Topps/tech109/Flickr (CC) I first realised that I had a problem with digital trading cards at 2am in the morning. I was in bed, squinting at my phone, spending my hard-earned money on virtual coins to buy Star Wars trading cards that don't actually exist.

Trading cards aren't just pieces of card with images printed on them anymore. They're being reinvented as digital goods to be bought and traded in smartphone apps. You never actually own anything with digital trading cards, they're just images in an app. Tech blog io9 summed up just how surreal digital trading cards are in a 2015 post titled "How the Hell Is This JPG of Han Solo Worth $225?"

I've certainly been sucked into the world of virtual trading cards, and I've probably spent around £100 on virtual packs and coins to buy rare cards with. It's not easy to explain why I've done this, but there's a weird thrill I get when unwrapping a virtual packet of cards and flipping over a rare one. It's probably a similar rush to the one gamblers get when they see the lights of a slot machine.

It may seem like a strange concept, but digital trading cards are big business. Research published in 2015 estimated that revenue from digital trading cards in North America alone reached $329 million (£248 million) in 2015, compared to $1.4 billion (£1.05 billion) for physical cards.

Superdata

One of the companies that's convincing people to buy digital trading cards is Topps, the New York-based business that has been known for making physical trading cards since the 1950s. It still makes those cards, but it has launched a digital division that runs apps that let customers purchase and trade Star Wars, baseball, wrestling, and soccer cards, amongst other themes.

"If you’re not familiar with digital cards, you probably will be in the next year or two," says Jeremy Strauser, the vice president and general manager of Topps Digital. He oversees the company's expansion to the digital world, and talked over the phone about Topps' expansion to digital and its Star Wars Card Trader app.

"For many people, the younger generation, obviously, it’s really the only way they’ve experienced trading cards. It’s one of those things that as the transformation from physical media to digital media is going on, trading cards is one of those things."

Strauser says Topps has sold over 300 million packs of virtual cards since expanding into digital trading cards. That was helped along by the release of its Star Wars app, which Strauser says was more popular than the company predicted.

Topps released the first Star Wars trading cards in 1977. YouTube/THE BLACKED OUT EWOKS

"We were pleasantly surprised by the reception for Star Wars Card Trader," he says. "Star Wars helped take our entire business to another level."

Topps has worked with Star Wars since the release of the first movie back in 1977. Lucasfilm is still involved, Strauser says, and signs off on every single digital trading card. "Sometimes they approve things very quickly, sometimes it takes a couple of weeks of back and forth to get things right."

Right now several Topps employees are working on content that's being released to coincide with the Star Wars spinoff movie "Rogue One". "Some of our guys who have been sworn to secrecy have seen quite a few materials from it," says Strauser. "Lucasfilm has a date that we can start to release things and on that date we’re going to celebrate Rogue One and make a very big deal out of it."

It won't be the first time that Lucasfilm decided to use Topps to promote an upcoming movie. It also chose to release information about the main characters in "Star Wars: The Force Awakens" through a series of virtual trading cards in 2015. Strauser says over 200,000 customers completed the full set of cards in the app. Topps won't say exactly how many users it has beyond "hundreds of thousands."

There's also a thriving aftermarket for virtual trading cards. If you weren't able to spend in-app currency or real money to buy a card in the app, chances are you can probably buy it on eBay. A full set of "Reflections" cards is on sale for £100, while a single rare Admiral Ackbar card is yours for £40.

eBay

What does Strauser make of this bizarre aftermarket in virtual trading cards? He says it was "unexpected" and confessed to struggling to understand how a secondary market in digital cards came to be. But, Strauser says, "to me that shows that what we’re building has demand and people love what we’re building. They’re willing to pay for it even after it’s sold out."

Topps is continuing to launch new digital card trading apps — it recently brought out a UFC version, for example. But Strauser hints that the future of digital trading cards is actually rather ... physical. "We want these things to have a tactile thing and we’ve still got room to go there," he said. "I think we will be doing more in that area in the months to come ... we’re going to introduce some new things and some new experiences in the coming months that give you different ways to interact with your cards."