Trading Cards

[CameraManWill]

It'd be nifty if we got pictures of just the bots at certain events, or one person from each event too high quality pictures and sent them into one place and cards were made.

It'd be an interesting concept to pull through

[Joe Matt]

Originally Posted by dtengineering

While lots of teams produce their own trading cards, I think the idea here is to have them produced for ALL teams, and perhaps sold in packs of ten random cards, for sale at events.

So if a trading card is .8mm thick and there are 1,500 teams in FRC (well... more next year, but let's say 1,500) then a complete set of cards would stand 1.2m high.

The catch would be getting the photos submitted and cards printed in time for regionals. For instance, our robot did not have decals on it until we got to Portland, and then changed out one manipulator when we got to Seattle.

But now we have good photos.

So perhaps it would make sense to sell the 2008 cards at the 2009 regionals. It will still be difficult, however, to get quality photos of all 1,500 teams, but even if only half the teams submitted photos it would be kind of fun, especially as teams traded and swapped to get "their own" cards. For once I would feel sorry for 1114 as their robot would be likely to be in wee bit higher demand than ours!

Jason

P.S. Just an addendum... as the discontinuation of the "Behind the Design" series of books shows, FRC is still not quite "big" enough to support some of the commercial ventures of professional sports. Something like this would require a careful business plan if it were intended to generate revenue.

What I'm thinking is maybe having certain teams from certain years, not every team from every year. Think of opening a pack and finding a 71 from 2002, 365 from 2005, and 111 in 2003? Similar to how you can get baseball player's xxx year card, we can do that with teams here. Same with mentors/volunteers/important people in FIRST, I mean who wouldn't want to have a Karthik or Copioli trading card mounted on their wall?

[Alan Anderson]

Originally Posted by Joe Matt

Same with mentors/volunteers/important people in FIRST, I mean who wouldn't want to have a Karthik or Copioli trading card mounted on their wall?

Or on their dart board?

[riskkeeper205]

This was the general idea, to eventually have a pack of the cards include other years (like the 254 rookie year ). I think it would make sense to only sell them at Nationals and get all the pictures from the different regionals instead of selling them at all of the regionals, because i know that our team didn't show any pictures until our first regional (trying to keep it a secret) and even then it wasn't fully done until the finals of our second regional.

Also where would we get these pictures from, whether we would have each individual team submit a series and someone picks one, or if we get them from a site like thebluealliance.net, we could also get one person (like a volunteer or something) assigned to each of the 41 regionals who is responsible for taking the pictures of all the teams at the regoinal and giving the pictures to whoever is going to make the cards.

[Rick TYler]

Paper is SO 19th century. How about e-Trading Cards? We could use <some online technology> to create decks of cards that people could "trade" and show off. Anyone remember hypercards? Something like that, only online. The E-TC would have some kind of serialization so that if you traded one, it would disappear from your storage folder and appear in the new owners'. By only trading registered and serialized cards, rarity and trading would be protected from copying (which would spoil the fun anyway). I wonder if some DRM scheme could be easily adapted to this? A quick interface development project and a hosting site, and some of you would be the next Google. Please save me 1% of the stock, OK?

[CameraManWill]

Originally Posted by Rick TYler

Paper is SO 19th century. How about e-Trading Cards? We could use <some online technology> to create decks of cards that people could "trade" and show off. Anyone remember hypercards? Something like that, only online. The E-TC would have some kind of serialization so that if you traded one, it would disappear from your storage folder and appear in the new owners'. By only trading registered and serialized cards, rarity and trading would be protected from copying (which would spoil the fun anyway). I wonder if some DRM scheme could be easily adapted to this? A quick interface development project and a hosting site, and some of you would be the next Google. Please save me 1% of the stock, OK?

The online card thing has been done with MTG before, as to the serialisation, it'd still be important to have them in real life too, simply because you can have Regional/National Exclusive cards.

[riskkeeper205]

I don't know about all of you but I'd rather physically hold a trading card than look at it on a computer screen. I like the idea but I'd still rather use paper.

[NickE]

The e-Trading Card idea is great and all, but I think that paper cards would be much better.

They would provide something physical for teams to hand out and for somebody to collect.

If you're at a regional or the championships, you can physically trade cards with someone else, just as one could trade shirts, buttons or other collectable items that teams hand out.

This wouldn't work out so well at the regionals and the championships as many FIRST events have no public internet access.

[Jreed129]

if you would want to do this by each year you could have every team take a High res image of their robot when it gets back from Nationals and hand them out throughout the whole 2009 season and start all over again.

or you could just have championship robots from each year. the people that won at the championship and the chairmen award winning teams

[riskkeeper205]

ya but i don't like the idea of being one year behind. But honestly I think that is the best way of doing it.

[Jreed129]

Originally Posted by riskkeeper205

ya but i don't like the idea of being one year behind. But honestly I think that is the best way of doing it.

odds are that it will be the only way to complete everything unless you just aim to release them at Nationals every year and send people to every Regional taht year to get the pictures

[fluffy]

FIRST, the trading card game, sounds catchy

each team could get a card with offense and defensive ranges and then you could make alliances and verse each other, there could be special cards(dead battery, overdrive, coach has a bad day etc) would be interesting

[riskkeeper205]

i agree, once we get the trading cards off the ground then we can start looking at a card game

[NickE]

Originally Posted by riskkeeper205

once we get the trading cards off the ground then we can start looking at a card game

Yes, but if you ever plan on turning it into a card game, you should have the stats (as fluffy suggests) on the cards from the beginning.

[riskkeeper205]

So wat kinds of things would any one sugest then