Trading Cards

[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?