Today , before things went to hell when I got home, I was looking around an office supply store for… ummm… office supplies. Specifically, inkjet business cards. I’m making a few desultory attempts to sell a few of my photo prints, and I’ve printed out a number of business cards using some of my photos as backgrounds. Yay.
I noticed that along with 2X3.5 business cards, also available are postcards, 4.25X5.5, and plain cardstock. And for no readily apparent reason I flashed back to when I was a kid, lo these many long years ago. In those days long before the interweb tubes, I had a few collections of “trading card” type informational… things. Not really sure what to call ’em. One was a box of cards each showing a photo and providing info on one of a vast number of animals (dinosaurs included), and another that had cards on various airplanes, tanks, etc.
It dawned on me that the same desktop publishing that lets me crank out my own business cards would allow me to produce “trading cards” of, say, aerospace projects. Art/photo on one side, a small 3-view & data on the other side.
I have little doubt that such a thing – especially with the data available to me today – would have sold well back when I was a kid. But sadly, I suspect that the market for them *today* would be minimal at best.
Irony. Now that I have the technical capability of doing something, the reason for doing so has evaporated.
5 Responses to “An idea whose time has passed?”
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You’d have to create a game… for example: “SSPS Builder” with them. Cards for launch systems, cards for on orbit assets, space weather disasters, perhaps some other things. Kids could get shuttles or VTVL lifters or HOTOLs, etc to be their fleet, and race to complete an infrastructure.
You’d be competing for attention with the “Magic” card game(s), so it would be an uphill battle to get publicity, probably need to sell your idea to a game company which would leverage their publicity engines into the pitch. Just hawking it over the net will be a hobby, not even a part time job.
You might run into issues with copyright too, Making an image available in a historic/journalistic context is treated a little differently by the lawyers for the big aerospace companies than actually selling stuff in the marketplace. Probably need to have one or more artists come up with new versions of the images, rather than use the glamor pages from the old documents.
So my final assessment: There are kids who would like it, but the financial effort to reach a percentage of them is pretty big.
I remember those cards very well. I never had them myself, but schools and friends often did. I loved the idea that if you wanted to know something about an animal you could get it all on handy card, complete with a nice color photo.
I love the idea of trading cards, or identifier cards for aerospace projects, and even just everyday commercial and military aircraft. I’m always looking up and wondering what exactly it is that’s flying over, and a quick reference book, cards or smartphone app would be great for that. I have downloaded an app for it, but it doesn’t allow you to scroll through the 3-views, so you kind of have to know what you’re looking for to find it! Frustrating.
Is there any useful information that can be gleaned from this material? If so, perhaps compile it into a book of “Already been tried …”
Looking ahead, if you could figure out how to make money from 3-D printer patterns, you would be in a good position to provide cool designs and profit from the coming 3-D printer boom.
Everyone seems to be downloading designs for free, which is a very nice thing. I have no idea how to make money here. But you are sitting on design info for a gazillion cool models. And you have the necessary skills and experience to become King of the Weird Aircraft.
Speaking of 3-D printing…
And would there be gum inside the packs of cards? Dry, hard, tasteless, broken gum? That might do it for you….