Topps marks 75 years of baseball cards with Kevin Costner-narrated film

Topps is celebrating 75 years of Topps Baseball with a 60-second film narrated by Kevin Costner that presents this year's Series 1 set as the latest chapter in the sport's story.

In ‘Every card tells a story’, Costner leads viewers through a stylised, diamond-shaped gallery of famous Topps cards from the past three quarters of a century before reaching Series 1. He describes the new cards as “the next stories to be written… new faces… new dreams… preserved as a single frame in time… where the next chapter begins.”

From a marketing perspective, the line links the brand's heritage to a product collectors can buy today.

A baseball heavyweight

Costner has been tied to baseball for almost 40 years through films such as Bull Durham, For the Love of the Game and Field of Dreams, and fans who regard baseball as more than numbers take his voice seriously. He collected cards as a child, including those of Willie Mays and Hank Aaron, who both feature in the film, and has appeared in Topps sets himself.

Those connections help the film feel grounded in the values it celebrates, linking Topps with baseball's screen history and reinforcing the idea that today's rookies may become tomorrow's legends.

Creative agency Kamp Grizzly worked on the film with yU+co, which directed and designed it. yU+co created the House of the Dragon titles and has worked with Ridley Scott, Ang Lee and Steven Spielberg.

Cards as sports media

Topps, part of Fanatics, sells into a collectibles market that increasingly blurs into ecommerce, content and live online experiences. Card breaks attract large online audiences and resale markets turn rookie cards into headline-making assets, making a card part of the wider sports media ecosystem.

Building the anniversary push around Series 1 underlines the idea that every new set adds to a story that began in 1951, linking fans of different generations through common stories and giving them something tangible to buy now.