Trading Card Project

The recent Persian Gulf war had an immediate and intense impact on myriad aspects of our popular culture, both material and non-material. American vocabulary quickly expanded to include Scud and Patriot missiles, Smart bombs and Humvees (High Mobility Multi-purpose Wheeled Vehicles). Our great desire learn about the Middle East region generated a staggering rush for theater of war maps. Hammond, Inc. sold more than one million special edition Middle East maps in just four months, and described it as one of the fastest selling maps in their 90-year history. Rand McNally & Co. stated that its special edition Middle East map generated the most spectacular demand for a single map since World War II this map alone eclipsed their 1960s and 1970s combined sales of lunar maps and maps of the Vietnam conflict. Both Rand McNally Co. and The National Geographic Society had to set up special toll-free 800 numbers solely to take Middle East map orders Lewis 9).Material culture enthusiastically reflected the overwhelming public support for Operations Desert Shield (i.e., the military build-up) and Desert Storm (i.e., the military offensive). Merchandise ran the gamut from T-shirts, bumper stickers and pins, commemorative plates and mugs, yellow ribbons and American flags to marquees, billboards, Saddam Hussein dart games and video war games. 29-cent stamp commemorating this successful military operation was also released by the U.S. Postal Service. In these and many more diverse forms, the Persian Gulf war ephemerally became ubiquitous on the American Landscape.This presentation focuses on one specific form of material culture: Desert Storm trading cards. Although many people might assume, incorrectly, that long-sports cards are a recent innovation, they have long been in our culture. In the nineteenth century, pictorial card games were sold with printed questions for players answer (e.g. Famous Authors, Bible Characters and in geography--A Game of the World, A Game of States, A Game of Cities). During my childhood in the 1950s, in addition to baseball and football, various types of pictorial trading cards existed such as presidents, airplanes, movie stars, entertainers and 3-D movies. New categories have since arisen such as Garbage Pail Kids, TV shows, Disney movies, famous rabbis, drug-sniffing dogs, fire fighters, fugitives and missing children (Forward Spin).Operation Desert Storm stimulated significant merchandising activities. On February 10, 1991, The Topps Company, a well-known sports card manufacturer, issued a set of 88 Desert Storm trading cards. They became an instant success with collectors (Kalette B1). As a result of such unprecedented demand, five other rivals rushed to participate in the market for military cards. America's Major Players, Operation Yellow Ribbon, Pacific Trading Cards and Pro-Set all supplied products.Topps, the initiator of the Desert Storm trading card fad, expanded its first offering by releasing two additional card in quick succession, yielding a total of 264 cards. For comparison, Pro produced one set of 250 cards, Troops produced two series containing 120 cards (of an advertised five series totaling 300 cards(1)), America's Major Players and Pacific Trading Cards each produced one set of 110 cards, and AMA Group produced one set of 60 cards.While responding to collector's enthusiasm by producing huge quantities of Desert Storm trading cards for sale, not surprisingly perhaps, these companies, in the face of obvious economic profit, were careful to appeal to and perhaps appease consumers' patriotic values (Castaneda B1). The following are some of their printed statements in this regard:* 100% of Pro Set, Inc. profits from these cards benefits families of Desert Storm veterans. (Pro Set, Inc. 1991)* Portions of Troops trading card sales will be donated to: U.S.O. (Troops 1991)* Part of the proceeds from the sale of these cards is donated to Operation Yellow Ribbon (AMA Group 1991)As Desert Storm trading cards were produced by different companies, it is logical to expect differences along with the similarities. …

NBA (National Basketball Association) trading cards are a hot collector’s item, with sales increasing rapidly every year. However, with the popularity of online trading, some sellers have started to intentionally and unintentionally sell imitation trading cards, and even PwC (Pricewaterhouse Coopers) is not immune. However, the PSA (Professional Sports Authenticator), which is the authentication agency, is not liable for this. Faced with the above situation, we moved trading cards online and proposed a blockchain-based anti-counterfeit and traceable NBA digital trading card management system, using blockchain technology to protect digital trading cards, and special digital copyright, to move from relying on other regulators to achieve the fight against counterfeit cards and maintain the security of the digital trading card market. Finally, we analyzed the security of the system and compared it with other methods. Our system uses Hyperledger Fabric to share data while protecting corporate privacy. Proxy re-encryption enables secure and trusted access authorization for digital transaction cards. Asymmetric encryption protects the data and uses signatures to achieve traceability and non-repudiation. Overall, our system solves the problem of counterfeiting and traceability that can occur in the digital trading card process from production to purchase.

In this paper, we present a new type of trading card (called Stereo Cards) designed for a table-top Augmented Reality (AR) game environment. The main goal of Stereo Cards is to replace the current trading cards used in collectable card games such as Magic: The Gathering, YuGiOh, and Pokemon. The superior point of Stereo Cards is that they are computationally detectable and recognisable, e.g. they are numerically readable by computing devices equipped with conventional digital cameras or webcams. Therefore, Stereo Cards are not only suitable for collection purposes, but they are also ready for AR applications and games. In each card, we optically encode a unique error-correcting binary Golay code by pasting a series of stereo stripes over a portion of the original image. Even though some parts of the picture are lost, the Stereo Cards still maintain, on average, 75% of their original look. Further in this paper, we also describe a simple set-up of a table-top Stereo Cards game environment. From experiments conducted, our Stereo Cards are found to be relatively robust under various lighting conditions, and thus, could be useful in future trading card game tournaments.

Fungible

Consumer discrimination in the NBA: An examination of the effect of race on the value of basketball trading cards

Magic: The Gathering is a popular physical trading card game played by millions of people around the world. To keep track of their cards, players typically store them in some sort of physical protective case, which can become cumbersome to sort through as the number of cards can reach up to the thousands. By utilizing and improving optical character recognition software, the TCG Digitizer allows users to efficiently store their entire inventory of Magic: The Gathering trading cards in a digital database. With an emphasis on quick and accurate scanning, the final product provides an intuitive digital solution for storing Magic: The Gathering cards for both collectors and card owners who want to easily store their collection of cards on a computer.

A talking trading card playing system consists of a portable card player and a plurality of trading cards. Each card includes a card body having front and back surfaces, flexible sheets affixed to the front surface and to the back surface of the housing, and a voice chip for storing and generating sound patterns. The portable player comprises a power source located in the housing for supplying electrical power to the voice chip, and sound generation components. The subject trading card and player may be activited by inserting the card into the player, thereby establishing electrical contact between the card and the player.

The COVID-19 pandemic is a significant public health problem and the leading cause of reduction in the demand and supply of public transit in the last three years. It has caused an unprecedented reduction in the demand for public road transportation, and it has changed passengers’ perceptions from positive to negative when it comes to using public transportation amenities. There is an increasing concern that the public road transportation systems are witnessing a new horizon, especially now that developed and developing countries are trying to resume their daily activities post COVID-19 pandemic. In this research, we focused on the overview of literature reviews of research within the past three years that focused on the challenges and solutions of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on public road transportation systems, especially when it comes to the enforcement of physical distancing in public transportation, usage of face masks and government interventions. The inclusion and exclusion criteria were used in reviewing the articles used for this literature review, and an original 140 articles were reduced to 100 articles that were used in this literature review. This research aims to create an overview literature review that highlights the impact of the pandemic on public transportation and identifies strategic ways in which urban planners and public road transportation researchers can develop constructive and efficient public road transportation planning to ensure the sustainability of public transportation systems in the post-COVID-19 era. This literature review extends our knowledge of the COVID-19 pandemic in public road transportation. It also provides additional evidence concerning the effectiveness of physical distancing and the use of face masks to prevent the COVID-19 virus in public road transportation networks.

Prelims

Technological innovations in bus rail transit is worth adopting as it promotes efficiency in public utility transactions. Fare payment collection has been one of the dominating modernization that is considered an exogenous parameter in optimizing the bus services in foreign countries. In the Philippines, however, public transport in most of the urban areas do the customary fare payment collection with conductors issuing the ticket. These buses and jeepneys are utilized to account people’s everyday work and living. This study aims to explore the potential of automating the fare payment collection in public utility transport to improve the Philippine’s payment collection and the unbiased request to avail of 20% discount for students, senior citizens and Person With Disabilities (PWD) when boarding. A purposive sampling was used and 230 people participated in the study using a pre-tested questionnaire. Study in the Philippines revealed that with greater demand to use public transportation, majority of the commuters demands for higher speed on fare payment collection and convenience when riding in a public utility transport (M:4.60), surprisingly, among the situations that is alarming on the part of driver is the possibility of not paying the fare of a passenger especially when no collector is assigned and the driver is unable to monitor the paid passengers(M:4.55). With the positive adaptation putting together the concept of existing smart card fare payment frameworks, the use of smart card may result to a highly sustainable fare payment system in the Philippines that can help promote a more convenient, efficient, standardized fare payment collection, gratified and appeased passenger experience within the region and positive realization of a cost-effective way of transportation.

The article analyzes the challenges facing public transportation in the capital during the war and outlines potential development paths for the post-war period. It's crucial to note that assessing the performance of municipal transport enterprises is complex due to the threat of enemy shelling and their pre-war financial struggles. The development of an efficient urban public transportation system is a complex economic challenge that demands a rational selection of a transport market organization model. The chosen model will shape the level of competition, the attractiveness of the sector for investments, and ultimately, the quality and accessibility of transportation services, which are essential for the well- being of city dwellers. The article examines factors affecting service quality and the financial health of both municipal and private carriers, as well as approaches to interpreting economic efficiency and the passenger transportation market. It also investigates the decline in passenger traffic at Kyiv's public utilities, its underlying causes, and the war's impact on the transportation system. The "Recovery Plan of Ukraine," approved in 2022, specifically addresses the prospects for urban transport development. The text highlights that urban transportation was in a poor state even before the Russian invasion and that territorial communities now face the challenge of renewal, modernization, and overall reform. It emphasizes the need for legislative and regulatory changes at the local level to attract funding for post- war reconstruction. A multi-faceted evaluation of transportation enterprises' economic efficiency necessitates considering various financial, socio-economic, and operational factors, as well as the external factor of regional security.The analysis concludes that the unsatisfactory economic condition of municipal enterprises stems not only from wartime challenges but also from mismanagement in the pre- war period. The primary priorities for restoring the urban transportation system should be comprehensive, consider socio-economic development factors, and align with the country's overall reconstruction plan.

In this paper, we try to predict the card prices of the trading card game using their information. The trading card game market is growing by the increasing popularity of the board game or the digital card game in the e-sports in recent years. The trading card game is a kind of card game which two or more people plays a card with some text or symbols those characteristics expresses a ruling or interaction to the other card. This interaction of cards may work effectively in the game, prices of those card pairs will be increased with the popularity of its combination. We have a hypothesis that card text is useful for prediction of card prices from the importance of card combinations. Therefore, in this research, we focus on not only the basic card information but also card text. Moreover, we use several machine learning method for prediction of card prices, and we analyze which machine learning method is an effect.

Trading card games (TCG) differ from traditional card games mainly because the cards employed are not shared among players in a match. Instead, users play with the cards they own (e.g., purchased or traded with other players), which corresponds to a subset of all cards produced by the game provider. Even though most computer-based TCGs rely on a trusted third-party (TTP) for preventing cheating during trades, allowing them to securely do so without such entity remains a challenging task. Potential solutions are related to e-cash protocols, but, unlike the latter, TCGs allow users to play with the cards under their possession, not only to pass those cards over. In this work, we present the security requirements of TCGs and how they relate to e-cash. We then propose a concrete, TTP-free protocol for anonymously trading cards, using as basis a secure transferable e-cash protocol.

Trading card games (TCG) distinguish from traditional card games mainly because the cards are not shared between players in a match. Instead, users play with the cards they own (e.g., purchased or traded with other players), which corresponds to a subset of all cards produced by the game provider. Even though most computer-based TCGs rely on a trusted third-party (TTP) for preventing cheating during trades, allowing them to securely do so without such entity remains a challenging task. Actually, potential solutions are related to e-cash protocols, but, unlike the latter, TCGs require users to play with the cards under their possession, not only to be able to pass those cards over. In this work, we present the security requirements of TCGs and how they relate to e-cash. We then propose a concrete, TTP-free protocol for anonymously trading cards, using as basis a secure transferable e-cash protocol.

“They don’t get your wind…” Nearly all in tobacco control today can only imagine the early days of television, when young sports fans watching their favourite team would be exposed...