Short answers, pulled from the story.
Four brothers named Abram, Ira, Philip, and Joseph Shorin established the company in 1938. They launched Topps initially as a chewing gum business leveraging distribution channels from their family's American Leaf company.
Sy Berger designed the 1952 Topps baseball card set while sitting at his kitchen table on Alabama Avenue in Brooklyn during the autumn of 1951. He worked for Topps for fifty years between 1947 and 1997 serving as both employee and consultant.
The most famous example of Sy Berger work remains the 1952 Mickey Mantle card which sold for $12.6 million on the 28th of August 2022. This sale represents the highest value achieved by this specific trading card to date.
Topps had purchased Bowman outright by 1956 leaving it as the sole producer of baseball cards for the next quarter-century. A Federal Trade Commission hearing examiner ruled against Topps in 1965 regarding unfair competition practices though the commission later reversed that decision.
Fanatics purchased Topps itself for US$500 million in January 2022 after acquiring exclusive MLB licensing rights in August 2021. Plans to go public via merger with Mudrick Capital Acquisition Corporation II were announced in April 2021 valuing Topps at $1.3 billion before Mudrick backed out within six months.