MOVING FROM SPREADSHEETS TO SHOWCASE ON NEXTGEM
By day Ryan is a successful entrepreneur, but by night he’s an ambitious collector with an extensive collection of rare sports cards.
As kids in the 1990’s Ryan and his twin brother were avid sports card enthusiasts, even starting one of the first sports card websites. Like many he drifted away from the hobby after high school but rediscovered his passion for cards in 2016. It was a great way to bond with his brother over their shared nostalgia as they set about acquiring all of the cards that were beyond their reach as teenagers.
Now with his limited free time in the evenings Ryan aggressively hunts for cards, whether it’s for his Randy Moss and Stephon Marbury personal collections or investment opportunities.
Until recently Ryan managed his collection the same way others have for decades, with cards hidden away in a safe and tracked with a basic spreadsheet. It was inefficient and just not a great experience for many reasons, not the least of which being it made it difficult for Ryan to enjoy the cards himself.
When Ryan needed a photo of a card for a deal or just to show off he would need to either endlessly scroll through his phones camera roll or go pull it out of the safe and take a pic.
When others wanted to know what cards Ryan had he would either have to exchange countless back and forth messages or screenshot / export portions of his spreadsheet.
“I used to be so disconnected from my collection because most of the time I was viewing it in the form of an inventory document. I would only actually look at the cards on the weekends, if I felt like taking the trouble to dig them out of the safe.”
As an app built to give collectors tools for the modern trading card world, NextGem was exactly the solution Ryan was looking for - to those problems as well as many more.
The NextGem app made is easy for Ryan to digitize his cards with just his mobile phone. No expensive scanners or special equipment required!
The intelligent scanning system captured high-definition images and automatically cropped out all of the background while providing a ten photo output that included quadrant views of both sides.
NextGem also helped with cataloguing (because nobody likes data entry) by automatically extracting and inputting key information from both graded and ungraded cards. This includes the year, player, set, variation and card number.
For graded cards it also pulls the grader, grade, certification number as well as some information specific to certain companies. For example, sub-grades on BGS slabs or a link with population details from new PSA slabs.
Now with his cards scanned into NextGem his entire collection essentially lives in his pocket.
They are all fully searchable, sortable and filterable, which makes finding cards an absolute breeze. Each card page also has private fields where he can make other notes such as how he acquired the card including where, when and price paid, specifics on condition, etc.
There is also now one home where Ryan’s collection lives. When he wants to show somebody his collection all he has to do is share a single link for either the app or web.
“Now with NextGem my entire collection is digitized with amazing images and available at all times on my phone. Finding any specific card is a simple search away and I can share with a few taps.”
“There is now one place where I can send people to see all of my cards, which makes it easy to show off my collection and really helps in deal negotiations. It’s not an exaggeration to say NextGem saves me many valuable hours every week.”
