Whispers of favoritism have long echoed through the halls of the collector community. The drumbeat of accusations holds that Fanatics, the sports merchandise retailer, seemed to favor its large-volume customers and prominent “breakers” by blessing them generously with high-value cards. Fueled by videos of these breakers pulling valuable cards out of packs time and again, speculation about the randomness—or lack thereof—of pack contents has grown louder, reaching a crescendo that Fanatics/Topps could no longer ignore.
In a move that combines the audacity of a fastball with the precision of a collector’s eye for rare gems, Fanatics has taken a decisive strike towards transparency. They engaged the audit firm KPMG to scrutinize their card distribution process to demonstrate that there’s no trick in their hand—only random deals.
Fanatics Collectibles CEO Mike Mahan announced at the Industry Conference in Atlanta that the suspicions were unfounded. After several exhaustive months of meticulous examination, KPMG served an ace, confirming Fanatics/Topps’ procedures effectively eliminate the possibility of a loaded deck favoring any particular group of customers.
Greg Abovsky, CFO of Fanatics Collectibles, offered a simple explanation for the deck skepticism – It’s a numbers game. He suggested that the often-seen high-value pulls by major breakers stem from the immense volume of cards they handle, rather than any covert manipulation of the card packing process.
KPMG did not merely take a cursory look at the deck and take Fanatics at their word. Their audit delved deep, performing a careful review at the Texas printing facility, where the fate of every Topps card is sealed. They dissected the collation process, went page by page through the production logs of each job to ensure a truly randomized distribution, as claimed by Topps.
Not only is this initiative incredibly proactive, but it’s also the first of its kind in the industry, aiming to trump scepticism with transparency and deal a successful hand of trust to the collector community.
But that wasn’t the end of the debunking. Abovsky took the opportunity to discard a long-standing suspicion among collectors – the notorious accusation that Fanatics seeds boxes with valuable cards for promotional purposes. He firmly laid this claim to rest.
With clear intent to go all-in on their transparency game, Fanatics plans to shuffle this randomness audit into the deck as an annual event. It’s their way of holding their cards up for all to see, reasserting over and over that they are committed to demonstrating fairness, and indeed, randomness, in their practices. Every card collector can now have their peace of mind, knowing that when it comes to Fanatics, luck of the draw could fall in anyone’s favor.
