How Sports Trading Cards Have Inspired New Fantasy Types of Cards and Games For Children

Collecting baseball or football cards has been a longtime hobby for a lot collectors in the past. Although many kids enjoyed buying these cards every once in a while the real collectors of these sports cards tend to be adults because they have the means to support that hobby. New trends of collecting cards came from these sports cards and have hit the new profitable market of gearing towards kids. This article will touch on some of these card collecting hobbies that are geared to the younger generations and how they have been very profitable.

The first game that emerged were cards that featured different characters from a thing called Pokemon. This cartoon looking characters that had a mystical and anime type of style were being sold in small packs of 5-6 cards. They only sold certain characters and some were harder to find than others. Soon, kids were begging their parents for more packs of cards to see if they could get the more rare characters. They made huge binders to store their cards in and often spent time playing with their friends in which they would trade cards back and forth. This phenomenon took off as a popular craze and has now evolved in more things than just trading cards.

Pokemon has entered the digital and technological age to continue to stay popular with the kids. They have a website full of information about everything Pokemon as well as video games and even cartoon shows that bring the stories and characters from the trading cards to life. Although the trading cards phenomenon has died down a bit, they continue to be popular in the various videos, games and TV shows that they have now. You will probably still see children dressed up as Pokemon creatures this Halloween as you have for the past decade or so as it remains popular.

Another children’s trading card game that emerged from the same principal as collecting sports cards is the game and cards of a thing called YUGIOH. This was a similar idea to Pokemon with different characters featured on the trading cards but the cards were actually used to play a game as well, not just to collect. Certain characters could overtake other characters and this would result in the better card winning the other card. So a new competitive game became the new way to acquire cards, not just by trading them but by actually winning them from others in a game that mimics a type of war. YUGIOH has also extended into the digital age with a TV show, video games and other toys using the theme of the characters on the cards.

The old basic concept of a sports trading card helped to bring on a whole new type of cards geared towards kids today. If you ask any kid about trading cards they most likely will say Pokemon or YUGIOH instead of a sports player like they used to. It a shame that fantasy characters are replacing real life people.