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!
Welcome to the first ever Sports Card Album Tournament Challenge! We will be giving away a bunch of prizes to our faithful SCA members & fans…all you have to do is fill out your brackets!
Brackets must be filled out before the tournament begins. Each participant may enter up to FIVE (5) brackets! Prizes will be awarded for guessing the best Sweet 16, Elite 8, Final 4, and a grand prize will be awarded to the person who ends the tournament with the most points.
Click this image to enter the Tournament Challenge
We will also have a few “surprise” giveaways throughout the tournament. All you need to do to enter is to go to our group’s page on ESPN.com. If you’ve already created brackets, you can go into each bracket and simply add that bracket to the Sports Card Album group.
The password to join this group is: Collect
We hope you join us for some clutch shots, huge upsets, and awesome prizes! Big thanks to our sponsors Upper Deck, BCW Supplies, and Blowout Cards who will be providing the prizes!
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.
Apparently there’s this thing called “Instagram,” and it’s kinda a big deal. Forgive us for being late to the party, but we’ve kinda been swamped with the whole “invent-a-photo-management-site-for-collectors” thing. We are now on board, and to celebrate, we are giving away some beautiful cards from 2014 Panini Rookies & Stars Football and 2014 Panini Elite Football.
All you have to do is follow us on Instagram and post a comment on our first photo (shown below) to enter. That means we have THREE giveaways going on today…we will do a video and post it to the blog tomorrow with the winners of all three giveaways. Link to our Instagram: CLICK HERE
I am excited to share an incredible new feature that is guaranteed to make your life as a collector easier! Whether you are sharing your personal collection on the Beckett forums or trying to sell some cards on the Blowout forums, anyone who collects online understands how cumbersome it can be to copy and paste dozens of “IMG-Codes” into your thread. Our super-simple new tool allows collectors to grab countless “IMG-Codes” all at once.
Bulk IMG-Code Animation
To celebrate this new feature, we are going to giveaway up to $150 in gift cards to your favorite retailer (online or LCS.) Here are the rules:
Post a thread in any forum using the new bulk-img tool to embed the images. Email us, tweet us, or FB us the link to your forum thread. One person, chosen at random, will win a $50 gift card to their online retailer or card shop of choice (assuming that company sells gift cards.) If we get more than 50 entries we will give away two extra $50 gift cards (three $50 gift cards total.)
NOT SO FINE PRINT: You can only post one thread per forum category, but each person is allowed to submit a maximum of three (3) entries. For example, you could submit two entries if you used the bulk-IMG-code tool to embed images in the Football forum as well as the Baseball forum. Or the Football B/S/T forum as well as the Football “box breaks” forum. If you’re not sure what this means, ask. Threads must include at least ten images to count towards this giveaway. Contest ends Monday, August 18th, after the Cleveland v. Washington NFL Preseason game.
Watch a video demonstration of this new tool below:
Without a doubt, it is the community that makes Sports Card Album what it is and we thank you for all of your support.
Every Friday we will post a collecting-related comic to the blog for your enjoyment. I’ve kept a list of a bunch of things I love about collecting and a bunch of things that really frustrate me as a collector. Peter Griffin’s “Grinds My Gears” segment seemed like the perfect way to vent my frustrations. Happy Friday everyone!
We finally have a blog!!! This may not sound like a big deal to you, but I have been wanting a Sports Card Album blog for a really long time, mainly so we can share all the new features and updates we are doing on the website (and apps.) We have been mentioning our progress via traditional social media outlets like Twitter and Facebook, but relying solely on those to get the word out is pretty dumb for a couple of reasons:
Not everyone is on Twitter & Facebook
The people that are on Twitter & Facebook aren’t online 24 hrs a day
It is virtually impossible for people to search through all our old tweets to see if/when we announced something (hard to see archives)
This blog is the solution to all of these dilemmas and a whole lot more. This blog will provide us with a better platform for our giveaways, it will allow us to bring you special (unique) content, and will allow us to share our thoughts (and progress) with you in a way that is easy to navigate and search.
We encourage you to sign up for our mailing list (in the right sidebar) so you are notified when we launch our updates. We look forward to sharing a lot more with you in the days to come and thanks for all of your support!
In the meantime, let’s kickoff the blog with a giveaway…simply comment below and you’ll be entered to win one of two SCA prize packs!
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:
