[HanClinto]

I resonate with this blog post a lot.

I think there is something to be said for monetizing ones' hobbies, but I've recently been taking some forays into this world of "build something amazing and give it away for free" as well. I recently took a very big experimental plunge in this path, and I'm curious how well it will work out for me.

Open-source state-of-the-art Magic: The Gathering card identification pipeline:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MHieOcmC7Dw

I used to do this kind of image recognition for a living, but I've been out of the business for a little while now. I had some ideas for a different approach from what I've done in the past and decided to code it up. This version is far better than anything else I've ever done -- especially for scanning against busy backgrounds or with occlusions, and also for noticing fine differences between otherwise difficult-to-distinguish printings.

I didn't have any interested customers waiting for this, so -- much like the OP -- decided to create an experiment and release it open source. I'm not opposed to having paths to monetize it (for people who want to license it for closed-source commercial projects), but I'm not trying to commercialize it so much as I would love to see how far we can take it with open-source.

I don't know which path I should take with this.

The biggest downside is that I feel like I've had a hard time getting people to be as interested in this project as I would have expected -- I believe this truly is the best identification software available (I've built some benchmarks to test it [0]), and maybe the market is just a bit flooded for such things (?), but I suspect that one very strong problem is that if you don't charge for something, then there is a perceived lack of value.

Sometimes I wonder if I would have more interest in this project if I _weren't_ trying to give it away.

For me, that's been the most negative aspect about releasing this for free so far.

[0] - https://blog.hanclin.to/posts/gh-26/

[claytonjy]

I don’t know how big the market is, but seems pretty commercial-friendly to this old magic player. I have a big box of cards from a few decades ago I’ve held onto. I’ve thought about selling them, but it seems i either take them to a shop and get lowballed, or spend hours meticulously researching each card and then figuring out how to sell it for what it’s worth. taking a pile of photos and having the ID and valuation automated could go a long way! Hard to sell to individuals like me, but i would think a card marketplace would find it invaluable?

[HanClinto]

> it seems i either take them to a shop and get lowballed, or spend hours meticulously researching each card and then figuring out how to sell it for what it’s worth.

Well if you want to use the scanner for something useful, you can run the web version here: https://hanclinto.github.io/CollectorVision/

No install -- scan your cards with your phone or desktop (downloads the weights in WASM -- runs 100% local -- the only web request it makes is to look up card names and prices online -- no image data ever leaves your machine), export the list as CSV, take your cards to your friendly local game store, and expect to receive 50-75% of TCG-low for your cards. This app currently only displays TCG Market, so probably about 50% of this price is what you could realistically expect.

> Hard to sell to individuals like me, but i would think a card marketplace would find it invaluable?

Yes -- and part of this might be that this would have been much more amazing several years ago, but by now -- most marketplaces (I used to do work for some of the big ones) have their own recognition tools. If they aren't actively looking to replace their current software, many companies would rather stick with what's currently working "good enough" than expend effort to migrate to something with only incremental benefit that is difficult to quantify. It's possible that would happen, but it's a tricky sales call to make.

I might just be imagining things, but I'm also picturing what one of those sales calls might look like, and it feels like I've opened the kimono a bit. The cat's out of the bag. There's no mystery or allure behind it anymore, and I feel like that puts me on the back foot somehow -- almost like I've played my strongest cards (hah!) first and have nothing left. By being open-source from the beginning (and talking freely about my architecture and what makes my solution different), there's very little sales-pitch build-up. Maybe it's just a part of the problem of how I'm presenting it, but I think people (especially the big houses) are probably just-as (or more) inclined to silently learn from me and improve their own scanners than try to use / build-upon what I've provided.

It's funny -- that angle is almost more about raising expectations and forcing the big houses to improve their own tech and catch up to open-source, more than getting anyone to adopt my solution in particular.

Am I okay with that? Absolutely -- I made that decision when I open-sourced it. I feel like the tech has been stagnating for several years, and I want to increase the quality of scanners across the board. I want to be the rising tide that lifts all boats.

That's one of the strongest arguments in favor of open-sourcing it (it would be very difficult for a closed-source product to have that same effect), and I remain hopeful for that long-term.

[towers]

As a mtg player with an absurd amount of bulk, this is awesome! I think there is something to be said about the perceived lack of value, I appreciate greatly open source and even hold it to a higher value all things considered. Keep up the good fight :)

[HanClinto]

Thank you -- I appreciate that. :)

[financetechbro]

This is awesome. I’ve been interested in something like this for some time as I’ve been working on slowly indexing my mtg collection and selling cards I don’t want/need. Will be checking it out this weekend!

[HanClinto]

Thank you! If you want to test out my tool, here's a link to the web version that is built for scanning in lists of cards:

https://hanclinto.github.io/CollectorVision/

It's still super rough (doesn't support foil-toggling yet, still some issues with double-sided cards, crashing on some iPhones), but overall the rough structure is there -- it can create lists and export as CSV.

If you have feedback or feature requests for your needs, please leave them on Github and I'll get to them as soon as I can. I'd love to hear more user feedback!