Collect and Trade Star Wars Cards Digitally with a New App from Topps

Raise your hand if you had a binder full of collectible cards as a kid. You can't see it, but my hand is raised. I grew up in a family of sports fans so I collected baseball and football cards for no real reason except that it was fun to buy them and satisfying to insert the cards into my meticulously organized binder. I sadly missed the days when cards were sold with a stick of gum, which if we're being honest, was probably for the best. I didn't learn about the existence of non-sports trading cards until much much later in life, and now I can experience them in a whole new way: digitally! Topps has launched the Star Wars: Card Trader App for iOS devices.

The basics are straightforward. The app is free to download. You register and automatically get 25,000 credits in your account. You use those credits to buy packs of cards and start building your digital card collection.

You can purchase credits with real money or just use bonuses that you receive through the app. The cards have borders with different colors representing their rarity. I've spotted gold, yellow, red, blue, and white cards so far. The white ones are the most common. The cards include characters from all six films, the television series, and The Force Awakens cards that revealed the names of the characters in the teaser. Each card has a front and back so you can flip them over to get character information.And the app includes tons of vintage cards in beautiful digital quality! As someone who didn't experience collecting real vintage cards, I love opening a pack and coming across them.

When you "open" each pack, a wrapper unfolds. The cards in the pack are added to your collection as you swipe through and unveiling certain cards will trigger a spray of virtual confetti.

And you can trade cards with others! It's like enjoying the good parts of recess again (right up there with climbing on the jungle gym and making friendship bracelets). I'm still learning how to trade, but you can make offers to people on your contact list or post what you're looking for/have available on the news feed. As you complete collections, you earn rewards. I'm digging it so far because you can approach the app casually and still have fun. I'm happy to just flip through my cards and read them without obsessing over complete sets... yet. That said, I'm all about trying to nab the limited packs.

Like I said, I'm still figuring out the ins and outs of trading, but if you'd like to add me on the app, my user name is amy_geek.