The Current Lack of Baseball Card Technology

[conor912]

My wife and I just took our daughter to Harry Potter World. When we got back I was thumbing through some junk era stuff and stumbled across some Sportsflix cards. I remember as a kid thinking those things were magical. The late 80's also brought us holograms, which were pretty effing cool too. It got me wondering why we haven't seen any leaps and bounds in card technology. Potter World has those "moving pictures" that would translate amazingly to baseball cards. The main 3 obstacles I would see are 1)thickness, 2)power source and 3)price. From what we're seeing in roll-up TV's these days, I'd think the thickness would rival any of these extra thick patch/swatch cards. For power, solar technology for watches, etc, is off the charts, and considering people are paying hundreds of dollars for these Immaculate or whatever boxes containing one pack with some high end card, I don't see how it wouldn't be financially feasible.

Maybe my imagination is overly ambitious at the moment, but I was just kind of struck at how, given all of the advances in technology since my childhood, that I was still impressed by Sportflix from 1987, yet left wanting in 2019.

[steve B]

There were some motion cards in the 90's, but they were at the time pretty expensive, like $5-10 a card. And they weren't much better than sportflics.


Something digital like you're thinking could be interesting, I can't think it would be hard making a phone size gadget that only played a handful of included videos.

But considering how my cell phone has gone, I'm developing* an aversion to expensive and yet very ephemeral technology. It's maybe 2-3 years old, and the un-changeable battery is on its way out. I don't expect it will make it to as much as 5 years, which is pathetic for something that cost 300+.


Then there's the recent loss of data by Myspace, 12 years of photos and music etc gone because they didn't back up when migrating to new servers.


It's a nice idea, but probably won't really be ready for prime time for another couple decades.

[JustinD]

Video cards have been around for years.

Google Panini HRX video cards.

[conor912]

Originally Posted by JustinD

Video cards have been around for years.

Google Panini HRX video cards.

Interesting. Had never seen those.... though they're horrible and nothing like what I had in mind

[mrmopar]

I have a few of those audio cards that come out in the late 90s that ran off batteries. I don't remember now, but they may have also had a few seconds of game action via a sportflic type technology. Of course, the batteries are all dead and there does not appear to be a good way to replace them. I guess they didn't care at the time, but having a replaceable battery would have been a common sense move anyway, but NO, they were not replaceable.

It seems the card makers have stopped focusing on what might be cool (mid 90s insert variety, for example) and innovative and just focus on packing in the potential dollar lottery returns with 1/1 cuts and limited autographs of guys like Koufax, Trout, Aaron, etc.

Speaking of cool concepts, I really enjoyed the early acetate cards and the duffel technology. Not sure why duffel is still not used more, but it seems many of the early acetate cards just turn a nasty yellow over time. Surprise bonus down the road for many. I also really enjoy the 3D effect, like Topps lineage had. Wish that was more common as well.

[ALR-bishop]

One of my favorite sets is the 68 Topps 3D set. It was a test set with very limited if any distribution at retail. Topps did not produce anything like it again until 2011 as a sub part of it's Lineage set that year. I assume expense to produce and the associated pricing was the primary deterrent