My baseball card collection is one of my prized possessions. Even though I stopped collecting more than 35 years ago, and the entire thing* is worth less than a dime, I love that I still have every card.
Sometimes, though, I want to look through them but I don’t feel like pulling out all the binders.
I wish I could have a digital version of every card that I could look at on my phone or iPad. (I wouldn’t mind repurchasing sets in digital format.)
It’s unlikely that I will invest the time to scan all of my cards into my computer. The only way I’d want to do it would be to scan front and back, then match them up as one .png file.
So, I visited the iOS App Store to see if Topps or Fleer or any other trading card company offers a digital option — and not NFTs.
Topps offers a clumsily named app called Bunt that’s too slick for what I need, and seems to be focused on modern-day cards and players.
Topps, Fleer, Donruss and Upper Deck — or whatever conglomerate owns them — must have digitized their archives, right?
I don’t get it. We can already carry our music, movies and books in our pocket. Why can’t we take our baseball cards wherever we go?
Unless I am completely missing something, this seems like a missed opportunity for these companies to reconnect with their, ahem, now middle-aged customers.
*Several years ago I wrote about the process I went through to finally organize them.
Mike McClary 