The Yak Shack Forum

If you have any bright ideas for improving the price guide then please get in touch with either MakTheYak or myself, or post them here to get a feel for other people's opinions on the idea  :)

can we suggest what card sets to add in the price guide in future? like maybe james bond liaisons set coming out soon? the auto list for that set is fabulous and i am sure it would be a great addition to the guide

Roz and Mark, this new section is a great idea! :)  I have a couple of suggestions.

When an auction number is entered and the next screen comes up to input all of the info, there's a scrolldown list of every card in the price guide.  I would appreciate it if you could put the titles of each set in bold to make them stand out from the list of cards.  It would be easier to find the cards that way.

After an auction has been submitted, the same form (but empty) comes back for a new auction to be entered.  I personally would prefer that the "submit auction" screen came up, where you enter just the auction number.  It can be aggravating to enter ALL of the data for an auction, only to find out it had already been submitted.  When I'm entering a bunch of auctions, I go through the extra step of clicking on the "submit auction" link on the left side of the screen so I only have to enter the auction number to find out if it's been submitted by someone else.  This change would save a few seconds, which really add up when you spend a lot of time adding to the price guide.

As for adding other sets to the price guide, it's a great idea -- BUT -- we need people to enter the data for each set.  Right now, there's a small, hardcore group of people who work on the price guide.  Anna, in particular, spends many hours a week on it.  We need help to keep up with all of the auctions and sets. :)

I would help, but I would want to do Harry Potter which Anna does :-X

Maybe we could vote on a set that members want to add :-\

I am open to any new set provided that there are enough people behind the set to enter the auctions for it. But as Cindy points out it has to be a set with a team of keen collectors behind it.

We are working on making it easier to enter auctions ;)

Cindy - your suggestions have been passed on to our head Yak, who is currently (as we speak) coping with behind the scenes problems with the guide, but will certainly get on with your suggestions asap.

OK well for starters it should be going back to the auction check page now!

As for making it easier to distinguish between sets and cards, I'll try and work on that over the holidays. I have some ideas...

And of course if my lovely-but-cheeky girlfriend will make a habit of logging in to the forum on my laptop and not log out again, sometimes I will post as her accindentally... *doh*

One must endeavour to keep up one's "cheeky" reputation


What's accindentally Sam? Does it hurt?

Great work Mark - oh and his plans for better differentiation between sets sound awesome ;D

Mike, you can enter HP auctions!  Anna is doing the majority of the work, with some help from me, because there aren't many others entering those auctions.  Send her a PM -- I'm sure we can work out something. :)

Thanks, Mark!  I know you work very hard on this site (never mind that you also have a job). :)

I don't know if this is a good idea, but maybe we can have volunteers to input before a set comes out and assign them specific card / or cards to enter auctions for.  That way they only have to track a specific card/or cards.  I don't enter many auctions because 90% of what I was entering in POAU was already entered. 

I would be happy to help with more inputs, if I wasn't repeating entries.  Maybe you could assign two people to a couple of different cards so we wouldn't miss to many auctions.?.?

I am new here, so I don't want to stir up any feathers. What is there now, is great. Very resourceful and informative. Almost like looking at a stock.

When I first used this guide (last nite) I was disapointed  ??? to see only a few card sets. I use the NSU book (subscription), but looking something up online w/ pictures to boot, is awesome.

I guess what I'm saying, I was expecting to find every card set that has been made so far to date. I am just realizing that this is kind of new. I would luv to be able to go to this price guide and find a card from say, Terminator 3, Batman & Robin, 24, etc, etc....  :o=

Gr8 job for what's there now though!  ;D

Considering that it's all done via volunteering & scouring auctions, I don't see how that could be done....

My only suggestion is perhaps not having an initial drop down menu that lists everything in the price guide when submitting an auction number.  It would be easier on the submitting end to choose a set THEN have the drop down menu of all the cards in the set - perhaps have 2 drop downs - 1st for the set & 2nd for the cards in the set

I agree with kbmum that it would be helpful to have the title of the set in bold (right now it's got hyphens on either side which works fine since the cards in that set are indented).

Perhaps give a monthly update so that people know which sets need more help... I keep forgetting that all the LOTR auto/costume sets are in the guide...

EDIT:
Of course I COULD have looked at the bottom of the FAQ for a solution to the long drop down list...

Q. Man, what's with that long list of cards when you submit an auction, eh? There are so many of the things there I think I might go blind.
 
A. Yeah it's quite long and it's only going to get longer. Fortunately you can save yourself the bother of searching for the card the hard way by going straight from the card. Browse to the card you want through the View Sets or View Cards options and then when you find your card click 'Submit Auction' at the bottom of the page. See now it's already been selected for you. Not bad eh?
I also agree with beckham1 that it would be nice to have some cards assigned to volunteers.  The HP sets in particular are SO LARGE that having one or two people doing the majority of the entering is a bit daunting.  Assign me a particular card or two and I'll be more than happy to help out :)

It isn't possible to include all non-sport sets in the price guide.  We just don't have enough volunteers to do it, and probably not enough bandwidth, either.  Right now, there are only a handful of people who enter auctions on a regular basis.  Case in point, the five HP sets.  One person -- Anna -- enters about 98 or 99 percent of the HP auctions you see in the price guide.  This woman gives up hours and hours each week to keep that part of the price guide up-to-date.  Roz, ferdinand_the_yak, and blackcat enter auctions for the other sets, and there are still more people (like myself) who help out when we can (or remember to ::) ).

Every now and then, someone suggests we add a particular set to the price guide.  My response is always the same.  It may be possible to add another set, but we need people to commit to enter auctions.  The Shackers who already help with the price guide really can't take on any more.  And remember, HP Memorable Moments and Chamber of Secrets are still scheduled to be released this summer.  I honestly don't know how we'll be able to keep up with all of the auctions. :-\

Boka1111, if you are interested in adding a set to the price guide and are willing to put in the time to keep it current, then please send Roz a PM.  Tialessa, I know Anna would love help with the HP sets, however you're able to do it.  Please send her a PM. :)

I always try to add new auctions to the guide as soon as they end (I'm watching over 90 items per week), I didn't know Anna was the only one doing this :-\. But that also means i might be submitting auctions that she already entered and viceversa.

If you're able to enter an auction, that means no one else has entered it yet.  The programming goes by the eBay item number.  If the auction was entered, you'll get a message to that effect and it won't allow that particular auction to be entered again. :)

Ohhh that's good, i haven't seen that message yet :). I'm glad I've been able to help a bit then. I was wondering, do you guys (mods) actually review every auction before it goes to the guide?

You might get a few of those message since I entered a few just now :) I got the message for three I tried to do so I believe you or Anna might have done them (BTW - these cards where for GoFu)

A few people can enter auctions without review, but for everyone else, the entries are reviewed by Roz before they show up.  That's why you might submit an auction, but it doesn't show up right away.

So, what if many ppl start submitting auctions for cards not listed. Is that possible. Even if we can't get every card, atleast they'll be some sort of coverage for other cards of interest.

Also, the statue forum keeps track of all ENDED statue/replica auctions. They might use a program or spider-bot that does this automatically. You might want to look at it and perhaps contact him how he does it.

http://ccpstatues.tripod.com/index.html

You can't submit an auction for a card that isn't on the list in the price guide.  Sure, you can enter the auction number, but if you can't choose the card from the list, the programming won't allow it to be submitted.

There is a way to get the auctions automatically, but we aren't able to do that yet.  I can't remember if it's very expensive or if this site would have to generate a certain amount of traffic to eBay.

NSU's price list is incorrect for Prisioner of Azkaban. They list the Honey Dukes Candy ( and isn't it Honeydukes? NOT Honey Dukes?) card as the 25 case incentive. Everyone knows that it's the 10 case incentive.
The correct 25 case incentive is the Pear Tree Leaves card. I have told them about it months ago and I know tha Tom said he sent them an e-mail about it after I saw that he was a contribuitor to the NSU price list. Still nothing. I mean how long would it take someone to correct this. They are in the file all of the time adding new cards. DUH!!! MAbe they just accept mediocrity and don't strive for excellence. CRAP!! If they want to set themselves up as the best NS card source of information they should work at it, especially when readers bother to send them the help. CRAP again! "Stupid is as Stupid does."- Forrest Gump

... and they still call the Whomping Willow, the Whooping Willow despite me telling them otherwise about 50 times... ahh well.

We strive for top notch quality in everything we do in the price guide, and the contributors, programmers and even the fool who sets up the new sets can be proud of it ;D.

You can call it a flaw if you like but we only make price guides for the cards we obsess about, but if you are volunteering to enter some past sets then PM me, the problem is of course that there are few or no auctions out there for them, so the data will not be verifiable :(

It's more than possible and Mark's more than capable but we need thousands of dollars for access to ebay's database in order to do it automatically AND it can be flawed, it can easily miss auctions (don't forget, humans list cards, not machines with a standardised description). He funds it with affiliate links to ebay and affiliate links to the manufacturer's site, advertising donations etc etc etc. We don't have that kind of money and can only just afford the bandwidth we use by funding it from our own pockets... unless you are volunteering to fund it  of course :P ;)

However, his site is just a list of each ended auction whereas I really think that Mark's "click on this card to see a picture of it, the price trends, current and past prices and a link to each auction" is really much clearer and simpler to use... not to mention a LOT easier on the eye ;)

How much money are we talking about?

I haven't looked into this for a while, but this is as I remember it:

First eBay charge a $200 fee for checking our program and database to check it's appropriate useage (etc etc), then it would be around $500 a year for "membership" of the programme, and then $1.60 for each 1,000 times we access the ebay database, so probably (at current useage, although it might go up if we implemented the access into the program) that would be just another $40 or so per year I think.

So a start up cost of around $740, and thereafter just over $500 per year. (plus we have to persuade Mark to spend the time coding it... which he's usually pretty good about, but he's a busy guy :) )

Perhaps we are a victim of our own success - I think if we only wanted to check the database for a few items a day it would be much cheaper or even free ::) but for the volume we'd use it would be classified as commercial.

Mark and I already spend enough on the site for hosting and bandwidth use, after a fair number of hiccups we splashed out on a dedicated server for the Shack, so we're already all out on this one.

Have you considered a gallery subscription service for people? The way the price guide is set out is very smart indeed, with your options to view thumbnails or sets by list and all the other options. I imagine there are several members who would pay a small monthly fee to have this sort of thing set up for them to upload and organize there images to. Nothing drastic just something like ttp://www.theyakshack.co.uk/username_of_subscriber  they could have there own webmail accounts or what ever and you would be getting some of the money back for the server. Just thought I would toss that out there for you to consider. I mean I could be totally wrong and you have no space left at all on this thing or you have no inclination to do anything of the sort lol never mind me I shall shut up now ;)