With the recent announcements that Upper Deck signed an exclusive deal with Collegiate Licensing as well as Alex Ovechkin for his auto cards, and Topps recent announcement that it signed an exclusive deal with MLB, it got me thinking: Do we as card collectors care about exclusive card deals like these?
If you’re a brand loyal collector the answer has to be yes. If you became infatuated with Upper Deck’s Goudey revival, then you might be a little ticked at the notion of not seeing the interlocking NY on Derek Jeter’s hat in a 2010 Goudey baseball card because of some exclusivity deal.
If your main concern is collecting your favorite player’s cards, no matter who makes them, then you probably don’t care.
Personally, I’m not a fan of these exclusive deals. These types of deals just don’t seem necessary, especially the player specific deals. If you’re a Jeter collector exclusively and he signed an exclusive deal with Topps, why would you ever buy an Upper Deck card again?
It’s not good for competetion among the companies, and that will limit their creativity. Soon you’ll need a scorecard to find out who has an exclusive baseball card deal with what company.
What do you think?
