You might have heard about the $225 jpeg of Han Solo. I wrote an article about a card worth over $200 in an app called Star Wars Card Trader. Most of the article was devoted to explaining how a person could own something on their phone. It was difficult.
A long time ago. Star Wars is bigger than ever, digital goods are mainstream, and Star Wars Card Trader is still doing well. There are hundreds if not thousands of loyal users who log on every day to open packs, trade, and spend money on Star Wars cards, even though there are not as many active users as back in 2015.
I should be able to tell. One of them is me. After two years out of the app, I returned to work during the H1N1 epidemic. Things got very silly when I focused my collection. Every day, fans of the app look at every little thing that happens with new releases and analyze it. I was wondering if I would be able to talk to a few people who work on Star Wars Card Trader about those things. It's true, I was.
The edited highlights of the discussion with Brandon Bernard and Lisa Granshaw can be found here. This is not for you if you don't know what "dupes for needs" means. This is not for everyone. My friends.
Bernard told me that they are talking about that. We don't want everyone's collection to be the same. We don't want it to be a problem if you're in there for a long time. We want to find ways that people can differentiate their collections.
He said that decision-making would have to start on the level of the collector. We have to start releasing things that force people to choose between chasing this thing or not. I believe you are correct. We are trying to discourage people from thinking that they can get everything that comes out, and encourage them to express their enthusiasm for Star Wars through what they choose to chase.
I don't know if we have a perfect answer at the moment, but the conversation is going on. It's part of the experimentation that's going on, trying different levers, trying to engage people in different ways, trying to make things up for new users that log in and just want to be free to play for them. People that are spending a lot of money feel like there are things out there for them as well. We are constantly trying to find a balance for everything.
When I returned to the app in 2020, it was almost daily. A new set will be released at a certain time. You only get one release a day these days, and the weekly set that comes out that day has been the same for many years. I wanted to know about that change.
Bernard believes that they are trying to focus on quality content. It is one of the decisions we are making to avoid burning great ideas for a set on a weekly. We can make those into box sets or more premium sets because of the idea and concept behind it.
He said that they were struggling in the past couple of years when they used to change up weekly. It would be like, 'Oh, that was such a great idea for us and we just burned it for a week.' Because those are always going to be around, we want to shift to those more broad categories. We will change the templates for those as much as we can. New characters that people haven't seen yet will be added to the shows. It's absolutely true. You're going to have your standards and you're going to have your staple.
It allows us to pour our creative energy into more premium sets for people. If we can, tie them to events, develop them, hammer out the designs, and expand them. There is a pivot that we are trying to shift to more quality content.
In the past, members of the team used to go to more than one place to keep in touch with fans. For a while, there was an interactive show on twitch. That is not the case under the current team The people making the app don't communicate with fans directly. Bernard and Granshaw said they were available to be there for fans, but they also revealed that they were looking at someone else.
There is a little bit of chatter about that. I don't think it's advanced at this point, and I can't give you any assurances that it's going to happen. It's a topic that comes up in conversation. It is something that we would love to have. I believe we are trying to fill out roles that we have lacked for a long time. It is where we are beginning that. I think it will fill and expand outward. This is just nuts and bolts, but all of our apps are picking up a second designer, which didn't used to be the case We are starting to get out of that survival mode that we have been in for a long time and begin to thrive and think about what we can expand on.
In January of this year, the sports company acquired a company called Topps for half a billion dollars. Star Wars Card Trader fans were worried that the new company would shut the app down and Bernard was excited about the new regime. Bernard thinks they're augmenting the business. I think they believe in the business and use the wordplier to describe it. We were picked up because of that. We have a large corporate company as a base for things.
He said that they are committed to supporting them. I don't believe they're going to throw a lot of money at things. We are going to be careful but aggressive. It has been wonderful. It was news to everyone when it happened. We were a little hesitant at first. Do you know what this means for us? We are not going anywhere, they are keeping us and they are just looking to bolster what we already do and figure out what we want to do in the future. They can help us figure that out.
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