I noticed some of my pokemon cards had shot up in value recently, as pretty much all commodities are doing lately by the looks of it.
It got me thinking how lame/weird it is that there's a whole market and companies in existence in this day and age based on the quality of a card print. Now, I'm not saying I'd do things better or that high grade printing factories can be improved or that I'd know much about that, but you'd think a multi-billion dollar company printing cards that sell out everywhere almost instantly and are literally pushing themselves to meet demands would be able to do some quality assurance here and there.
That said, grading companies like PSA have also started to become more stricter in recent years. When I sent out my pokemon 151 series cards to be graded, it was a lot harder to get a 10 score than it was before that time.
I've talked about some of these things before and how I'd do things differently, especially when it comes to serializing each card so people can verify it's the one they own and get back from grading companies or other middlemen that may hold your cards for a while for whatever reason. As this leaves the leeway for abuse where card switching can happen, i.e. someone hands you an identical card that isn't looking like it can score a better grade than the one you have.
Anyway, I wanted to write a little about some things I've thinking about as of late along with how to proceed in the case that we'd start printing physical cards for our game in the future.
I had this idea of a digital-first process to cards.
If you're an up and coming franchise looking to create physical cards, the starter barriers can be quite high in terms of cost and the amount of bulk they want processed before they can take your order seriously. I.e. you can't just do "test runs" with only say 5-10k cards and see if you wanna order more later. This means that for many niche games and communities card printing is quite impossible, especially at the quality levels you'd require along with features such as texcture, layers, etc.
So my solution could be more in line where say, if we have an app and engine where collectors can buy digital packs and open their cards up in the digital world, eventually if they'd hit a certain milestone/target, they'd have the possibility to pay extra for having their cards printed physically. This would naturally require that the digital packs are a bit more expensive starting out to be able to cover the printing expenses, but it would also give us an idea on demand which is what would make it a harder investment if we'd set out to print 50-100k cards which is usually the minimum requirements on the higher end quality printing services.
Along with referrals and a goal set, people would understand that we wouldn't be able to offer physical cards unless at least 100k digital cards have been generated, so it could be another way to "crowdfund/source" it into existence and you as the creator wouldn't need to create unnecessary bulk as you'd know exactly which cards you'd need created looking at the nfts existing in every collector.
Another thing I feel like is for some reason being completely ignored in the current card space is uniqueness to the artwork as an additional layer of rng/rarity.
There's clearly a demand from players to make some of their common cards feel more rare, as we've seen with "swirls" in holo layered cards:
So when collectors receive basic energy cards they look out to see if there's some unique swirls, error swirls or the sheer amount of swirls in the cards to set them apart from the common ones that may only have 3-4 swirls. Yet Pokemon has pretty much discontinued this practice instead of making it a feature which is kind of a missed opportunity in my book.
I don't mean it needs to be something like this uncontrollable side-effect like swirls either, but planned and weighted randomness in unique colors, additions, differences in artwork.
Take for instance one of the newest @holozing fanart created by @solumviz:
Now let's say we'd place her in the digital and physical card design and you get lucky and receive the diamond foil card:
This would still only give you a few differentials between a typ-card rarity (green/blue/yellow/red) or gold/diamond. In physical form you'd then have to rely on grading it, which most of the time depends on the quality checks at the factory rather than how well you took care and stored the card. Why not add more?
Let's say, there's a 10% chance she can be generated with holo colors in her hair, let's say there's a 2% additional random chance that her eye color is blue instead of yellow, 2% for green, 0.1% for heterochromia where her eyes have different color from one another. Maybe 10% chance for a different colored outfit, x% chance for a different background, x% chance for a different colored camera, x% chance for a different picture being printed from the camera, etc.
This in and of itself, easy and small changes give for countless amount of variations to the art giving collectors a wide range of uniqueness and making rare variations stand out in different ways, where a card with the rarest foil, rarest eye colors, rarest hair color, rarest clothing colors, rarest camera color and rarest image on the camera having a 0.000x% chance thus giving it true scarcity. Rather than "oh is it PSA 10? okay cool".
Anyway, this is something I've been looking forward to building, how we go about it will of course depend on funding which isn't looking too great lately, but hopefully hive gets its shit together in the near future or that some of our core functionalities like the game finally gets finished so we can start looking for funding again once people are re-assured that there really is something here and it can grow.
Hello @acidyo ,
I'm not a fan of games (we all have our flaws, don't we?), but collectibles and prints on various media are part of my professional field.
I read your post carefully and yes, you have the right strategy. Pre-sales of collectibles and merchandising are great triggers that work in two ways: 1) passion and interest in the item (in this case, the game) is palpable. 2) Source of financing without initial investment by promoters, since this is done through pre-sales.
What caught my attention in your post, and hence the purpose of this comment, was your mention of the obstacle of the large number required for printing. (“...if we'd set out to print 50-100k cards, which is usually the minimum requirement for higher-end quality printing services.”)
I made a phone call to a supplier friend (one of those who don't mind being bothered on a Sunday :) and, for this case, he recommended this company that does minimum print runs of 300, 500, and 1,000 copies.
The quality is guaranteed, as it is one of this company's great strengths, specializing in this type of holographic playing cards.
There may be other companies that do this, it's just a matter of research.
I made a simulated request for a quote for 1000 cards: they respond within 24 hours. I will add to this comment when I have that information.
Cool thank you. I've mostly been looking in the US/EU region and a little bit in Japan, but I reckon your friend is right that it may be a lot cheaper there and quality is probably good too, at least for starters. Will take a closer look and open contact when the time is right, thank you!
The big printing market is in the East: China and Japan. In terms of cost-quality ratio, they have already surpassed Europe and the US.
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Thanks @friendlymoose 🤝
I didn't expect phisical print to be so complicated, expecially cause at work they print even 5k decent quality gift cards without problems, but I guess it's different then
I like the thing of having unique characteristics on a card, adds a bit of excitement and collector factor
Great ideas 💡
Best to print physical cards only when there is an actual demand for it instead of unnecessary spending. The idea to see what's gonna be physically printed is very convenient too since we get to see them in digital versions early. We don't want any surprises there haha.
Hope it gets implemented in the future!
Yeah, there's also a lot of bulk and unnecessary plastic and stuff that is generated only to be thrown out with current existing collections and tcg's, this way people could choose which ones they want printed that they think will carry over the value over time.
We'll have to see into the finer details later I suppose but doesn't hurt to lower the amount of "waste" produced.
I've been thinking about buying trading cards for some time. Can you recommend which series are worth buying in terms of collector's investment?
It's hard for me to say, I mainly picked up the 151 set of Pokemon to study the space but also for nostalgia's sake (as it only featured the original ones that I used to know well when I was young).
I understand. For a similar reason, I am also tempted to buy one 151 booster. From what I see, there are also a lot of cards of decent value (but you still have to be lucky enough to find them 😅). Did you manage to find a unique one?
This should answer your question :P
OMG that’s your cards?
ye i bought my 151s through him cause they weren't available anywhere else
You hit a lot of valuable cards. Out of curiosity. Are you selling them or keeping for now?
She'd look pretty in that digital card and would be a cool collection to have, for collectors, though.
Have a fabulous week.
That's a good idea you're proposing. I don't know much about cards, but I hope your projects come to fruition and that Hive has excellent moments so we can all move forward.
I pulled this getting it shipped to me
Looks great, lovely artwork!
I said about it and writte to matt and agroed about splinterlands, they should prints some packs of cards, but they ignore all advices, i am sure a lot of people bought the physical packs.
Imagine a kind of ugly cards called among us. i do not know why this is so cheap, here you can bought 12 card per 0.25$
For me it js cheap very cheap.
But well they was spend a lot of money in gls and loses a lot of money in this.
Or maybe not.
I think splinterlands needs to look into this. I would LOVE to own a physical copy of some of my splinterlands cards. The artwork is so cool on many of them, and I like cards. I don't even play MTG anymore and I still have some cards cause they pretty.
The “digital-first” idea makes sense, especially for new and limited-run cards; this approach reduces production costs and investment risk.
hallo, bist du sammler?
for a short period I was opening a lot of packs yes, now not anymore
verkaufst du auch privat?
I've only bought from one streamer (linked in the comments here) because they didn't have packs of my favorite set available where I live.
Ok. Also willst du sie behalten und später wenn es Wert haben soll, verkaufen?
Maybe, depends how much Hive I can get for it :D
😂
Ich handle es privat und auf plattformen
@acidyo,am I right to say Holozing is still in the Beta stage? Happy New Month!
Yea we are still working on the game.
Thank you for your reply,it means so much to me.
I don't see why that's the case.
I am really looking forward to this game.
Oh man..
So I take it that the Holozing cards will not have "Fart Swirls" ?!?!?! sad day haha
Also, not sure if you have seen this. But this artist created his own physical Trading Card Game. It's a good series on YouTube if you want something playing in the background and to get ideas! ~~~ embed:c4QJDKIg-38 youtube ~~~
But all of that to the side. I love your ideas with Holozing. As much as the Hive market taking a downward turn (well all of crypto that is), I think it's important to see the silver lining here. It is giving you and your team more time to plan things out and figure out new or better ways to do things. And I think because of that once the game launches eventually, it will be even better than you originally planned.
I am all for you guys waiting to release the product/game/ecosystem until it is ironed out and there is something substantial to deliver. I rather wait for a 'OK' Beta game to play then a 'Shit' Alpha game to play honestly. But that is just me. (and I already have too much web3/crypto games on my plate so I need to wait to add another one to the mix hahaha)
Keep it up Acidyo!
Also not sure if you have seen yet but a fellow Hivian (@captaindingus) is out there spreading the TCG love to the community. Splinterlands and Pokemon cards!!
https://www.youtube.com/@FreeTCGs
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