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Mudrick (NASDAQ:MUDS) stock is on the rise Tuesday after announcing plans for a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) merger with baseball trading card company Topps.
![Various trading card brands in a store. Various trading card brands in a store.](https://investorplace.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/topps-trading-cards-300x169.jpg)
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The deal between the two companies will have Mudrick changing its name to Topps when it closes. This will also result in MUDS stock changing over to the new TOPP stock ticker.
Mudrick and Topps are expected to be worth $1.3 billion once the deal closes. The combined company will also have gross proceeds of up to $571 million. That includes $250 million being raised through a private investment in public equity (PIPE).
When the deal closes, Topps Michael Eisner will continue to act as the Chairman of Topps. Eisner is the former CEO of Disney (NYSE:DIS). His firm, The Tornante Company bought Topps in 2007.
While news of the SPAC deal is clearly behind some of the positive movement for MUDS stock today, there’s more than just that. Topps has been expanding its business to digital of late and there’s nope that it will join the NFT market.
Eisner said the following during an interview on CNBC’s Squawk Box while speaking about NFTs.
“We are now about 25% digital, however the digital is growing really fast. Now with blockchain we are going to be able to participate in the secondary market.”
MUDS stock is seeing heavy trading on today’s news. This has more than 20 million shares of the stock changing hands. For comparison, the stock’s daily average trading volume is only about 199,000 shares.
MUDS stock was up 11% as of Tuesday morning.
NFTs have been a growing interest for companies as digital collectors continue to pay huge sums for the crypto tokens.