Weekend Wonder: Upper Deck’s Video Trading Card
By Andrew Tolentino | Football Editor
This weekend’s Weekend Wonder is: Upper Deck’s Evolution — soon to be the market’s first video trading card.
Because this innovation has already received its fair share of knee-jerk reactions — positive and negative — we’re hoping for a little more elaboration here. Considering both sides of the coin, tell us why you love it, hate it, or even explain why you’re entirely indifferent about it.
If you’re really feeling adventurous, feel free to respond to part or all of this long-winded prompt, specifically:
Despite previous attempts by Upper Deck — and other industry leaders — to create tech-based collectibles, many of these concepts seem to have flopped in the hobby. What then, is the significance or motivation for moving beyond the basics? Why would a manufacturer expand with modern technology when the core of its existence is something as simple as cardboard? How do future generations of collectors benefit or suffer from these efforts?
No matter your stance, your voice is crucial to the collecting world. Tell us and other hobbyists what you’re thinking this weekend. Who knows? Your words might end up in the next issue of Beckett Football.
Andrew Tolentino is the editor of Beckett Football and Beckett Hockey. Ask him a question, send him a rant or spark a dialogue via e-mail at atolentino@beckett.com or tweet him @tolentinotweets
what happens when the battery dies? 20 years from now, when it doesn’t play, what value would it have?….Solar powered maybe? When they can make them as flat as a thick patch card i will be impressed, and interested. they need to incorporate photos and such, like a cut signature card. the video shouldn’t be the whole card.
Let me start off by saying I am a big fan of technology, and I think the video card is kind of a novel idea. To each his or her own, I don’t collect plates, spoons or thimbles although I can understand the concept, sort of. That being said if I really want video of my favorite player (AP) I can cut clips off youtube and the web for free, videomix it on my computer and put it on my phone, again for free. I consider myself an average collector, I don’t have tons of money to spend on my hobby and I’m not doing it as an investment, I do it for fun! I like being able to buy an occasional box, sit down with my son and do a good ole’ fashioned box buster. I like not knowing what I’m getting and atticipating that great pull, an auto, a game worn or someday a 1/1. I like going to The Dugout (my local shop) and getting supplies and shootin’ the breeze with the owner and other collectors and hearing about their luck. I also love the look on my son’s face when we pull a Morneau jersey(2nd fav. player) and get to case it and he gets to bring it to school to show his friends. I also like the fact that we can hunt down card shows and antique stores and he can pick out the greats of the game from the past Mantle, Robinson, Aaron, Rose, Ryan and all the rest. Call me old school but I like the fact that we can take that little piece of cardboard to the game and get a Mauer auto and it sits on a shelf in his room above his bed. It is his prized possesion, forget the Wii, the ipod and PSP and probably the video card, sorry Upper Deck, we’ll still buy your cards.
Way to go Upper Deck! Now we can party like it’s 1999; as in when you tried this sort of thing with “PowerDeck”. It failed then and it’ll fail again now. Have you ever considered that the only people who think this is the “card of the future” are the creative geniuses who voted for this in your product development meetings? PowerDeck flopped in the relative infancy of the Internet back in 1999; Evolution faces stiffer competition from a myriad of options now. Even Darwin himself would be seeking divine intervention to make this product a winner.
So stupid…
Ok, here goes nothing. I just want to start buy saying that I am a fan of technology and always seem to need the newest and coolest tech toys; that being said, I’m not looking forward to this “card” at all.
Card manufactures in the past have always tried to push the envelope of design and concept but have also always tried to stick to the standard size card and material. When I was younger it was always interesting to see what new designs and concepts the inserts were going to be. Each year they got tougher to pull. Then inserts were serial numbered, then autographed, then game used, then both, then video? I could come up with a lot of different reasons why this is not going to work but I will spare everyone and leave you with this final question, how are they going to be packed and isn’t it going to be pretty apparent which pack the video card is in?
They are rechargeable right?
Just stick with the basic trading cards forget the high tech mumbo jumbo. If I want a video I’ll just down load a video of my favorite player or team.
cant wait for this to come out so it can be on the market and me not buying it…. just saying this has to be one of the stupidest things ever made.
Indeed, this is the biggest money sieve that upper deck has created since deciding to buy dinosaur bones for hockey cards. Fitting a video player in a cardboard shell is not a cheap process and this will just inflate prices not just for whatever product this will be in but for every upper deck product across the board. Instead of spending all the extra cash there, they should have used that for more autos or mem.
why would i want a tech product from a company whos own website doesnt function properly?
OK, to be frank, I think some people are missing a few things here.
1) They are supposedly autographed, so there will be some long term value.
2) They will be rechargeable via the USB port.
That said, I’m not exactly thrilled about it either.
There is a kind of cool factor, but it is very short lived.
60’s Auravision Records
70’s Mattel Instant Replay. Plastic Mini records using special player
1979 Talking Baseball mini records
1989 Baseball Talk, Over sized card with mini record on back using special player.
1991 Silver Star Holograms (Nolan Ryan and Rickey Henderson)
1997 Motion Vision / Diamond Vision (Lenticular Card, tilt to make action happen.)
1999 Powerdeck, CD rom cards.
I think that if you come up with a card, that has a hard signed autograph, and a chip (rom)
that will not degrade, embedded inside it that can be read that has a video of the player
signing THAT card it would be pretty cool. Likewise a memorabilia card that shows the player
handing over the item and showing the patch being cut and embedded for THAT card would
be awesome.
A device could be made, battery powered, that was included to read these cards.
Obviously this is only workable for the high end products since a player will cost the company
$40-60 and it would be nice if it also had outputs to play on a TV or the like in addition to
having its own screen.
Me? I’ll admire the stuff, but I think I’ll still stick to the hard signed auto cards.
I like i.
I ment it
I appreciate the thought and the idea of evolving collecting but this doesn’t have to be it. It kind of feels like/looks like something I might find in a happy meal for my kids. also, design has more UD and Evolution elements than anything about the player.
Looking at the item. This is essentially a piece of memorabilia and not a trading card. Upper Deck Authenticated should be marketing and selling this instead of Upper Deck.