Game Card

Game Card, also called collectible card game (CCG) or a trading card game (TCG) is a kind of card game that first emerged in 1993 and consists of specially designed sets of playing cards. Terms such as "collectible" and "trading" are used interchangeably because of copyrights and marketing strategies of game companies. The rudimentary definition requires the game to resemble trading cards in shape and function, be mass-produced for trading or collectibility, and it must have rules for strategic game play. The definition of CCGs is further refined as being a card game in which the player uses his own deck with cards primarily sold in random assortments. Acquiring these cards may be done by trading with other players or buying card packs. If every card in the game can be obtained by making a small number of purchases, or if the manufacturer does not market it as a CCG, then it is not a CCG. Successful CCGs typically have upwards of thousands of unique cards, with the most successful CCG having over 13,000 and growing.

Typically, a CCG is initially played using a starter deck, or intro deck, which has a basic complement of cards that can be used to play the game. This deck may be expanded or modified with cards from booster packs, which contain a random selection of cards of varying rarities, usually between 8 and 15 cards. One of these cards is a rare or unique card that is much harder to obtain than the remaining cards and often has a higher value than the rest. These values can change over time as distribution changes, cards become banned in playing formats, or the metagame is altered by interactions with new cards. Eventually, with enough cards, players may create new decks from scratch.

There are many trading card games available today, most popular ones being Magic: The Gathering and Pokemon.

Browsing the Catalog

The Colnect Trading Card Games Catalog can be filtered from the Catalog drop-down menu by these properties:

• Games: The game to which the trading card belongs.
• Languages: The language of the trading card game.
• Artists: The artist who created the game card.
• Years: The first year of issue, if known.
• Recently Updated: Game cards where at least one piece of information was changed in the last 30 calendar days. The last change applied is used to determine the change age of the game card. This can be further filtered by the last 1, 3, 7, 14 and 30 calendar days.
• Newly Added: Game cards added to the Colnect Trading Card Games Catalog within the last 30 calendar days. This can be further filtered by the last 1, 3, 7, 14, and 30 calendar days.
• Import Log: A list of all New Item Forms (NIFs) that have been imported since 2013. It shows date, the person who created the NIF, the coordinator who imported it, the number of game cards imported, the game to which the game cards belong and the country of the game cards. Please note that it is not possible to find the game cards that were in the NIF, this information is not stored in the database.

The catalog also contains other properties to further describe the trading card games:

• Name (60 characters): The name of the game card.
• Set: The set, the game card belongs to.
• Catalog Name: The name of the catalog used for the catalog code. Currently only Colnect Codes (Colnect's own numbering system) is used.
• Catalog Code: The Colnect catalog code consists of the trading card game abbreviation, set abbreviation, hyphens and the ordinal number of the card.

Example: WoW-TCG-TOT-001/263 (WoW-TCG: an abbreviation for World of Warcraft TCG -: Hyphen TOT: a set abbreviation for Throne of the Tides 001/263: the ordinal number of the card).

• Variant: If a game card is marked as a variant, you can get a list of all variants of this game card by clicking on Click to see variants.
• Number: The ordinal number of the game card in a set.
• Rarity: The property that shows how common the game card is.
• Type: The type of the game card.
• Subtype
• Print run: The number of game cards printed.
• Description: A detailed description of the game card. This may include information on how to distinguish variants.
• Front Picture and Back Picture: Both front and back of the game card should be pictured, as the back often contains important information about the game, artist, motif, number and hints to determine the age. Please follow the Picture Guidelines.

See Also

• Game Card collecting