Trump cards, or strategy cards, are this season’s newest flavour with a nod to the 90s kids, but the game just got a lot more serious with a national championship centred around it. Read on.
Growing up in India in the 90s was a fun time when cable TV started becoming popular with its limited programming that largely consisted of cricket and wrestling. Then there was the pastime that combined the two sports, burning a hole in a teenager’s ever-inadequate pocket money — trump cards. The craze of these collectible card sets that listed down every wrestler’s physical statistics and every cricketer’s career statistics, fizzled out towards the early 2000s when flying tazos began to become a rage. But now the trump cards are making a comeback, with collectors making beeline to purchase them again. While children and teenagers are discovering the joys of this one game they don’t have to go online for, slightly older collectors are relishing the nostalgia of their 90s childhood. What’s more, now there’s even a national championship centred around the game.
However, the cards go beyond being just a game for many. Collectors far older than the target group (6-16) for these cards, the have their own reasons behind buying the cards. “These cards are different from the ones we had back in the 90s,” says 22-year-old Akshay Shinde, who has a collection of football and WWE cards. “Kids especially love this because you actually need to use your brains and plot your strategy to play it. They enjoy learning it and hence they grasp it fairly quickly,” he adds. Akshay first came across these cards at his aunt’s day care centre where the kids spent most of their time playing games and eventually started to collect the WWE cards. “I realised this was fun to play on road trips and added to nostalgia value, so I kept some of these cards,” he says.
The national championship here, which has kick-started along with the IPL season, combines the element of fantasy leagues, where one can play a manager and choose their team members within a specified budget. “While we encourage players to play the games whichever way they want to, we needed to have some rules in place for the national championship,” says Anita Ahlawat, marketing head, Topps India that is hosting the championship. The lure of the attractive prizes associated with it has seen nearly 30,000 participants from eight cities enter the competition this year. Winners of the championships are awarded with meet and greets with cricketers of their local teams.
Ajay Pandey, a city-based executive with a BPO, who bought these cards for his nieces, says, “We play the game as a family unit every weekend, and hopefully my nieces will be able to participate in the national championship next year and meet their favourite cricketers. I wouldn’t mind tagging along too.” Back in 2011, a line of cricket cards had hit the market but it is only now that it is grabbing the attention of trump cards enthusiasts. In fact, Topps India is looking at selling about 18 million cards this year. “Collectibles are not age bound,” Anita says, adding, “Besides, they act as memorabilia. You can trade them years later, or you can get them autographed, and add to their value.”
Collectible and strategy cards have a far bigger legacy in the US than they do in India, with old baseball, and American football cards being auctioned off for thousands of dollars. Twenty-four year old businessman Sahil Arora is enjoying getting back to old habits. Sahil, who has just resumed collecting these cards, says, “As kids, my brother and I were very interested in WWF and we started off collecting and playing with the wrestling cards. Later we moved to football and cricket cards. There was a craze for cricket cards and eventually we had a lot more of those. I started collecting these cards around 2001 and eventually I had about 350-400 cards that I would rarely trade, especially since I used to have full collections back then. It was easier to buy a complete pack rather than scourge for cards to complete your collection.”
While the collectors are spoilt for choice now, it is the cricket-based cards that remain most popular. “We have already exhausted the first round of cards for this IPL season. People feel the need to complete an entire team, so we get frequent calls from them asking us how to get that missing Yuvraj card or a missing Dhoni card,” Anita says.
