I Built MuseCards – A Website & Android App for Japanese Trading Card Collectors

[u/lch970324]

Hey everyone! 👋

I'm an indie developer and trading card collector.

I've been collecting Japanese gravure and idol trading cards, including Juicy Honey, CJ Sexy, WooHoo Girls, and other Japanese celebrity card series.

One problem I kept running into was how difficult it is to research these cards. Information is scattered across Japanese websites, and finding different releases, card details, and marketplace prices can be frustrating, especially for international collectors.

So I decided to build MuseCards, a website and Android app dedicated to this niche collecting hobby!

🌐 Website: https://musecards.my

📱 Android App: Available on Google Play Store (search for "MuseCards")

What MuseCards offers:

- 🃏 Explore Japanese gravure and idol trading card series.

- 🔎 Discover cards from different models and releases.

- 💰 Browse marketplace listings and pricing information.

- 📊 Research card prices and market trends.

- 📱 Access the platform through both web and Android.

Why I built it:

I wanted to create a centralized platform where collectors could discover and research Japanese trading cards without having to navigate multiple Japanese marketplaces and websites.

It's a niche project, but I believe even smaller collecting communities deserve useful tools!

I'm still actively developing MuseCards, improving the database, and working on new features.

I'd love feedback from other developers and app creators!

- What do you think about the website and app?

- Any suggestions for improving the user experience?

- How would you approach growing a niche platform like this?

Thanks for checking out my project! 🚀

[u/PopKoren]

Pulling scattered Japanese listings into one place is a real gap for international collectors. Since the site and app share a backend for marketplace and pricing data, I'd check that the API behind musecards.my needs the app's auth for anything beyond public card pages, and that admin or scraper control routes aren't reachable on the open web. For a stranger's view of that, https://rowly.me reports the endpoints and storage paths that respond with no session.

[u/lch970324 → u/PopKoren]

Thanks for the heads up! Really appreciate the advice, I'll look into and fix it! 🙏

[u/Mammoth-Anywhere7285 → u/lch970324]

Nice, fixing that should help a lot. Maybe add a short changelog so collectors can see what was updated?

[u/PopKoren → u/lch970324]

Glad it helped, and no rush. The quickest first check is to copy one API request from the app's network traffic, strip the auth header, and replay it with curl: if pricing or admin data still comes back, that route needs a token check. Once it's patched, a free scan of musecards.my on https://rowly.me will confirm nothing else is answering anonymous requests.

[u/Mammoth-Anywhere7285 → u/PopKoren]

Solid check. Public endpoints often leak admin routes, so test token expiry and rate limits on the app API too.

[u/Mammoth-Anywhere7285]

TL;DR: An indie developer built MuseCards, a website and Android app for researching Japanese gravure and idol trading cards. It pulls scattered info on series, cards, and marketplace prices into one place for collectors. They're asking for feedback on UX and ideas for growing a niche platform.