Product Review: Rookies

If you were on Twitter or other social media this weekend, you saw a lot of familiar images.  If you are my age or a little older/younger, they were images of your childhood, familiar frames of pictures that were stacked in boxes and put into binders.  However, while the look and feel of these images were familiar, they weren’t just quite right.

That’s the familiar design of the 1988 Score (one of my favorites–I believe I still have the factory set) but I’m pretty sure nobody would ever have put my ugly mug on an actual baseball card.

That’s where our friend Matt Sebek comes in.  Matt has created an app, called Rookies, that lets you easily place your pictures inside those well-remembered borders.  You can select from a number of famous designs to put your picture in.  Or expand your horizons–use it for group shots, announcements, something more unique than just you pretending to recapture your youth.

Half the fun of baseball cards, though, is turning them over to see what’s on the back.  Sebek has covered this angle as well.  While there are two variations of basic backs that don’t allow for editing, there are a few more that let you add in some more information, using this to remember details or just have a lot of fun with what you think should be on a baseball card.

That’s all well and good, and even if the app stopped at just the creation of the cards, it’d still be well worth your time to download.  I know I made around a dozen on Friday afternoon and my son made up a few on the old iPhone as well.  The creative options you have on this, from styles to color, can keep you entertained for a long time and have you planning out what kind of pictures you want to take to get new cards made up.

The genius in this whole thing, though, is that Matt didn’t stop at just the digital creation of cards.  No, he’s got it set up so that you can actually print a set of cards and have them sent to you wrapped in wax paper, just like the baseball cards of our youth did.  Twenty cards come in a pack that runs you about $13, which given the price of cards today, puts it well in line with what you’d pay for real cards at the store.  The value of these, though, will never show up in a Beckett magazine, but most likely will be priceless to you and those that you give them too.

I hope that Matt will continue to update the app going forward.  I’d love to see the ’89 Upper Deck or the ’87 Fleer, a couple of fairly memorable sets from the time period when I was collecting cards.  (Maybe not the 1991 Fleer, though–I liked those at the time but I’m not sure they’ve aged well.)  These would be great items to stuff in Christmas cards or announce an arrival, a party, or even a promotion.  Kudos to Matt for an outstanding idea and best wishes for its success.  Rookies is currently available only on the iPhone, but the Android version is coming soon.