Your ballpark photos could end up on a baseball card in 2015 Topps Opening Day set
By Chris Olds | Beckett Baseball Editor
If you go out to the ballgame and take a picture, you might have a chance to see it on a Topps baseball card.
On Monday, the company announced that it will include fan-generated photos on cards in 2015 Topps Opening Day via an Instagram-based contest called Topps Live.
Beginning today, any fan who posts an image at the ballpark and includes the hashtag #toppslive with the image will have a chance at being on a card. As many as 30 images will be selected from photos shot between now and the end of the season.
Topps said it will judge images on their originality and creativity with examples to be found at @toppssports. For more information, visit topps.com/toppslive.
Chris Olds is the editor of Beckett Baseball and Beckett Sports Card Monthly magazines. Have a comment, question or idea? Send an email to him at colds@beckett.com. Follow him on Twitter by clicking here.
This is pretty cool if you ask me.
I’ve always thought that they should insert some of those extreme-off-the wall highly dedicated and make-up made fans to some sets (Raider-guy Viking-guy etc..).
At least they are trying something innovative….There are going to be 30 or so Very Happy participants.
Peace
A very cool competition. However, the terms are awful. If you tag your photo on instagram with #toppslive, it IMMEDIATELY becomes property of Topps–even if they don’t select your photo. Awful terms.
Not much of a contest. Topps gets free photos for an insert set and who knows what else, 30 people get a proof card. What’s next, an entire set with photos sourced from Twitter? “Tweet us your photos and we’ll put your Twitter handle on the back of the card!” Whatever happened to “We’ll pay standard licensing rates for the rights to use your photos on a product that we sell for actual money?”
Matt 1: I really don’t think that matters to a massive percentage of people on Instagram. How many people are making money off their pics there or have another outlet? Only the professional photogs.
Matt 2: Pretty sure that applies if you are a professional photographer and contact them about photo use. This is clearly not that scenario.
I saw this yesterday on facebook. Very cool! The only thing that I find annoying is that you have to submit via instagram. They should do it on all of their social media platforms, not just the least popular (less than 17% of people use instagram).