Saturday, July 22, 2017

The Digital Revolution: Revisiting Some Old Cards and Planning for the Future

So I run a baseball card blog. Yet I kind of no longer collect baseball cards. So what am I doing?

Well, that's a good question, and one I hope to answer in this post. 

As I mentioned in my return post a couple of days ago, collecting is not really a viable option at this point in my life. I'm moving to NYC in a month, money is tight (as is space), and I'm not even able to take my current collection with me. But that doesn't mean I still can't have fun with baseball cards.

Before I took my sabbatical from the blogging community, I spent a ton of time working on my own digital baseball card set. Here are a few of my favorites. 




You may or may not remember these (I never did get around to posting all of the cards I created), but I definitely enjoyed making them. Of course, many of the cards I created are outdated (#trades), but that doesn't mean they're not cool.

Considering the ostensible move toward digital everything, digital baseball cards seem to make too much sense for me. Topps seems to be putting a lot of time and effort into the digital card market, with Topps Now digital cards flooding my Facebook timeline and ads for MLB Bunt (the digital card trading app) making a home alongside them. I previously used MLB Bunt a few years ago but spent most of my free time with real cards and ended up deleting the app, but I've re-downloaded while writing this paragraph. 


Digital cards are not as fun as the real, tangible cards you used to see on this blog and many others, but digital cards will help me reengage in this hobby and allow me to stay involved in the baseball card community. 

So what can you expect from this blog moving forward? 

For starters, I'll gradually post the custom cards I created a few years ago. That should be fun (and maybe nostalgic) and will help me provide content as I work on my new project for this blog -- a new digital card set

I plan on putting a ton of work into this (partly as an excuse to practice my Adobe skills), though I'm not sure exactly what this card set will include. It will probably be small in its first iteration (a handful of players from every team, probably voted on by you).  I plan on creating my own card design, but I will also throw it back to designs of old. Beyond that, the possibilities are wide open. I encourage you all to throw ideas my way if you have any, and hopefully I can get cracking on these soon. 

The new digital card set will be my primary focus, though I also plan on diverging into larger researched posts about the card industry, especially from a digital collector's perspective. And, of course, I'll do my best to post about any real cards that make their way into my hands. 

With this blog's renewed focus on digital cards, I'm feeling like the blog could use a redesign. Expect some small changes in the coming weeks and larger changes in the coming months. 

I may no longer collect (real) baseball cards, but that won't stop me from running a baseball card blog. 

3 comments:

  1. Looking forward to seeing the customs!

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  2. As an "old Man" 52 collecting my whole life I don't get the digital baseball cards especially as an autograph collector on top of that the digital autographs make absolutely no sense to me! I own no digital cards and probably never will. but I guess like in all collections collect what you want and what you like I can see the digital collection in one aspect and that is space of course until where you have them stored crashes and there lost..... lol

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    1. Hahah, I don't actually get the digital autographs or relics either tbh. I think that Topps is incredibly smart to take advantage of the digital market however, creating supply and demand for these digital cards. I'm not very attached to the cards digitally, though there is certainly a desire to collect and accumulate the best and coolest cards. As a team and player collector, I do get some satisfaction over picking up a new Justin Turner cards though. Nothing will be real cardboard and ink.

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