When prepaid phone cards first appeared in early 1990's in the U.S. market, printers greeted the lucrative new trend with offers to laminate cards with four layers of baked plastic. The result was a high-quality look with credit card-like rigidity. While this method was tailored perfectly to the booming collectible market of that time, today a more mature, less novelty-oriented industry has seen the emergence of two distinct markets that demanded changes in the printing processes. The mass-produced, less expensive cards are targeted towards retail applications. Their primary purpose is to package minutes. They are the result of the competition for long-distance rates, which forced card makers to bring their costs down. New limited-run applications, however, still demand a high-quality card and offer refuge for the smaller and specialty printers. In some cases the pins are packaged on cash register receipt style cards. The prize become the product

From the onset of the design process of our Patented U.S. 6,213,874 and other delivery system the focus has been on the collectible cards no matter the genre and how as a designer one could develop a delivery system with its own promotional incentive attractive enough to give our distributors the edge over what had traditionally been used to package, promote, sell and deliver to the consuming public. Thus, by developing, designing and patenting such a method and delivery system I could intercede the Billion Dollar a year industry in a manner that would come from out of left field and catch not only the card industry but the promotional advertising market asleep.

What seems to have been taken for granted is the myth that collector's cards are somehow limited to a sports card or "ball cards". When the fact is, it is, just one of the many genera of a collectible card. This confusion is more likely than not because for generations before the 1990's introduction of "phone cards" the majority of the world associated a collector's card with sports, post, animal or other imagery. In the later offerings the picture cards were packaged with phone time or other pre paid services. Leading experts in the marketing industry long have recognized that phone cards are a collectors cards. Since the 1990's the pre-loaded or paid card has become the bedrock of packaging service related products as a delivery medium to the consuming public.

In fact the early use of a sports card was, the card being the promotional incentive place in the tobacco packaging to get an adult to purchase one brand of tobacco over another, However as time and the consuming publics perceptions of value changed the sports card became the item purchased. The sale of such of sports cards became so competitive that the cards would have a free stick of gum enclosed in each pack of cards as an incentive to promote one brand of card over the other. This reward to the consumer has become the rule of product promotion rather than the exception. This is easily seen by looking at various in package promotions which range from instant cash to super bowl trips being offered as a prize associated with the advertising promotion.

This offering of a promotional contest to encourage the purchase of a collectable card has extended to all aspects of the card industry. A prime example of this how a Collectors Card of the Phone Card genre is being promoted by offering a lottery styled scratch off contest or free interactive video games. These free offerings known as a premium, promotional advertisement or sweepstakes are used by the sports card industry to be a promotional incentive to a consumer of cards to buy brand (a) over brand (x).

While Collector's Card in the form of a pre paid or loaded card offer a service of phone, internet, or other related service the history of the two genera of cards is very akin. Such a paralleled is easily seen in cases where the Florida State Lottery has offered the phone card as an incentive to boost lottery sales of a given lottery ticket. Just as the Sports cards was first used as the incentive as time moved forward the demand for Phone style cards drove the phone time producers to print small quantity and as a collectable.

The same is true from the view of Russ Herman manager for Allegany Printed Plastics and reported in a magazine article from 2000 where he is quoted "The phone cards went from being a collectible curiosity to being a retail item," he continued with the following example, "you'd get an order for 5,000 [cards] that had to be very high quality because they were being collected. Now you're more likely to get an order for half a million cards that are going to be retailed at a convenience store. So the various emphasis on quality, price and delivery all changes a little."

This same article emphasized the need for such a delivery system and method, as offered through the various versions and application of the 874' patent, that would afford the card industry more affordable, secure packaging and advertising method to a retail market. It was due to a growing retail market and falling long-distance costs per minute, that card manufacturers were looking for ways to avoid putting money into the card, packaging and deliver.

This was reported as well by Standard Register's (www.standardregister.com) Susan Krause, manager of the print on demand division. In the article she explains, "If your sole intent is just to sell the minutes, and you're in an area where that's a highly sought-after item, you're probably not going to put a lot of money into the card," she explains. "In ethnic neighborhoods where the cards are specifically designed to sell to a specific country at a low cost, you'll even see perforated tear-off cards." This has become evident in today's market where in the card is offered in a thin paper on site printed card. These cards are offer referred to as receipt or ticket style cards.

Advances in presses and other machines allow card manufacturers to combat downward pressure. Implementation of new printing processes has resulted in more cards in less time. "The continuing benefit of a lower cost per piece far outweighs the expensive equipment investment", Krause says. One of the cutting-edge technologies within the industry is a six-color UV printing press. This allows a print run on thinner kinds of plastic.

Also, large ink-jet machines that imprint the personal identification number (PIN) or other information can handle 20,000 to 30,000 cards per hour. Hot stamping and foil machines that apply scratch-off panels over the PINs are capable of printing on thinner plastic without causing warping.

Following this logic we felt the on site and pre-printed cards were just two mediums of pre-paid or pre loaded cards we would utilize to move from the sports style collectors cards to the pre loaded or paid collectors cards. Thru the application of the Collectors Cards/Phone Cards Dispensing systems with promotional play features met the log felt need of the industry to further reduce cost insure product security and offer affordable stand alone promotional incentives. This need is evident from the following excerpt.

Phone Card Printers Pentagon Graphic's Caron says, "The hanging card right now is the most popular card on the market for two major reasons: One, it gives the owner of the card a lot of space to do promotion; and two, it is the least expensive card to produce and ship." While that is a true statement what was needed was a platform that would allow maximum exposure to the consumer with minimal loss of floor space the application of just one version of the 874 patent has met this need.

Premium Promos

The retail market is an opportunity for card manufacturers, and promotional cards are becoming a popular application. Rather than being a vehicle for selling minutes, this concept focuses on printing quality and customization. They also often carry shorter runs, all of which offer a source of additional revenue for card manufacturers. Those who issue the customized cards are willing to pay more per card because of its perceived value.

Allegheny's Herman explains, "One thing that's given the phone card some renewed life for us is that they end up being premium giveaways with other products--phone cards that are packaged with candy bars, boxes of cereal, and we're working on a project now where there's a phone card that's going to hang around the neck of a juice bottle. So they're giving phone cards away as promotional items, and that's a new angle that's been pretty good for us over the past year." The niche also attracts smaller printers, whose ability to customize and quickly match fluctuations in the market can be an asset.

"We give them a personal thing that they're not going to get anywhere else, at a reasonable figure," says Don White, president of P.P.P. Communications (www.prepaidphonecardusa.com). Focusing on fund-raisers, personalized Christmas cards, wedding and birth announcements, sporting events, regional ethnic populations and other focused applications for which they can charge a premium, small printers can tailor each run for their customers while keeping the cost structure in line. Larger printers can't compete if a customer is looking for a small run because of the processes involved in setting up plates and die cuts on large machines.

Jim Saffron, president of NovaCard (www.novacard.com), says, "Our philosophy, not just with this product but with all products that we produce, is we specialize in small quantity, personalized custom products. Things change so quickly. I'm not interested in doing a half a million cards. I don't even really compete for 50,000 cards. I will do 50 cards up to maybe 10,000."

The small market heralds a new process: Digital printing. Card characteristics are imaged digitally onto the card, direct from a desktop. The economies of scale are such that in larger runs the time it takes to imprint the card makes the cost prohibitive. However, for runs under 50,000, the process gives good quality and quick turnaround with no expensive prints, plates or films.

"Part of making a phone card is the personalization," says Gordon Kramer, president of Continental Plastic Card Co. (www.continentalplasticcard.com). "The plateless part of the personalization in digital printing means you can do the personalization at the same time that you're making the card. So there's some theoretic savings."

Elastic Plastic

Printers must remain flexible to change with the market oscillations. For many that means branching into other areas. A heightened awareness of phone cards as an accepted vehicle for service has aided that transition.

"The fact that phone cards are so widely accepted now has opened the way for gift cards," says Paul Blanchard, marketing manager for Arthur Blank. "Phone cards are still lucrative, but we have a very diverse group of markets that we service beyond that. We're very involved in a lot of other prepaid card products." In the high-demand, low-margin retail arena, PoSA has opened the way for lower cost processes, and new innovations in equipment have aided competition in the intensely fierce marketplace. The promotional arena offers higher margins and opportunities for customization and niche marketing. New plastic card applications made mainstream by the acceptance of phone cards offer even more advantages. The future of phone card printing is in diverse realms and will remain a lucrative industry, according to Krause.

"I definitely think we'll see some increases in the whole prepaid card industry," she says. "Phone cards have been around for almost a decade in the U.S., and I don't think we see any sign that it has peaked or [is] declining."

Given that these views are from the late 90's and early 2000 is is clear that the collector card is far more than just a picture card on paper but include virtually every printed medium of card that may offer a service related function be it on four layer plastic or tissue paper thin stock. While this information is given as a educational guide. Nothing in this article is limiting on the scope or design or claims that may be taken by Worlds of Games LLC.
Tara Seals is agent channel editor for PHONE+ magazine.