The Topps Company is shelving its blank-check ambitions after learning that Major League Baseball (MLB) would be signing an exclusive contract with rival sports merchandiser Fanatics.

The new contract between the MLB and Fanatics ends a 70-year partnership to produce baseball cards for American consumers, stretching from the Baby Boomers born just after WWII all the way to today's Generation Z. Even for someone like me that has never traded a single baseball card in his life, the sudden pivot was pretty surprising, given the synonymity of the name "Topps" with baseball cards.

Interestingly enough, Topps appears to have been just as surprised by the announcement, having learned last week that the deal had been finalized. Topps executive chairman Noah Garden commented that the company had not been aware that negotiations had been underway. The MLB has yet to issue or respond to any press requests for comment, with the details of how its deal with Fanatics came to be left to speculation.

Topps maintains several ongoing contracts beyond the MLB, including agreements to produce Star Wars-branded products for Disney (DIS  ) and products for World Wrestling Entertainment's (WWE  ) stable of brands. Like its competitor Fanatics, Topps also intends to push further into the digital content marketplace with the release of branded NFTs.

The timing of the decision was immensely inopportune for the cardmaker, which was due to IPO through a Special Purpose Acquisition Company (SPAC) deal. Currently owned Tornante, the holding company of former Disney (DIS  ) CEO Michael Eisner, the firm was to merge with Mudrick Capital Acquisition Corporation II (MUDS  ). However, due to the MLB's decision, Topps has decided to can said merger.

It's hard to say with any certainty that its SPAC debut would have been as lucrative as its investors may have hoped (as the SPAC craze is well into its cooling phase, having begun to wind down over the summer), but the cancellation of the merger with Topps has left an understandable degree of uncertainty with MUDS investors. Mudrick shares started last Thursday with some fair gains of around 6.4% before suffering an 8.6% drop on news of the announcement. Shares slid further on Friday, ending the week a further 2.8% down.