Most of our followers know that we give away a lot of autograph & memorabilia cards through our various social media channels. What you may not know is that for almost five years we have been donating our base cards to various charities. In the past, we shipped our cards to Cards2Kids and Commons4Kids. Both wonderful organizations doing a lot to bring our hobby into the hands of deserving kids all over the country. We recently learned of another organization, SportsCardsForKids, doing the same thing.
Although we plan to support these fantastic groups indefinitely, we are actively looking for ways to support hobby growth in our local community. Recently we had a chance to visit the Houston Boys & Girls Club and do just that. We setup some basketball shooting stations, played games, gave out cards, and discussed a lot of life-lessons that revolve around sports, health, and education.
Members of the Houston Boys and Girls Club showing off their favorite sports cards.
Afterwards, we gave kids the chance to trade cards at a designated “trading table.” Kids could trade their cards for another card of a different sport, or search through stacks to find their favorite players. The kids came in groups of 25, ranging in age from 5 to 18 years old. Afterwards we donated 10,000 more base cards and inserts (all from 2013-2015 products) to the club so they can continue to give them out to kids moving forward.
Excited kids holding up their favorite sports cards
Our first event with Boys & Girls Club of Houston was a big success, but there are a lot of things we can do to make it an even better experience for the kids. Our next event will include a bunch of cool sports-related drills, custom packs of cards, and cool giveaways for the kids. BCW was generous enough to donate supplies so the kids are in for a real treat. Our next event will be on Friday, October 9th. If you know of any collectors in the Houston area that would like to volunteer at this event, please let us know! We need about 10 volunteers to help with all the stations.
Panorama of the kids flashing their sports cards
The Boys and Girls Club is a phenomenal organization that makes a visible difference in the lives of children across America. Please join us in supporting them in every way possible.
If you are interested in organizing/hosting a “Sports Card Day” at your local Boys and Girls Club, please contact us for details on how you can get involved.
If you are a collector or manufacturer interested in donating your time, talent, or treasure to this cause, please email: sergio@sportscardalbum.com for more information. The more the merrier!
March Madness, BABY! It feels like the tournament just began yesterday, but here we are on the precipice of the Championship game between Duke and Wisconsin. This year’s tournament has been chock-full of big-time shots, controversial calls, incredible comebacks, and huge upsets, which is par for the course for what many consider to be the greatest event in American sports.
We wanted to celebrate the biggest tournament of the year with our biggest giveaway of the year, so we enlisted the help of our friends at Upper Deck, BCW, and Blowout Cards. The prizes they donated will make you want to climb a ladder and cut down a net, regardless of how your team did in the tourney.
As we mentioned in our original post, we are giving away four prizes:
Highest Score after Sweet 16
Highest Score after Elite 8
Highest Score after Final Four
Highest Score after Championship Game
There were almost 200 entries into this competition, so the four of you who win should be very proud of how stupid-a** lucky you got on your bracket Just kidding…we know you were probably up for many nights studying metrics and doing analysis on your favorite teams, right? However you got there, the following three winners have already been determined:
Highest Score after Sweet 16 : MiamiTrev2
Highest Score after Elite 8 : brandon14234
Highest Score after Final Four : Tcolumbus
Thanks for making it easy on us by not having any ties. We will know who wins the Championship later tonight, and I will update this post. We have several brackets that are neck-and-neck so we are excited to see how the brackets shape up.
Huge thanks to everyone who participated and a special thanks to our sponsors for donating the amazing prizes. We are packing out the prizes right now and will notify the winners of their prizes as soon as they are ready to go.
Winners: Please email SCAcontests@gmail.com and tell us which part of the tournament you won in the “subject” line. Within the body of your email please include your name and mailing address.
Everyone: Please subscribe to our blog by adding your email address to the field at the top of this blog post, on the right sidebar. Blog subscribers typically have a better chance of winning giveaways since they are the first to know about contests/promotions. Also, if you haven’t looked into our PRO features yet, please do soand sign up!
As collectors, we have dreams of where this hobby can go. As developers, we have parallel aspirations for Sports Card Album. We have our own visions for the future of SCA and those visions are augmented by the deafening voices of our passionate user-base. Every single day you tell us what you want. Not a day goes by without one of you asking for a new feature or suggesting a way for us to improve SCA. Today, we offer you a chance to help us push the hobby forward by investing in a “PRO” account.
Social media enables us to listen via so many different channels…Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Forums, YouTube, the list goes on. And although we can’t always respond to every communication, we are always listening.
While we have been working on fine-tuning our own program, we have been curating a list of the most commonly requested features. It takes a lot of time and money to develop these features, so we are asking you, the collector, to help us determine whether they are really worth our investment. Please note:Sports Card Album will continue to operate with all of its existing features (and several more) for free. These PRO features are for hard-core collectors who wish to enhance their hobby experience and are willing to pay a couple of bucks a month to do so.
So without further ado, let’s get into some of the features we have planned for PRO members:
Private Albums - People come to the SCA feed to see sports cards, trading cards, and sports-memorabilia. Since all images appear on our public feed, we cannot allow un-related images on SCA. However, we are flattered that many of you seem to prefer SCA over traditional image-hosting sites. Private albums will allow you to upload any image you want, without that image appearing in the public feed. PRO members will be able to designate the following:
Image/Album is public
Image/Album is private
Image/Album password protected
Image/Album accessible only via direct link
Image/Album visible publicly within user profile, just hidden from feed
No Advertisements -This one is straight forward. We have made a conscious effort to maintain a nice-looking website, free of all the distracting and obtrusive advertisements commonly found on other sites. In fact, we only have a couple minimally-intrusive advertisements on the entire site. But PRO members won’t even have to see those.
Advanced Analytics -Hard-core collectors have been begging us for advanced analytics. Cracked-Ice and Superfractor members will be able to see how many times their cards have been viewed or clicked. They will also be able to print out spreadsheets of their albums including all relevant card statistics. We will work directly with pre-registered members to determine the final list of analysis tools. Once you pre-register, please contact us to let us know you want input into these tools.
Trading & Selling: The most popular requests are often the most challenging to implement. For example: Trading & Selling. It’s not too hard for us to implement a trading system that allows you to print out invoices and mail each other cards. It’s also not hard for us to enable you to sell cards.
But those features don’t move the hobby forward.
The biggest problem with trading or selling is not the activity itself…it’s holding both parties accountable. So the bigger question for us is, “what can we do with our software to discourage scammers and make trading/selling activities more enjoyable and stress free for collectors?”
Our answer is called the “Sports Card Album Rating System,” or “SCAR.” All of our Pro members will be able to purchase cards via SCA. Cracked-Ice and Superfractor-level members will also be able to sell cards and will each receive a personalized, hand-scrutinized, “SCAR.” In order to obtain one of these ratings, members will need to submit an online application that includes a link to their facebook profile, their forum feedback, and their ebay feedback. The more feedback a user submits, the stronger their “SCAR” can be. We will personally verify all data. This level of accountability will decrease the likelihood of anyone scamming a seller on SCA. Additionally, the fact that only paying members are able to buy/sell means that people can’t just register a fake profile to scam somebody under a fake name.
It’s impossible to prevent 100% of the risk involved in making a transaction online, but we believe our new system will significantly reduce the chances of any buyer/seller being scammed out of their precious cards or hard-earned money.
One really cool thing about selling cards through SCA will be that we won’t take ANY cut from the price of your sale. You pay your monthly subscription fee and that’s it. We won’t even get involved with the financial exchange. If a user wishes to sell a card, they will simply check a box to mark it “for sale” and they will add a price for that card (including shipping.) If a buyer likes the card, they can purchase it on the spot. By clicking the “BUY” button, the buyer will be instantly directed to PayPal where they can login to complete the transaction. Once the card has been purchased, the image of the card will then be imported into the buyer’s “Purchased” album and a copy of the image will be sent to the seller’s “Sold” album. The buyer doesn’t even need to worry about scanning the card once they’ve received it.
Sell sports cards directly through PayPal with no listing fees or final sale fees
YouTube & WordPress Integration for Verified Accounts: Group Breakers and Local Card Shops have asked us for these features for a while. Verified accounts who subscribe to our Pro features will be able to add YouTube links to their cards so collectors can view their videos directly from the feed! This will add an element of interactivity to the feed that collectors have not experienced before. Verified accounts will also have access to custom WordPress widgets that will enable you to share your albums on your blog or website.
Verified accounts that subscribe to our Pro features will be able to add YouTube LinksMockup of YouTube Integration within the feed
Plus a lot more! All Pro members will receive custom badges for their profile pic and wallpapers for their personal album URL.
Ready to take your card collecting to the next level?Click HERE to seethe full list of features and then pre-register under the classification of your choice. You will not be charged until we launch the new features. Consider this our own mini Kickstarter. If you love the hobby and enjoy using Sports Card Album, please sign up!
I am personally guilty of taking many things in my life for granted. From family, to friends, to the little things that make us happy, it is easy for us to get carried away in our day-to-day lives and forget to show appreciation to those people/places/things that bring joy to our lives.
Thanksgiving is a perfect time for us to reflect on our lives and give thanks for these things.
For those of us who collect cards, we have to appreciate the fact that we are even able to participate in such a cool hobby.
We must give thanks for the parents and siblings who taught us about cards.
We must give thanks for the friends who traded cardboard with us as kids.
We must give thanks for the great collecting-community online, with whom we share our hits.
And we must give thanks for the local card shop owners who struggle to make it in this crazy industry just because they love the hobby so much.
I grew up going to local card shops as a kid in California. Many years later, there aren’t many things I enjoy more than spending an afternoon with Charlie and Jeff at my favorite LCS in San Antonio, Sports Cards Plus. We chat about our favorite sports teams, rip on players we don’t like, debate about the latest draft picks, trade cards, bust packs, and shout with joy when a fellow collector pulls a monster. The camaraderie I find there is something special and unique to our hobby. I used to get the same feeling hanging out with Kendall at Orlando Sports Cards.
In an industry with ever evolving methods of distribution and a greater reliance on the internet for price-shopping, fewer collectors are spending their hard-earned money at their local card shops. I realize that some card shops are suffering because their business practices are antiquated or because they have lost their focus on their customers. Or because they just suck. But I make it a goal to stop by a local card shop in every city I visit and I can tell you with confidence that the majority of card shops are run by great people with a passion for our hobby. To me, the local card shop remains the heart and soul of our great hobby.
So this weekend, after you’ve stuffed your face with Turkey and done some holiday shopping, please remember to do a little something for yourself, and for our hobby. Stop by your local card shop and buy something for yourself (a box?) and something extra for a friend (a couple packs?) You’ll be supporting small businesses in your community while also spreading the love for our hobby. Then tell us all about it below…
CONTEST: Post a review of your favorite card shop in the comments below. Tell us what you like about the card shop, what they could do better, or what you think card shops (in general) can do to help engage collectors better. Why do you love this card shop? What’s your best pull from the shop? Tell us whatever comes to mind. If you don’t have a local card shop nearby, tell us which card shop you wish you lived nearby. Is there a particular shop you’ve heard about that you would like to frequent? What makes them special? Each person may enter once…you can earn a second entry if you email/tweet/instagram us a picture of you AT YOUR LCS this weekend. Or, for those of you without an LCS nearby, send us some photos of the local card shops you wish you lived nearby (google search.) If you are sending pics via social media, please be sure to tag us with @sportscardalbum or post directly to our wall on facebook.
GIVEAWAYS: Two winners: 1) Hobby box of “2014 Hot Rookies” & 2) Hobby box of “2014 Playbook Football”.
TIMELINE:Wednesday, November 26, through Sunday, November 30th, 2014
BONUS: Don’t forget to participate in the Panini POD promotion while you are at your local card shop! Panini is supplying the prizes for this giveaway, so give them a “thanks” on social media if you have a chance. Also, we will be contacting some of the card shops (that you mention in the comments below) and sharing your feedback with them.
Help us spread the word by re-tweeting our tweets and sharing our FB & Instagram posts!
Most of you are familiar with the legendary “Player of the Day” contest Panini sponsors through local card shops each year. The last two years, we have participated in the promotion through our “Busting Packs” blog. This year we are a couple of weeks late to the party since we have been working behind the scenes to migrate all of the old data from Busting Packs over to the Sports Card Album blog. Rather than wait until we are finished, though, we are going to get started with this awesome promotion and begin giving away goodies IMMEDIATELY. There will be several stages to this promotion and all of them will happen over the next 3 weeks, so please pay close attention! Subscribe to our blog (see the right side of this screen) and follow our Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram pages for chances to win multiple prizes. We will be doing a different giveaway on each social media platform to give everyone a chance to win! We will also be adding a LOT of sweet prizes to the pot, so get excited.
GIVEAWAY ONE:November 17th, 2014 — We will begin by doing a giveaway here, on the blog. Right now. Just subscribe to the blog and post a comment on this thread. Let us know what you like/dislike about the Panini POD promotion. How it could be better. Do you have an LCS nearby that participates? Whatever…just post a comment and you have a chance to win two (2) POD packs and a prize pack from SCA.
GIVEAWAY TWO:November 17th, 2014 — Giving away an 8″ x 11″ autograph, three (3) POD prize packs, and an SCA prize pack. Rules on our Instagram page HERE.
I think we’ve all been there. You carefully review the scans of a card you want. After approving the quality of the card, you make a trade or purchase said card from someone online. But when the card arrives, you are furious to see that it is damaged due to poor packaging by the idiot who mailed you the card. Here are some popular examples of seller/trader stupidity:
Top-loader wasn’t taped at the top, so the card slid out of the top-loader
Top-loader was left loose in a much-too-large bubble mailer, causing it to slide around inside the package
Plain White Envelope (PWE) – Seller/Trader did not inform you they were sending a card via PWE, hence the card arrived damaged
No protection was placed over the top-loader or case…typically you want to put decoys or cardboard or something around the case to protect it in transit
A bowling ball fell onto the package in transit — OK so this one can’t be blamed on the sender…sometimes the mail carrier is to blame (looking at you, USPS)
Card was sent in a “snap” case…see image below. Snap cases SUCK and should never be used…their rounded edges destroy corners. Use sliding boxes instead, if necessary
You’ve asked for it, then pleaded for it, then begged on your hands and knees. We finally got our act together and are ecstatic to announce the beta release of the Android App for Sports Card Album. And we are celebrating this news by doing some big giveaways…tune in to Sports Card Live, hosted by Doug & Dan from MojoBreak and Ryan from Sports Card Radio. Click HERE to tune in “live,” or to download the podcast later. Some of the giveaways will not require you to listen “live.”
Hey Sports Card Album fans, Technology Co-Founder John (@smplejohn) checking in here with all the details.
We’ve flipped what we knew of the iOS app upside-down and started from the ground up in developing this. The focus of this app, besides uploading and organizing your sports card photos, is on the actual cards themselves. With a larger viewing area for the card and smaller, flat icons for favoriting, commenting and sharing, this app has turned out more beautiful than our original plans.
You’ll also notice that the profiles for all users have been completely revamped. With a more streamlined approach to displaying user stats all of the information available for users is easily viewed without distracting from their collection. Oh, and the albums. The albums are gorgeously displayed in a thumbnail view with the first card from each album showing proudly as an album cover. Simply click on that icon to view the full album list.
Now, on to some details about the beta.
Here’s how it’s going to work. At the bottom of this post you’ll see a link to the .apk file. “What’s an APK file?”, you ask. It’s the file type that Android uses to install an app on your phone. For the beta we’re not quite ready to throw it on Google Play for the world to see, but for our dedicated users, we’re more than happy to share the progress. And we have to do so by giving you a file to download.
Once the file is downloaded you will make sure your phone allows files from external sources to be installed. If you’re an Android user you are more than likely used to this as we like to tweak our phone’s a lot. If you’re not too familiar with that, follow the instructions listed here.
In this beta you can expect to…
UPLOAD CARDS!
View the Sports Card Albums cards feed including all sports, recent uploads and user-specific cards and albums
Search all cards, user-specific cards or users
Edit cards
Message users
Comment on cards
Favorite cards
View backs of cards
Share cards on Facebook, Twitter, or anywhere Android allows
Follow users
COPY IMG CODES!!!
Add new albums
View all albums / sub-albums
What we’re working on…
The back button: We want you to be able to go back to the last feed you were looking at because that’s what I would want to do.
Editing profile information
Deleting a card
Notifications of comments, likes, follows and messages
Back of card uploading
Rotate cards
Reporting Bugs
This is a BETA and I can’t be any more clear about that. Although we have thoroughly tested it on our array of Android devices (Moto X, Nexus 7 and Samsung Galaxy Nexus) there are a ton of Android devices out there. It is a possibility you’ll run into a bug that we haven’t seen. If you do, please comment below this post with your phone model and the specific problem you’re encountering.
After the Beta
Once the beta is completed, we will be blasting from the mountaintops that the app is available on the Android store (which won’t be long.) When that happens, simply delete your app and install it from Google Play to continue receiving updates for your favorite card collecting app. No data will be lost in this switch.
Enough talking, here’s the link…
If the button above does not work for you, try this alternative link: ANDROID APP DOWNLOAD
Panini America has uploaded images of their super-spectacular, sneaker-inspired “Sneak Peek” set to Sports Card Album. Panini’s “Immaculate Basketball” was a tremendous success last year, featuring gorgeous, acetate card-stock, huge swatches of game-worn jerseys, and an impressive array of rookie-patch-autographs. Panini expects this year’s product to be even more popular thanks to the addition of unique new inserts like “Sneak Peek,” which includes massive chunks of game-used sneakers from some of the most popular players from the last two decades.
Enjoy the full album embedded below and if you’d like to grab the entire set to talk about on other forums, feel free to scroll down and grab the [IMG] codes for all the cards! To grab an image code for any specific card, simply click on the card in the embedded gallery below and then hover over that image.
To read more about the “Sneak Peak” insert set, head over to Panini’s blog: The Knight’s Lance
To see the entire gallery in Panini’s Sports Card Album, click HERE.
Just kidding…we know you were probably up for many nights studying metrics and doing analysis on your favorite teams, right? However you got there, the following three winners have already been determined:
