Michael Eisner’s Tornante Company along with Madison Dearborn Partners bought Topps, a trading card and collectibles company for $385 million. Now on Tuesday, it was announced that Topps would be going public as the company is now valued at $1.3 billion.
Topps is going public through a SPAC with Mudrick Capital Acquisition Corporation II. Eisner will stay on as chairman and won’t sell any of his shares until after the deal is complete.
Topps is best known as a baseball card company but they also own the Bazooka bubble gum brand (which also owns Ring Pops). Topps has the trading card rights to WWE, UEFA, Bundesliga, Major League Soccer, and Michael Eisner’s former home The Walt Disney Company.
With Topps becoming a public company they are going to be competitive in the red hot NFT (non-fungible token) market.
During an interview, Eisner told CNBC that NFT’s and blockchain technology will allow Topps to compete in the secondary market for its collectibles which has seen a dramatic rise in the last year due to pandemic boredom (other examples include stock trading) and overall resurgence in popularity regarding memorabilia.
“The company today is in the exact same financial position that Disney was in 1984 when I went there, to the dollar,” Eisner told CNBC. “If we do a tenth as well as we did at Disney, I will be happy.”
Michael Eisner has remained active in his post-Disney career from investing in Struum to taking Topps public via a SPAC. It seems like Eisner still has some things to accomplish for companies who are built off of emotional connections and nostalgia like Topps.
Zach Perilstein is the Editor-in-Chief of the Boardwalk Times
