Star Wars Trading Card App Attracts Those With Disposable Income

Megalith

Megalith

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Topps has a Star Wars trading card app, and it’s pretty neat—you can actually buy and trade cards. But are people seriously buying crumpled Han Solo cards for $225? I’ll sell you my pristine Greedo card for tree fiddy.

…the Han Solo card is one of the highest prices seen yet for a single card. Except for this super limited edition Pink Yoda card. There were only ever 10 copies, and they were only available for one hour. It costs $900 — that's as much as a seven-night Caribbean cruise.
 
I don't understand buying a virtual card (no matter what the image looks like).
 
So... For $225, you get a GIF-quality instagramified digital image of Han Solo with fake creases and completely artificial scarcity. I understand collecting, but here you might as well collect (free) screenshots people have posted of their cards. What is the difference between having the screenshot and having the DRM'd image in the special card collecting app? (Besides "idiots will pay money for this")
 
This is some majorly retarded shit. I can MAYBE see paying for stuff like Magic or Pokemon cards online so that you can also play with them online, but purely from a collection standpoint? Asinine.
 
eh... the sense of "owning" something digital seems so odd to me. I mean I play Hearthstone, but I don't pay money for it, and I fully expect to lose more games than I win, and while you can't actually trade/buy specific cards I don't feel like I actually own any of the cards that I have, they're simply "achievements" I've gained in the game. I could understand something like Pokemon because there's a physical card that you own, no one take it away from you... well unless they're a bully and picking on you for obviously playing Pokemon :D
 
sfsuphysics said:
eh... the sense of "owning" something digital seems so odd to me. I mean I play Hearthstone, but I don't pay money for it, and I fully expect to lose more games than I win, and while you can't actually trade/buy specific cards I don't feel like I actually own any of the cards that I have, they're simply "achievements" I've gained in the game. I could understand something like Pokemon because there's a physical card that you own, no one take it away from you... well unless they're a bully and picking on you for obviously playing Pokemon :D
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At least in a digital card game, there is interaction... playing the game. Sure, you don't own it and the company could go belly up taking your cards with it. But when you look at money spent on gaming as money spent on entertainment rather than a product... it's not so bad(I'm not saying dumping hundreds into an online card game is a good idea either).

But this? It's a damn picture to look at on your phone. Once they eventually quit bothering to update the app, and it just crashes repeatedly on whatever version of android is out 3 years from now, you've got nothing unless you keep a phone or tablet around just to run the stupid card app. If you actually look up video of this thing it's literally just collecting "cards", getting achievements, and opening packs of cards(like crates in CS:GO, complete with kids and weird grown men posting videos of their pack openings to youtube... wtf?). Even weirder is that it's not like there are even that many cards based on what I've seen poking around youtube for this thing, but you can get the same card in 2-5 different borders, whoopdeedoo. It doesn't even appear to have anything like a phone wallpaper that changes to random cards you "own" or whatever.

At least in CS:GO I kind of understand it, as it's something in addition to the game. But this is literally like buying crates in CS, not having a game to play, and just looking at weapon skins in the gallery. wtf.
 
My family all plays it, but nobody spends any actual money. You get some free credits daily and can use those to "buy" packs and try to finish sets to get bonus cards via trading. Everyone has a good bit of fun with it, but it's a 5-10 minute thing every few days.

I agree that it'd be a silly use of real money.
 
Honestly, in comparison to some collectibles these are both fairly old and fairly inexpensive. Some Super Nintendo games are worth $1000+ in mint condition and a fair number of titles are over $100 even in poor condition.
 
Quix said:
Honestly, in comparison to some collectibles these are both fairly old and fairly inexpensive. Some Super Nintendo games are worth $1000+ in mint condition and a fair number of titles are over $100 even in poor condition.
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It seems I forgot to include my main point here. My point was that collectors are willing to pay a lot of money, even for things a lot newer and less rare so I don't find this surprising. The Star Wars toys go for insane prices and they're not even that good.
 
This is just one more reason to disapprove of Star Wars fans and shun them when they try to interact with normal people. I really wish this whole thing would just die. The couple Star Wars movies I had to sit through were just horrible and I'm hugely disappointed in the world for there being more of them. It's like an old people version of Harry Potter only with a much dumber plot and even more stupid (if that's possible) magical powers.
 
The reality is that a tiny number of people are willing to go to Ebay or something to get what they want the "easy" way if they have spare cash. It's just a clickbait type of story.
 
Quix said:
It seems I forgot to include my main point here. My point was that collectors are willing to pay a lot of money, even for things a lot newer and less rare so I don't find this surprising. The Star Wars toys go for insane prices and they're not even that good.
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The difference is those are actual things. This is just an image on your phone.
 
brentsg said:
The reality is that a tiny number of people are willing to go to Ebay or something to get what they want the "easy" way if they have spare cash. It's just a clickbait type of story.
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in fairness, it's the only way to get one of those Yoda cards ;)
 
I'd not pay that for cards because I don't collect them but it is people who mock collectors and make fake memorobile that drive the prices crazy high making many of the colllectors pay too much then when they have to sell stuff becuase of wifey agro the number one reason guys get rid of stuff like this. But personally I watched the funniest thing I had seen in a while when people were buying up rare copies of ce boxes scanning the box and selling multiple copies of the box to drive up the money they collected but did not provide copies of the games. I only got to see this because I was getting my girl friend not liking one of my for lack of better word toys, and I wanted to see what people were paying for it. All the sales closed as seller fraud so I shrugged and told her it was better to wait until I did not risk getting flagged with what looked like a nasty set of fraud on both sides.
most people simply buy the stuff when it is popular and hang onto until something happens to make people want a bit of their childhood, like when a kid who saw the movies the first time and was first really cool toy or was on a date and wanted a shirt but could not so ended up spending the money on a gf's happyness not realizing the gf is now a wife and hates the shirt for one their being a choice between her happyness and his and that it is now taking away from her happyness.

so right now the people buying are either speculating or the guy above. the guys without gf are either getting a bit of well they don't have the chick now they may as well have the geeky tshirt or they were not willing to work a summer job and simply did not have the job then. personally I figure that if you have to work hard now to buy something that you should have then it is a good thing someone has one to sell but a bad thing that you have to look back to that point in your life to be happy. well there is a third type but those guys are kinda funny usually actors trying out for a part will wear stuff from older generations and look stupid because they forget that the shirts are printed as mech for the movies or game and come out before the event or the event happened but the show or game was not popular until a few years later and they say they were there and to people not old enough they tell each other stories about it until they convince themselves it happened while people who actually were there chuckle to each other and suggest stuff to see what takes and what does not so that when the person goes and tells the story to the next person they assume since they were wrong with the first person they add those instead of looking up footage or old bulltion boards to see what actually happened... I ran into someone the other day who said he played eve when they were fighting over the basic asteroids that you start next to... some times you just had to shake your head and wonder why they even care find something happening now and make memories actually enjoying something you care about. I mean so you don't like one thing or other find something that instead of going those people are stupid stop and go they are having fun and your not... maybe it is not the thing they are enjoying but simply that many people are so quick to want to be cool they do not get the different between someone who is cool and who is a tool is cool people are those people who simply live life. I have seen over and over again cliche form around people who buy love and friends and wonder why they have neither and cool people form because some idiot start doing things people do not have the guts to do and his or her stories entertain the people who are not the "cool" person but the friends who the people who are cool want to be around. But then again those people who not be here so just chuckle and realize that the people buying that stuff do not have disposible income so much as a need to posses things the rest of the collectors simply buy stuff when they get holiday spare money.
 
Parja said:
So how long before someone hacks this and floods the market with "counterfeit" "cards"?
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My guess is the image comes form a server, so the only way you can trade it is if the server says you have it. You can get an image of that image, but people are buying the scarcity of the number of legit cards. I don't know. I don't collect cards, much less virtual cards.

I still buy CD's, because CD's have value. You can't sell your MP3 to anyone...and it will definitley not become collectible.
 
nilepez said:
My guess is the image comes form a server, so the only way you can trade it is if the server says you have it. You can get an image of that image, but people are buying the scarcity of the number of legit cards. I don't know. I don't collect cards, much less virtual cards.

I still buy CD's, because CD's have value. You can't sell your MP3 to anyone...and it will definitley not become collectible.
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The only value anything has is what somebody else is willing to pay for it. People pay extra money for all these collectibles, physical or not and most of them aren't worth the paper, disc, or whatever they were made on when it comes to resale. Buy a "collectable" because you want to look at it or for nostalgia sake. Very Very rarely do they appreciate in value. Sure there are exceptions to everything, but probably somewhere in the neighborhood of 99 to 99.9% of collectables are worth less in the future than the original person paid for it new. It's just marketing bullshit.

So I say let somebody pay $900 for a digital version of a card. It's no different than people paying for for digital collectors versions of games. I don't think it's much different than people who pay extra for physical collectors version either, but to each their own. If you enjoy the hobby, who am I to judge.
 
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