royalties his firm pays Major League Baseball or the players’ association, Krause Publication’s Lemke estimates the fees to be about 8% of sales.
When it comes to baseball cards, the older, more scarce issues of popular players often resell for enormous sums. But the price of most new individual cards range from pennies to a few dollars.
But the 1990 Upper Deck card of rookie Baltimore Oriole pitcher Ben McDonald is selling for $100 because the “rookie” designation was inadvertently left off in printing.
Alan Rosen of New Jersey, believed to be among the world’s leading dealers in baseball cards, usually has little interest in current cards, prefering costlier, older items.
But this year, Rosen “will be dabbling for the first time in newer cards, in the Upper Deck cards,” said Greg Sholes, who works for Rosen’s Mr. Mint memorabilia business. “He feels it’s a strong enough product.”
Sholes, who also buys and sells cards as an investment, was impressed by Upper Deck’s entrance in the baseball card market.
“I personally have seen nothing like it in the hobby,” he said. “The demand was unbelievable by dealers. I’d say (Upper Deck is) a cut above.”
