After recently buying the venerable trading cards company, Disney Michael Eisner is making a seriously cool bid to keep collecting alive, debuting 3D, augmented reality baseball cards complete with tiny players, stats and games.
This kind of augmented reality tech has been seen before, most recently in a German Mini advert that placed a Mini Cabrio on a magazine, via a webcam. These cards (video here) take the concept a little bit further, with custom 3D models suited to each player and even a few little pitching, batting and catching games. The cards will be available in different editions in packs of either five or ten, for $1.00 or $2.00, respectively.
https://gizmodo.com/new-magazine-ad-displays-3d-car-in-augmented-reality-5112176
A rep for Upper Deck fired back, cryptically promising competing cards that “come alive and contain video.” What this means, I have no idea, but at any rate it looks like baseball cards won’t die quietly. [NYT]
