Digital Card Trading: Part 3: The Community

Part of the fun of collecting cards as a kid was trading doubles or trading a fist full of cards for the one "holy grail" card that you wanted because it was a certain Chicago Cub player, or Boba Fett, or that final card to finish a set.  Trading gave a whole new value to having duplicates of cards.  There were really only two things to do with a duplicate card.  One was to put it in the spokes of your bike to make that buzzing sound that made us feel pretty cool, or the second was to trade those cards with friends.  

I never really thought of community much as a kid, but the friends we hung out with as kids were our community.  This, being a part of a community, is part of the fun digital card trading. We find a few people who are really fair traders, we make a few trades and we start creating a community.  Even better, the community isn't limited to who is in your neighborhood or school, it could be anyone around the world who shares the passion for cards like you do.  

Topps Digital Card Trading seems to understand this and has created ways for us to easily make connections.  We have the ability to search user names and follow friends and fellow card traders.  When we follow someone, we have the ability to see their collections and a couple different lists: a wish list and a trade list.  Most importantly, we have the opportunity to trade with those we are following.  This is the best way to have fun and finish sets.  I found that when I started building my followers list, my set completion jumped.  When I found my community, I have found that we are all pretty generous.    

Another way that Topps Digital Card Trading started building community was with "Watch Parties."  The first watch party my family took part in was the Disney Collect party for Onward.  Both of my girls downloaded the Disney Collect app and as we watched Onward, we collected the cards that dropped, and then we traded to complete the set that accompanied the Watch Party.  During the movie, we watched the community comments, and I was super impressed with how positive the community was in talking about the movie.   We had such a good time that when it was announced that there would be a Frozen II watch party, we were on board.  We started collecting as many credits as we could, so we could go crazy buying packs to finish the set during the film.   I have noticed that the watch parties have crossed over to Star Wars Card Trader, Marvel Collect, and Slam.  I really appreciated the efforts of the Bunt team to do watch parties during the MLB playoffs this year.  I watched more MLB playoff games than I normally do, to take part in the conversation with other fans of baseball.  

Finally, card collectors have built their own communities on social media.  One such community that connects to SWCT was started by the host of The Rebel Base Card podcast, Greg McLaughlin.  He created a community on Twitter around the hashtag #cardsquadron.  Greg often does a Friday check-in, to connect with his community and keep the conversation going.  It is pretty common for a newcomer to the app to join the card squadron and ask for a little help getting started.  Everyone jumps in and sends trades.  When sets are about to be completed, the community helps out with making connections to help members finish the sets.  Every now and again, I get random trades in my favor from members of #cardsquadron just because.  If SWCT is your thing, search out #cardsquadron and you will quickly discover the community, and you will be a part of one of the most positive and helpful groups out there.

When we are looking for positive ways to connect to others, the Digital Card Trading communities connect people with similar interests.  This is a fun way to build a collection and celebrate fandom with others who share our passions.  Get out there to collects and connect!  Have fun.  

What are some communities you are a part of through Digital Card Trading or even with print cards?  Who do you trade with?  What other ways do you celebrate the community of card collecting?  Share your thoughts, experiences, and ideas below.  

A Daily Reminder from "The Child"

 Some days it is just too much.  I'm sure we've all been there at some point this year.  Some days it is just too much toxicity in social media, on other days it is too much division in politics.  Some other days are just filled with too much responsibility or too much stress.  Whatever it is, we need Chewie to put up the front deflector shield to protect us from the onslaught.  The truth is Chewie is not sitting next to us, and we don't have the Millenium Falcon's deflector shields to protect our front.  When times become overwhelming, we seem to lose hope.  

This week a good friend of mine gifted a tiny figure of The Child to me.  As seen in the picture, it is a recreation from an episode in season one when the Mandalorian, IG-11, Cara Dune and Greef Karga are trapped in a cantina while being assaulted from the street by an Imperial garrison led by Moff Gideon.  Gideon sends an Incinerator Trooper with his flame-throwing weapon into the cantina to finish off the Mandalorian's team.  When the flames blast into the cantina, The Child steps up and uses the Force to deflect the flames back upon the trooper.  It is a climactic moment as The Child saves the team for the moment, and we all took a deep breath as they get a moment to regroup.  

I set this little figurine on my desk below my monitor because he is quite cute.  Besides being cute, he also reminds me that when the toxicity, stress, overwhelming responsibility come at me, I can handle it.  I can use the Force in me to decide to not participate in comments or become emotionally involved in controversial issues.  I can use the Force in me to decide that I'm not going to participate in social media until I feel better and more prepared to face it.  I can use the Force in me to take the stress of the day and find a positive way to break my tasks apart and tackle them one at a time.  I can use the Force in me to say "no" sometimes, and that's okay.  

There is so much in this life to bring us down.  Look for the positive in every situation, but when it becomes overwhelming, think about The Child and how he uses the peace of the Force to face the worst.   

Digital Card Trading Part 2 "Hoarding"

The Topps Digital Card apps have become a big part of my life as I carry those apps on my phone with me
wherever I go. Which means I also get to carry my card collections with me everywhere as well.  Notifications let me know when new sets or new cards of marathon sets are released.  It is great!  I get to celebrate some of my favorite things from Star Wars, Marvel Comics, and baseball.  I get to share the fun of card trading with my kids with the Disney Collect app, and I get the sheer joy of cracking open packs in an app that doesn't necessarily appeal to me in the WWE SLAM app.  I still don't know why I collect those cards except it is just fun to open packs and see what's in there!  

I noticed a certain culture develop in the Star Wars Card Trader app pretty early.  It is a culture where people try to collect as many duplicates (or dupes) of a certain card.  This practice is called Hoarding.  I don't know why, but I found myself looking for a card that was my favorite to try to hoard for the fun of it.  If you take a look at my BATTLEJUMP SWCT account in the 2015 set, I attempted to hoard Darth Maul.  My attempt got me to 695 copies of this card.  I will say this is quite a small hoard as I have seen many card hoards in the upper 1000's, but I would not be surprised to see some hoards over 10,000.  This is a really interesting and in my eyes a fun and silly way of collecting.  For a few years and sets, I would find a card or two and start collecting as many as I could.  Then, I started collecting and hoarding teams.  One year I collected all the Rebels, then stormtroopers, etc.  Of course, the more cards I try to "hoard," the more difficult it becomes to accrue a large number of those cards without spending a ton of time trading.  

I have started using this concept of hoarding to try something new with my collection.  I don't actively go out and trade for as many of certain cards anymore (okay maybe a little), but I use the workshop to help shape and curate my collection.  For example, in my CYCLELIBRARIAN account in the current 2020 card sets, I am collecting as many of the animated (Clone Wars, Rebels, Resistance) cards as I can. 

Then, to get those cards to the top of my collection, I "workshop" any base cards that aren't animated to try to get those to drop below all of my animated cards, and when I look at my collection, I choose to look using the duplicates settings, so the cards with the most dupes are at the top.  

I know this is all pretty silly, but it makes for a fun way to curate your collection and it brings some fun to collecting "just" the base cards.  So, here is one more thing I am playing with the Disney Collect app.  In the base tier 1 collection, I have been able to separate my curated dupe collection from the rest of the collection by a large span of cards.  There is a 30 card separation between my top dupes and the rest of the collection.  So now using the Workshop, I'm going to start putting in order my favorites of the "favored" cards.  It is one more level of curation so that my very favorite card is at the top and then in descending rank they will show up by the amount of dupes each card has.  For example, right now I have 136 Kristoff cards, 128 Sven cards, 122 Elsa, 116 Olaf, and 107 Anna cards.  I would like Elsa and Anna to be at the top of my collection. 

So I will probably trade to get Anna's count up and then start workshopping Kristoff and Sven so they drop below the 122 count.  Wow!  That's a lot of work for Tier One cards, but, hey, they are Tier One so why not have some fun with "throwaway" cards now that I have the award for the set.  

What do you think?  Do you hoard cards in the digital card apps?  Do you hoard print cards?  What do you think of using the idea of hoarding and the workshop to curate a collection?  Leave a comment and let me know what your largest hoard or card count is.  Want to trade?  Check part 1 of my Digital Card Trading posts for the card apps that I am in and follow my user ID's.  Have fun!  

Digital Trading Cards Part 1

 I love trading cards!  I have collected trading cards on an off since the 1970's.  Over the last 5-6 years, though, my trading card fascination has taken a new turn as the Topps Company, who happens to be my favorite trading card company, has moved into digital card trading.  

Star Wars Card Trader was the first digital card trading app to which I was introduced.  I was at the Indiana Comic Con with my friends from Coffee with Kenobi, Dan Zehr and Cory Clubb, when I downloaded it and entered into a new world of card trading.  I will never forget standing in lines at the Indianapolis Convention Center collecting Star Wars cards with Dan and Cory while figuring out all the different aspects of digital card trading.  Since then, I have added Huddle, Bunt, Marvel Collect, Disney Collect and most recently SLAM.  

I plan to write more about digital card trading here on Seeking Positivity in the Galaxy because there are so many positive aspects to card trading.  If you are interested in trading with me in any of the apps mentioned above, I would enjoy swapping some cards for fun and for collecting sake.  Here are my user names:  

Bunt:  BATTLEJUMP

Disney Collect:  BATTLEJUMP

Marvel Collect:  CYCLELIBRARIAN

SLAM: CYCLELIBRARIAN

Star Wars Card Trader:  JEDIGROSS

I am almost always up for a trade of dupes, and you can look at my base card collection to see what cards I tend to "hoard."  Actually, "hoarding" will be the topic of my next post on digital card trading.  What card apps do you actively collect?  What are some of your favorite features of the card apps by Topps?  Leave a comment below.