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Happy New Year 2024
Monday, January 1, 2024
Posted by jaygross
Comments: 1

Wishing a happy and healthy New Year 2024 to the SCN community. You all bring so much joy to my household and make collecting more fun!

I always enjoy writing a blog post around this time of year. It allows me to reflect on things related to this site, our community, and how my collecting + life progresses.

2023 Milestone - 2 MILLION SUCCESSES

In November the community hit a huge milestone with 2 million successes tracked on SCN. I can't begin to express how amazed I am that we could get to this point together and how appreciative I am to everyone who uses the tools I created to track their requests/successes. You all have made the hobby so fun for me personally over the past 20+ years.

Site Enhancements

  • We had heard that we weren't always getting messages when our members were trying to contact us. Obviously this would be problematic, so I implemented a new contact system to make sure that every message gets stored in a database. I have made sure to respond to every message. In addition, we recently added a capcha to the Contact Us page that has significantly reduced the amount of SPAM messages we receive.

  • Last week we introduced the ability for promoters to indicate when Private Signings are completed. We anticipate that this will help streamline communication and expectations related to timelines for items being returned.

  • This year I spent quite a bit of time improving the site's performance and the administrative tools that allow our admins to manage the site.

    End of year community stats

    SCN stats

    Some 2023 highlights for me and my collection:

    • I finally spent many hours getting organized and listed over 60K unsigned cards on buysportscards:
      https://www.buysportscards.com/search?sellerId=354fc7bb8e&sellerName=sportscollectors

      BSC

      I accumulated a lot of stuff in the past 40+ years and I only had a very vague idea of what cards I had that were mixed up in many random boxes. After watching some videos of how Burbank Cards sets up their warehouse, I got inspired to organize my stuff by sport, year, and set in 5000 count monster boxes. It has been a lot of fun for me to "shop" in my own store for cards to send out TTM requests to players. No more needing to buy cards I already have.

    • I sent out 400+ requests in 2023, a decent amount but considerably less than 2023:

      jays stats

    • In the spring and summer I spent a lot of time getting to coach and root for my son Jack play baseball - he recently turned 12, is a righty pitcher, plays left field, and hits line drives left handed. All similar to the greatest Red Sox player - Ted Williams. We can dream....

      He has started to show interest in sports cards this year and we went to a local show a couple of times. After I gave him a slabbed 1986 Topps Traded Barry Bonds, he decided he wanted to try to slab his own cards. So I dug out a card I have since the 1980's in decent shape and we spent a few hours on a rainy Sunday putting this together:

      There was some trial and error, but we think it turned out pretty nicely. PSA and SGC has nothing to worry about, as I have NO interest to offer a sportscollectors.net grading service. I have since slabbed some of my autographed cards to display in my house (will likely be the subject of a future post).

      scn_slab_1959_fleer_ted_williams

    • My favorite TTM autograph of the year was getting Michael Pittman Sr. to finish up this Bucs leaders card from the season after their championship team:



    • I am still on the hunt for the following signed cards:
      -- 1992 Pro Line Portraits Al Davis
      -- 1977 Topps/ O-Pee-Chee Glossy Inserts (Round Corners) Ken Dryden
      -- 1977 Topps/ O-Pee-Chee Glossy Inserts (Round Corners) Denis Potvin

      1992 Pro Line Portraits Al Davis 1977 Topps/ O-Pee-Chee Glossy Inserts Ken Dryden 1977 Topps/ O-Pee-Chee Glossy Inserts Denis Potvin


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    Indication when Private Signings are Completed
    Thursday, December 28, 2023
    Posted by jaygross
    Comments: 1

    Private signings on SCN are quite popular, as there have been over 150,00 transactions related to them in our Trade Manager since we first launched the feature in 2010. These signings have provided collectors with great opportunities to get autographs from players that do not sign so commonly or via TTM. Thank you to all of our promoters and members who participate in them and for all of the helpful feedback.

    In 2021, we made some important upgrades to the Private Signings functionality. And while those changes have definitely been helpful, we listen to our members' feedback on what else we can do.

    Common Frustration - The date on signing passed, now what?

    One common trend we have heard is that there hasn't been a standard way for promoters to let members know that signing is complete and that items are being sent back. This leads to a lot of frustration and confusion from both sides of the transaction.

    Introducing Completed Signings for Promoters

    Today we have added functionality that allows promoters to mark there signings as completed for all signings with a date after 12/1/2023.

    Once a signing has a date of signing that is in the past, a button will appear as shown below:

    signing_with_complete_button

    Clicking the button will take the promoter to a page where a completion date for the signing can be submitted:

    complete_signing

    Please note - submitting a completion date will automatically send a message to all members with a transaction for that signing that the signing is complete.

    Once a signing has a completion date submitted, that date will appear on the signing page for all members to see (boldly highlighted in the yellow box):

    signing_completion_date

    When promoters go to the Manage My Signings page, they will see the status containing
    Approved+Completed:

    my_signings



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    2 Million Successes on SportsCollectors.Net
    Wednesday, November 15, 2023
    Posted by jaygross
    Comments: 0

    2 millon successes

    Way back in 1998, I came up with the idea of creating a database for collectors to track when they mailed out a letter to athletes asking for an autograph. I went on to launch autograph request tracking as the key feature on SportsCollectors.Net in 2000 and it has been such a helpful tool for collectors. So many of us have been able to track my own successes and failures, and see how our collections grow.


    Functionality that allows collectors to track autograph requests

    Earlier this morning the SCN community hit a pretty significant milestone with 2 million successes tracked in our system. For context, the community of 1000's of collectors enter an average of over 300 successes each day. It still sometimes blows my mind that so many folks enjoy using this system and what we have accomplished as a group.

    The 2,000,000th successes:

    player: George Karl
    date sent: 1/27/2021
    date received: 11/14/2023
    duration: 1021 days
    received/sent: 3/3



    Thanks to the community:

    To show our appreciation, I am extending the subscription of 100 members by 3 months. We will be randomly selecting 100 active subscribers who have entered 10+ successes in the past 90 days. If you are selected, you will receive a message from us with the details.

    I'd like to thank everyone for all your contributions and for making SCN what it is today, you are all amazing.



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  • Recent Topics

    HAPPY NEW YEAR 2024

    INDICATION WHEN PRIVATE SIGNINGS ARE COMPLETED

    2 MILLION SUCCESSES ON SPORTSCOLLECTORS.NET

    HAPPY NEW YEAR 2023

    SUPPORT FOR COMPLETED SETS

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