Collecting on the Cheap: Topps Skate

November 3, 2016, 1:19 PM ET [1 Comments]

Shawn Gates
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What would any discussion of cheap avenues of collecting be without raising the pinnacle of low cost, otherwise known as “free”? Not surprisingly, the option of not paying for collectible items rarely comes up for the mere fact that purely no cost items are very few and far between. Rather, most opportunities arising in this category do “come with strings attached”, and in some way we do find ourselves paying in some manner or another. That being said, should we find the small print in the deal to be worth the payoff, then we benefit at the end of the day, don’t we?

So with this in mind, and an open attitude to a newer manner of collecting, welcome to a modern angle on you grandparents’ hockey card: Topps Skate. The twist here is in what you define a hockey card as, for in the world of Topps Skate, cards exist not as a tangible piece of cardboard but rather in digital form. Furthermore, rather than being housed within binders, sleeves or shoeboxes, our storage now comes in by way of an app on your phone or tablet. So there’s your rub people; no cost comes with no physical card. At the same time, for those who long for the days of being able to chase sets, trade cards and pull the occasional short-printed parallel or insert without taking out a second mortgage, this could fill a need!

So what’s the process here? Relatively simple, and for anyone who has ever installed an app on their phone/tablet, pretty much par for the course. Head on over to your respective app store, search for the Topps Skate app and install it. Once installed you’ll have to register by creating a unique username and password, unless you happen to use any of their other sports (Kick, Huddle, Bunt, Dunk, Slam) or entertainment-based (Star Wars or The Walking Dead card trading apps), in which case you can use the same ones as you use there. With that done, you’re off and running!

Being a digital app, the currency is also digital within Skate. Within this lies the second rub: while a certain amount of cards are free, others above that come at a price. Here’s how this breaks down: for each day you open the app, you are given 10,000 credits. Open the app daily for seven consecutive days, and on the seventh day you’ll get 25,000 credits (a weekly bonus to keep people visiting). With said credits you can buy your packs, which vary in price (from approximately 3,000 to 50,000 credits), amount of cards (one to 25), and different inserts you can pull at various ratios (including Focus inserts which contain embedded video clips). Should you want to grab more cards than your free credits allow for you do have a couple of options. First is the bastion of the app-world: “in app purchase”! You have the ability to purchase various amounts of in-app credits in bundles ranging anywhere from $1.99 (20,000 credits) to $139.99 (1.125 million credits). You also have the option of earning credits in exchange for viewing video ads or completing various sponsor offers should you prefer spending some time versus actual cash. Furthermore, the app also pushes an interactive, game-based experience, where you can engage in daily fantasy team matchups, with who you hold in your collection dictating who you can put forward any given night. The notable thing here is that parallels of base series cards offer boosts to the points a player will earn you, such that the more rare a card is (moving up in rarity from base to blue, green, red, orange, teal, silver and gold) the more the players earnings that night will be multiplied (anywhere from 1.2 times for blue to 10 times for gold). Use the card and it’s gone at the end of the contest though, so be strategic (i.e., use doubles only if you’re trying to build sets!). Place well in the competition and be rewarded with packs to help you in building your collection! Bottom line here is that you do have flexibility in terms of how deep into this you want to get, but when push comes to shove you remain perfectly able to use the app completely free and still enjoy a pretty immersive experience.

So what are some of the pros with this app beyond cost? Well, you are offered a pretty varied experience in that beyond collecting you are also presented with a chance to compete against and trade with fellow app users, which really expands how you can enjoy the app as well as continue to build your collection. Speaking of which, Topps Skate rewards involvement and progress in a few ways. One is the levelling system which sees you earning experience points for a variety of actions, such as cracking packs, trading and competing. As you level up, free packs and insert cards are added to your collection as a reward! In addition, award cards, as well as some credit rewards, are dolled out for building your collection, with achievements involving completing 10 card team sets at each of the parallel levels, or complete set builds at a particular level. Again, more free action that you can easily achieve without having to spend a dime. Topps will also offer up a variety of different inserts as the year moves along, highlighting different aspects of the game, as well as events occurring as recent as the night before, adding an instant gratification slant to your collection. Should people respond well to the app and it rolls back around for next season, also expect a new, updated base set to roll out with a differing design which gives the experience some continuity while also rewarding collectors with some added diversity to their stash and an up to date reflection of where the league is at that point in time.

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Collecting on the Cheap: Topps Skate

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