API infrastructure, developer tools, and data solutions for trading cards
Sprint 129 focused on the invisible foundation that makes everything else scale. 35 issues completed across automation, stability, and infrastructure improvements. The unglamorous but critical work that enables professional-grade developer experience.
Announcing CardTechie v0.2.0 with comprehensive blog taxonomy system, performance optimizations, and technical improvements that showcase modern Laravel development practices and thought leadership in content management.
Sprint 128 marked a major milestone - publishing our PHP SDK to Packagist and opening CardTechie to developers worldwide. From internal tools to public platform in one sprint. A retrospective on 29 completed items and the strategic shift to enable a new generation of trading card applications.
When Uber launched, they didn't build their own mapping system. When Stripe started, they didn't create their own banking infrastructure. When Instagram began, they didn't develop their own photo storage solution. But every trading card app still starts by rebuilding the same databases from scratch. This isn't just inefficient—it's actively preventing entire categories of innovation that could transform how we collect, trade, and think about cards.
Sprint 127 was a milestone sprint for CardTechie - we officially shipped Trading Card API v0.4.0, marking a major step toward making comprehensive trading card data accessible to developers everywhere.
Every month, trading card developers collectively waste thousands of hours rebuilding the same basic infrastructure that already exists behind proprietary walls. But the real cost isn't just measured in developer time—it's in the innovation that never happens. When building basic functionality requires recreating an entire card database from scratch, revolutionary ideas die in the planning phase.
Announcing the launch of tradingcardapi.com as the official home for the Trading Card API beta, featuring comprehensive developer documentation and use case guides for building trading card applications.
Another sprint in the books! Sprint 126 was a productive one with 27 completed items across both the Trading Card API ecosystem and CardTechie brand building. Here's what got done and what it means for the bigger picture.
Building a weather app in 2025? You don't create your own meteorology department. Building a maps app? You don't launch satellites. But building a trading card app? You better prepare to manually enter data for thousands of cards and hundreds of sets. The absurdity isn't that this data doesn't exist - it's been collected, verified, and refined across countless platforms. The problem is that despite living in the API economy, trading card data remains trapped in isolated silos.
A response to Ryan Alford's insights on Sports Cards Nonsense about the lack of technological sophistication in the trading card hobby. Explores the $12.6 billion industry's reliance on outdated tools, the infrastructure problems developers face, and how the Trading Card API and Open Checklist Project are building the foundation for the modern solutions collectors deserve. From Excel spreadsheets to API-powered trade matching systems - discover why now is the time for trading card technology to catch up with the digital age.
A comprehensive sprint recap covering the August 17-23, 2025 development period for the CardTechie ecosystem. Explore the strategic pivot from 'production-ready' to 'beta program' messaging, major technical upgrades including Laravel 12 and PHP 8.4, implementation of Google Analytics GA4, and a heavy focus on community building through transparent development practices. Includes detailed breakdowns of 31 completed items across multiple repositories, insights into building in public methodology, and the roadmap for launching an early access beta program for trading card API developers.
Every trading card app developer faces the same soul-crushing problem: there's no reliable API for card data. You either build a database from scratch, scrape websites, or give up on your idea entirely. As a software engineer and lifelong collector, I got tired of this barrier killing great apps before they could start. Here's why I'm building the infrastructure our community deserves.