General Forum

 Hello everyone

I am thinking of possibly using this topic or something similar for a thesis and would like to get some opinions from other collectors.  Futera has released a collection of virtual cards, I'm curious about what your opinions would be about this.  Do you think tangible/physical cards will be on there way out, or is there something missing from a card image on your computer?

Let me know what you think, from any type of card collector, and not necessarily soccer.

Hello,

For me, I will always prefer a real card over a virtual card.  One main reason is that I really enjoy visiting my local shop.  I usually end up going on a Friday afternoon and always end up in some sort of interesting conversation with the good people who run the shop.  Supporting their business will always trump buying anything on the computer.  Plus there is nothing like coming home with a bag of packs of different sets and just ripping into them.  Finding a card of one my favorite players always brings a smile to my face.

I do not think a virtual card or pack will ever give me that kind of feeling.  I can't hold it in my hands.  I guess a virtual card could be printed but even that lacks any sort of excitement.

Bottom line give me real cards in a real shop every time.

Gunny

Absolutely Not.

Physical Cards bring all sorts of pleasures that virtual cards cannot offer.  Sorting, Texture, Produced with Different Materials, Storing Your Inventory, Resale Value, Opening the Boxes and the Packs, Dropping them on the Floor, Pride of Ownership, etc. etc.

Perhaps when (*insert your politician of choice here*) takes office and outlaws the use of trees for printed material or when the technological singularity takes place and we're living inside of computers, whichever comes first, will virtual cards take the place of real cards. 

While plenty of mediums have made the jump to digital with a high acceptance rate (movies, music, books, newspapers), trading card collecting encompassed more than just looking at pictures and text on cardboard.  There are whole other experiences like the ones mentioned in the posts above that get left out with virtual cards. 

That’s not to say that virtual cards can’t have a place in society, but I think at this point the question becomes akin to asking, “Will MMA ever take the place on boxing?”  We’re comparing apples to oranges and why does it have to be one or the other?  There can be both.  

Good luck on your “thesis”.
 

 Thank you for the previous 3 responses. This will help me in creating some contructs for a survey.

Certainly more posts from others will be appreciated.

I'll add my thoughts and a bit of digital collection experience.  I have recently returned to some minor collecting.  So far I'm just dinking around a little.  Anyway last year in the 2011 Topps Football set there was an insert set called ToppsTown.  With those you could set up and account at ToppsTown and use speciall codes on ToppsTown cards.  When you entered a code you received a few digiltal Topps cards.  The site was set up to collect, trade and use your cards in Topps based game.  It was fun attempting to trade for and acquire special players and expand your collection.  The sight even had special swap offers where you could trade in a specific card each week to get 4 different cards.  All in all I had some fun with it.  The problem though is at some point Topps just shut down the site.  Either to get ready for the new years worth of cards and new promo offers.  So basically overnight they came in and took mine and everyone elses collection away.  That will always be a draw back of 'digital' cards.  The owner of the collection site can always just spirit your collection away without notice or recourse.  Sure even in real life you can be robbed or have your collection destroyed in a way that is outside your control but you have control over it for the most part.  Not so with digital collecting.  You are always at the mercy of the site/company offering the digital collection and if they go bankrupt, or shut down the site for whatever reason then you just lose out.  That in my opinion is the single biggest drawback to digital collecting.  All the other things metioned apply to, from ripping a pack to holding that one special gem of a card that you never quite can believe you own.  Nothing can replace those things on line and as I said with the flip of a bit all your collecting hard work can just disappear into the void of cyberspace.

Koloth

As has been mentioned before, the idea is only good as long as the virtual presence of the "card" is supported.  Case in point: Pacific Online.  Every card had a URL to a virtual card on a website.  Now the company is long out of business and there is absolutely nothing left of the virtual cards.  There can only be any real, lasting success for a virtual card if it has some physical component, sort of like the Upper Deck PowerDeck "cards" that were small CD-ROMs.  But even the content of those might be lost as soon as the technologies used to "play" the content are no longer supported.  How common is it for someone running Windows 7 to still have anything installed that supports old Quicktime formats from the late 90s?  In less than a decade, even those types of efforts have already reached their end-of-life.

 Doesn't TCDB act as a sort of virtual card "collection" for all of us?  Sure, I have my physical cards here in my house, but a website like TCDB allows me to view hundreds of thousands of other cards, which I can then "put" in my collection simply by checking a box.  I'll never have the money to have a "physical" copy of every card I want, but this collection of images here allows me to see the front and back of all the cards I want.  With the new "rip a pack" feature, I even get a small taste of the joy and surprise of seeing what cards are in the pack.

Nothing can ever take the place of tearing into a pack of the newest cards, and feeling the texture, or seeing the "rainbow" of a refractor, or touching a piece of fabric worn by a professional athlete.

But I can also embrace being able to see every card, in brilliant color and detail on my computer screen.  Think of how many cards you have looked at on this site, that you had never had the opportunity to have seen before.  1934 Goudey Baseball.  1978-79 Topps Basketball.  1983 Topps Football Sticker Inserts.  1982-83 O-Pee-Chee Hockey.  Complete sets.  Right there with the click of your mouse.  More and more being added every day.

As long as TCDB pays those server fees, and the website stays "alive", we get the best of both worlds.

wamk, that was a brilliant post!  Very good insight on this site and how it enhances our card collecting experience.  Well said!

Gunny