Video trading cards prove that the geeks have finally beaten the jocks.

Panini, the venerable card and sticker company, is going high-tech with its trading cards. The future isn’t boring old cardboard cards with old-school photos. Nope. Panini will now sell you video trading cards.

Panini HRX (Highlight Reel Xperience) cards were developed with Recom, a company that makes video name badges and other screen-based promo gear. The cards will actually still be made from card, although they’ll be thicker than regular trading cards and will have an “HD quality” a screen covering part of the front. The 2GB cards will come pre-loaded with a highlight reel showing footage of the sportsman in question — Kobe Bryant, Blake Griffin, Kevin Durant and John Wall — and these people will also autograph some cards.

The video cards will not be for sale directly. You will buy a pack of five regular cards for $20 and some of these packs will have a voucher redeemable for a video card inside. Think of Charlie Bucket and his golden Wonka ticket and you’ll get the idea. Only there’s no chocolate.

I expect that this will be completely awesome for kids. I used to collect Panini’s UK football stickers (that’s football with the feet, not “foot” ball with the hands like in the U.S) when I was a kid, and when anyone got a gold or silver foil sticker, the news swept the playground like bullets strafe a modern-day school canteen. I can’t even begin to imagine how cool video cards would have been to us in the 1970s and 1980s.

These days, though, when kids all carry at least one gadget with a screen, will they care about these novelty cards? Especially when they contain infinitely copyable digital data.

At least they have one saving feature: they’re rewrite-able. The press release says that you can also use the rechargeable cards to carry documents and other data. It can’t be long before one of the nerds gets ahold of a jock’s cards and reprograms his dumb basketball player video to show sweet, sweet footage of Stephen Hawking, or even Sheldon Cooper. Those are some real heroes.

Panini’s HRX cards launch in June.

Panini Introduces HRX, the Industry’s First Video Trading Card [Panini press release]

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