The Rising Popularity of “Photocards” among K-Pop Fans
K-Pop fans must be familiar with photocards in albums. Nowadays, most albums come with a random photocard of the artist. In some cases, you will also find other merchandises inside the album, such as folded posters, stickers, or postcards, but photocards already held a special place in most fans’ heart, especially collectors.
The growing interest toward photocards create communities in various social medias. It will be easy to find collection accounts at Instagram, buying and selling accounts at Twitter, or accounts who post their unboxing videos at Tiktok and Youtube. There are also numerous amount of group orders in chatting platforms. If you don’t understand how group orders work, here’s a brief explanation. Group orders usually have admins who would contact the bulk photocard seller, offer the photocards to the members of the group order or you could say buyers, and pay the orders collectively. Through group orders, buyers will have an easy access to buy and collect photocards.
Collecting photocards becomes a trend and it leads to the start of other new trends still related to photocards. For instance, decorating photocards with stickers or in Korean 포꾸 (po-kku). Some other interesting trend are collect books and cute card holders. Collect books are basically a photo album for photocards, but the trend is when a lot of creative fans design and sell collect books to other fans. As for card holders, it is the card holder that people usually use for transportation cards. Some fans use them to bring their photocards outside and take pictures of the photocard, inside the card holder, at places they visit.
It is fascinating to see these growing trends as a fan. I myself have tried and enjoyed these trends, joining group orders and decorating photocards. But one thing that we should keep in mind is to follow these trends to have fun. Don’t burden yourself to collect photocards or to do other trends. Another thing that I would like to remind myself and other fans is to acknowledge and appreciate the whole production process of your favorite artist’ album. Let’s be mindful in every aspects of our life, including when you’re being a fan!
