Collector Club
Imagine trading cards designed for life’s challengers, those who ultimately favour transparency over all else, well that’s exactly what we’re excited to showcase here. We recently sat down for an unfiltered hour with the founder of Based Trading Cards, Alladan Flinn.
Alladan shared his vision for the future of trading cards with Collector Club, and explained how his brand has quickly risen to become one of the most unique and sought after independent trading cards products on the market today.
For the uninitiated, Based Trading Cards produces premium, story-led trading cards that look and feel like art prints, with multiple artists contributing distinct styles across each release. Most importantly, these cards were designed to teach. Each and every card carries clear educational cues drawn from money history and Bitcoin culture, echoing the project’s ethos of art first, transparency always, and giving collectors something to learn as well as display.
Alladan has spent years trying to fix the part most card collectors never see. He has built a brand on finite supply and transparency. The aim is not to sell cards based on hype alone, but to teach value beyond cardboard. If you have ever wondered why pack odds change or why reprints erode scarcity, Flinn wants his cards to be the lesson.
This interview explores Flinn’s path from artist-entrepreneur to founder, why he built a brand rooted in the history of bitcoin, and how that ethos shapes design and distribution. Above all, it’s about a novel approach to collecting that puts education first, keeping everything in the open and proudly heralding pioneers of economics.
Formative years, the birth of an ethos, and the case for transparency within trading cards
Alladan grew up on a small cannabis farm in California in the 1990s, where his father, and later he, ran the business and campaigned for the use of compassionate medical cannabis before it was eventually legalised. He says he saw first hand how a plant that could help people was kept out of reach.
The experience left a question in his mind that never quite went away: if something can do good, why is it illegal? That early exposure to awkward truths shaped his view that some systems do not work as they should, which takes us onto his journey into trading cards.
“From a young age I understood that some systems are broken,” he says. After a string of entrepreneurial journeys, the last of which ended in 2016, he encountered Bitcoin for the first time and everything changed. “It opened my mind, not because of the digital currency itself, but because I learned economics, how money works and how it is created.” That learning, he adds, “was the real rabbit hole, a way to grasp a subject that affects everyone, regardless of whether you make £10,000 or £400,000 a year. It ultimately helped me understand that understanding money itself is a catalyst to success.”
The challenge Alladan wanted to overcome was how to share that understanding of bitcoin and finance with other people in a manner that resonated well and didn’t cause friction.
“I wanted to share everything I’d learned about money and the topics around it, but without starting arguments at the dinner table,” Flinn says. “It’s important to make education fun. That is where the idea for trading cards came in.
“Cards were my first playground transaction, my first real exchanges of value. There’s no better way to teach than through something that’s visual, engaging and for some, nostalgic.” As he dug further into the hobby, he felt as if he was watching history repeat itself. Alladan firmly believes we’re entering another junk wax era with the amount of cards out there right now, pointing the finger firmly at overproduction from the big hitters in the industry.
“I am lucky enough to have an advisor who ran the global production line for Pokémon for several years, they have helped sharpen my view of supply and demand. During this same time I realised that a lot of collectors are not playing the games associated with most TCGs, instead they are treating cards as investments. From my perspective you cannot call something an investment if you do not know and understand total supply.”
“With our cards there are no parallels that multiply the same artwork into many slightly different versions.” Alladan is openly critical of on-demand production from uncut sheets. “With other trading card companies, if demand spikes, they cut more sheets and collate more packs for retail. But you cannot give honest pack odds if you are printing on demand. Those odds become unreliable.” The aim, he says, is to spark better questions. “It is economics, supply and demand, monetary theory, complicated topics simplified through cards. We just present facts and let you decide.”
Transparency is King when it comes to Based’s cards, with all cards in a set being truly finite.
Understanding the hobby, shaping the Based Trading Card brand
Before a single pack ever existed, Alladan put in the hard miles to understand both the culture of economics, bitcoin and trading cards. “I spent four years doing intense research before launching our first trading card set. You cannot enter a culture from the outside without truly understanding it, otherwise you’re going to be found out very quickly.”
After meeting hundreds of dedicated collectors he was able to gain a deep understanding of what would and wouldn’t work, whilst simultaneously earning the community’s trust, so he could get to work on building a product that reflected everything he had learned. The early years of the company saw them operate as Bitcoin Trading Cards, but feedback changed that over time.
“Having ‘Bitcoin’ in the name was a net negative and confused people,” Flinn says. “People asked if we were selling Bitcoin or NFTs. That is ultimately why I changed the name from Bitcoin Trading Cards to Based Trading Cards, so people could approach the cards without that fear.” The rebrand kept the pillars intact. “We still bake in the ethos. Finite supply, full transparency, a verify not trust mindset.”
“Our cards are 100% transparent about everything we have ever printed, down to the most common base cards. Every chase card is numbered. You know how many exist. Finite supply, just like Bitcoin.”
Alladan always had confidence in the project, but it would be fair to suggest that the success of the first major set release surprised everyone. “We launched at a conference. I’d say it went decently, but nothing major. When we got back home, the packs and boxes sold almost immediately.
To slow things down and plan accordingly, he increased the price of a box. “I raised the price, thinking it would bring sales to a manageable level. I was wrong. Within two weeks those sold too. My jaw hit the floor.” A community dedicated to the cards quickly formed on Telegram and a secondary market grew quickly. “Some of our rarer cards have sold for thousands of dollars, what’s more, people were paying in Bitcoin, which as you can imagine was extremely satisfying to see.”
A number of rarer Based Trading Cards have been graded by the likes of PSA and TAG.
Satoshi’s Heroes and the expansion of the Based universe
In terms of what’s coming next, the Based Trading Cards roadmap moves beyond single standalone sets into a much larger universe. “Our new set we have been working on for some time is called Satoshi’s Heroes, it’s essentially Marvel Comics meets money, finance and Bitcoin,” Flinn explained. If you hadn’t already worked it out, the set is named after Satoshi Nakamoto, the legendary person (or persons) who is famed for developing bitcoin.
The team has built locations and characters in 3D via Blender so individual cards can be true one-of-ones with cinematic detail. Chases are tiered. “There are multiple chases, a mega chase and a mighty chase, plus a story chase,” he explains, with a Cypherpunk Universe planned early in the sequence.
Printing techniques will push the envelope, from Dark Infinity cards limited to eight in total to 21 Dimensions cards with full-foil backgrounds, Big Bang out of 50, Burning Ember out of 70 that change colour, molten gold style Legend cards and Frozen Fractal cards that react to warmth. Physical redemptions are part of the plan, including figurines for select pulls and nine-card posters out of 2,100.
There is also a rewards layer designed to help new collectors find their way into the bitcoin scene. “Every pack earns Bitcoin, worth pennies to much larger amounts, with simple onboarding that makes bitcoin accessible to even those that are completely fresh to it.
“If the cards alone are not compelling, the prospect of earning bitcoin from them definitely is. What’s more if people learn the difference between Bitcoin and cryptocurrency, that is a service I’m extremely happy to have given.”
An exciting future lies ahead for the most transparent trading cards in the hobby
Strip the story back and message is simple. Trading cards can teach value if supply is fixed, odds are promises, and print runs are published openly. Based Trading Cards is an attempt to lead on good behaviours, making scarcity something you can see.
The goal is not to tell collectors what to think, but to give them enough information to ask better questions around pack odds, supply and why some cards hold value while others do not.
Bitcoin and economics might not be everyone’s cup of tea, but that doesn’t change the fact that these cards look absolutely incredible and highlight something more substantial than your favourite athlete or fictional creature.
You can buy Based Trading Cards direct from the official store here when a release window opens. Drops are finite print runs with no reprints, so availability is first come, first served. For UK buyers, prices are typically listed in US Dollars and you will likely be charged import VAT and courier fees on delivery.
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