Interesting article The future of baseball card collecting
 

Hi Gang:

This article appeared in today's Philadelphia Inquirer and Daily News. Thought others may want to read and/or comment on it.

If you want to read and see photos here is the link:

https://www.inquirer.com/phillies/ml...-20220524.html

otherwise here is the article

Are these the new bobbleheads? MLB is diving deep into NFTs as its latest innovation.
There could be a new giveaway that Major League Baseball thinks will be just as popular as a free bobblehead. Except you won’t actually be able to hold this one.

The Phillies paid Karl Wallenda $3,000 to walk a tightrope across Veterans Stadium 50 years ago. Two years later, Cleveland sold beer for 10 cents. The White Sox started the Bat Day craze in the early 60s and the Giants brought back bobbleheads in 1999.

Almost since the sport began, baseball teams have found ways each summer to fill their ballpark, from giving out free tickets to women in the 1920s to Vanilla Ice performing after a game in August at Citizens Bank Park.

And soon there could be a new giveaway that Major League Baseball thinks will be just as popular as a free bobblehead. Except you won’t actually be able to get your hands on this one.

MLB is diving this season into the nonfungible tokens market — think baseball cards that are purely digital — and has plans to expand past using them as solely collectibles that are bought and sold.

NFTs could soon fill the voids left by the decreasing use of paper tickets. They could be used in place of game programs — which many teams, including the Phillies, have stopped producing — and they could even become the new bobbleheads.

“I think we’re already at the point where these things would be a draw for people to go to an event in order to get one,” said Kenny Gersh, MLB’s executive vice president for business development.

For now, MLB’s NFTs will continue to resemble baseball cards after the league partnered last summer with Candy Digital — a company owned by Fanatics that calls itself “the next generation of sports collectors” — to produce the only NFTs licensed by the league and the players’ union.


Like baseball cards, Candy has produced NFTs that feature every team and all of the league’s stars and prospects. They can be bought in “packs” that consumers can digitally rip open or can be purchased from a marketplace where consumers sell NFTs from their collection.

An NFT might be foreign to baseball fans but the experience of opening a pack, collecting a set, and chasing a limited-edition collectible is as traditional to baseball as three outs in an inning. The NFTs are strictly digital — the items live on your phone or computer — but they certainly share similarities to baseball cards.

“We think about the traditional baseball card, the cardboard, we think of that as Trading Card 1.0,” Candy Digital CEO Scott Lawin said. “If there’s a digital picture of that cardboard that lives on your phone or your computer, that’s Trading Card 2.0. Now if we take all the different media assets that are generated around a game or a player — video, static imagery, motion graphics, sound, digital autographs — and we put all those things together and add things like player statistics, that’s Trading Card 3.0. We view that as what the future collectible is.


“Not just something that represents that particular player in an enhanced way but actually gives the collector and fan connectivity to that player in real time. If I’m a big Bryce Harper fan, his digital trading card has his updated stats. Now I feel more connected to him.”

MLB first tried NFTs in 2019 but Gersh said they entered the market too soon. Their system required consumers to set up a digital wallet and pay with cryptocurrency. It was too complicated and targeted a niche market. This time, they wanted to make it simple. Consumers simply register on Candy’s website with an email and use U.S. dollars to buy their NFTs.

A new lineup of players is released every few weeks with this season’s fourth lineup — which includes 90 players — set to drop on Tuesday. They created special NFTs last summer for the All-Star Game, launched a series centered around prospects, commemorated Atlanta’s World Series title, created an NFT for Jackie Robinson Day and create a daily NFT highlighting the majors’ best play from the day before that is available for just 12 hours. Some of the NFTs are then resold on Candy’s marketplace for thousands of dollars.

“What we really want to make sure is that the NFT in and of itself brings the fan value and joy,” Gersh said. “A lot of what NFTs have been tied to in consumer’s minds has been buying and selling and making investments. I don’t want that to be the case with the baseball ones. I really want them to be impactful for their own merit and they bring you joy to have it because it’s a collectible, it’s a memory, it shows your fandom.”

Candy has worked already with some teams to provide special commemorative ticket NFTs to season-ticket holders as teams try to find ways to replace the feeling of having 81 tickets delivered to your door. As printed tickets fade, the league envisions the NFT becoming the new ticket stub that proves you were in the ballpark for a memorable game. The NFT would include a box score, a video highlight, and a story about the game.

“When I grew up, I used to take my ticket, bring it home, and put it up on my bulletin board,” Lawin said. “I would collect those over the course of the summer and that was a piece of my history, my experience. That opportunity has kind of gone away. Things live on your phone or on a QR code on a piece of paper. Creating this dynamic digital ticket that starts to play that same role, we’re really excited about that same storytelling element that the paper ticket and program might have done in the past.”

The Phillies won just 59 games in 1972 but they sold 30,000 tickets that August when Wallenda walked across the Vet between games of a doubleheader. It was another promotion by Bill Giles, who knew how to sell tickets even in lean years. Fifty years later, an NFT could do the trick.

“You could have like a Bryce Harper Night,” Gersh said. “In the past, we would give out a bobblehead or some other item. Now every fan in attendance can get access to a NFT. It makes it sort of rare and special in that you actually had to be at the park that night to be eligible to get that NFT. You can keep it with you forever and it makes you feel good like it did when you received that free bobblehead.”


Published May 24, 2022
Matt Breen

I seriously hope NFTs are not the future of card collecting. But then, I live in the past.

+1 agree but we will have to wait and see what the future holds in NFT’s

NFT's in a recession will be like tits on a boar hog.

Guys, I am sorry, but NFTs are here to stay in some fashion (as is cryptocurrency and many new hobby innovations, like fractional ownership and card-portfolio mutual funds). Sure, many NFTs will be worthless, but we are in the first innings of a new game. In 1992, the Internet was a bunch of chat rooms, car phones were hot and cell phones came with back packs, and 5 CD changers were the bee’s knees. Now we can FaceTime family across the world, while videoing the conversation and posting it immediately to YouTube where millions can watch it, like it, and comment. The world and the hobby are changing. Fact. Physical cards are still king, and I think, will remain so- just as the real Mona Lisa will always be more desirable than an NFT of same. But NFTs are here to stay, and I bet in 5 years we will all have some; even if they were just giveaways at a Philly game (like the article says). I wish things today stayed how they were in the 80s. But the only constant is change.

Blockchain is here to stay. NFT's may or may not be. Most new things do not hang on for long. It is not some inevitability that this is how things will become.

well said

They are not the future of card collecting. By definition, card collecting means you are collecting cards, not NFTs. NFTs are their own collecting genre, and I expect that cards will continue to be produced and collected for some time after we are all long gone.

Right on. Can you say - Pogs!

As a 90's kid, I had a pretty sick collection of Pogs. My mom threw them out. Unlike card collectors, I don't think I'll be bitter about this in 30 years

My one son was a 90's kid, and I used to buy him Pogs. There are probably some still hidden around the house somewhere, but not worried about finding them to cash in. That is for sure!

+1

well said

+1

NFTs are not cards. If they become a thing I think it will be distinct from card collecting. Cards exist physically, NFTs do not.

Correct. And phones aren’t TVs, or cameras, or arcades, or computer… The times, they are a’ changin

I love cards. Physical, cardboard pictures of sports players. I like holding them, looking at them in person, passing them to someone, etc. I understand the resistance and denial. But I will gladly take bets (hell I will give odds) that NFTs are here to stay and a substantial portion of current and future collectors will have digital assets (yes “cards”) in the next 5 years.

How many people develop pictures anymore? When is the last time you took a physical picture and put it in a physical frame? Regardless of the answer I know it is much less than 10 years ago. People now have pictures on their phones, and on TV and computer screens when idling. And many picture frames are digital showing a digital slide show of images. How many people buy physical magazines and newspapers? A lot less than 5, 10, 20 years ago.

The good news is we can all keep our physical cardboard and nobody is required to buy digital collectibles. So do what you like. But just because you don’t like something doesn’t mean it’s not happening and/or will go away.

NFTs will be for some. I am happy for those people. I don't think they are for me. I like physical cards. And I actually think NFTs are just effing stupid (maybe I will change my mind in the future). It's my opinion and I can have it :).

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I would add fractional ownership and baseball card portfolios. To me, just effing stupid.

At the risk of opening up yet another front in the collecting vs investing wars, owning an NFT isn't all that different than owning stock in a company in that it represents a fractional claim on the value of some physical entity. How many of us who invest in the stock market actually still take delivery of physical certificates? Can you even do that anymore?

i supposed someone will counter that investing in the stock market isn't collecting, but I have a retired friend who spends his day managing his portfolio and analyzing new companies to buy into. He loves to talk at length about what he is doing. You will never convince me that it isn't his hobby and that his portfolio isn't a collection.

So, I have to agree with those who say that NFTs are here to stay and the market will be dominated by younger collectors who are as comfortable operating in a virtual world as we gray heads are with investing in stocks without actually having a physical certificate.

Buy what you like and enjoy but I just do not understand the allure of them and have absolutely no interest at all in owning an NFT...so it's no surprise I still write checks, carry cash, and buy real newspapers, magazines and books

Sent from my SM-N950U using Tapatalk

I don't get the appeal of NFTs whatsoever. With actual cards you don't need to "replace the feeling" (as stated in the article) of something delivered to your door...

I have to agree that NFTs are here to stay, but not as an investment. They will be for entertainment purposes only with no real value. This article came across my Facebook feed this morning.

https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2022/..._medium=social

You will see more and more of this I guarantee it.

Maybe it's just me, but does anyone else remember in 2000-01, when Upper Deck produced e-cards for their hockey set?

Each physical card had a unique code that you could enter into an upper deck website to build your digital collection. Anybody who built the set at the time has nothing to show for it now. The site is defunct, the digital cards don't exist anywhere, and the paper versions are effectively worthless.

I suspect the same outcome is inevitable for NFTs. Whenever the computer powering the blockchain is eventually powered down, collectors will be left with a collection worth approximately the same as the paper it's printed on.

Agreed.

Also, don't we have existing examples of e-cards on Topps that have absolutely not caught on? Not sure why this would be any different. An NFT, like an e-baseball card, is not tangible and therefore doesn't seem any different from looking at images of the baseball player on screen anyway...There are lots of signals of NFTs starting to decline quite rapidly, but then again a lot of companies have invested in it, so they are buying positive PR. Expect more puff pieces about NFTs to continue hitting newspapers.

To quote my favorite band: (He knows) Changes aren't permanent...But change is.

RIP Lyricist Neil Peart. ( He wasn't a bad drummer either...)

It had been proposed to me, and I considered it, to do a NFT for Net54baseball. In the end I chose not to (because of my thinking in the statement above). It would be a little PR but that is it and I just don't care for the whole NFT thing that much. To each their own.
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As I recall it was “eTopps”, and it faded away into oblivion. The basic idea has come back again in mobile app form for each of Topps licensed IP’s, as a F2P or P2W depending how you see it. The app will eventually and inevitably shut down and everyone won’t have their “cards”.

I’m a youngin’ and a techie who loves blockchain, but NFT’s don’t make a lick of sense and feel very much like a passing fad. I could be wrong but these are about the last thing I’d park my investment capital into. The dump is already beginning in some of the ‘hot’ sectors.

“I think of NFTs as pure froth,” said Peter M. Garber, an economist and author of “Famous First Bubbles: The Fundamentals of Early Manias.” “It is more of a pump-and-dump, Wolf-of-Wall-Street operation than anything else.”

Source: Washington Post

The great thing is that we will all know in time. I like my cardboard and own zero NFTs. That said, I believe they stick in some fashion and will have value (not all but some); and I would not be surprised if they become dominant in time.

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I respectfully disagree. I think nft's go the way of water beds. :)
They might be around but will hold little to no value. Entertainment purposes only.
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