SCN 2020 Year in Review
Tuesday, December 29, 2020
Posted by jaygross
Comments: 4
I would like to thank all of the wonderful folks who are part of the SportsCollectors.Net community, and especially to those who contribute to the site (be it tracking TTM requests, posting on the message boards, taking part in chats, uploading photos, offering private signings, making trades/deals, etc.). You are the reason I created this site and continue to enjoy this fun hobby so much.
2020 was a different and crazy year for the world on so many levels with the COVID-19 pandemic affecting everyone. For so many of us it has meant pretty significant changes to our lives. I've done my best to have SportsCollectors.net as a place for us to enjoy our fun hobby (autograph collecting) and hopefully be a pleasant distraction from all these things.
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In March we celebrated the 20th anniversary of when I opened up this site for members to sign up and join the community. The site and the hobby were VERY different back then! Sharing info on who signed was REALLY hard back then, so I invented+coded the Request Tracking database. It still amazes me that something I have created is still used by so many folks and bringing them enjoyment. And it's even more amazing that there are still a lot of active members who have been with us since 2000.
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Numbers tell a story
Former NBA big man Rasheed Wallace used to say "Ball Don't Lie". Well neither do the statistics about the combined contributions of this community. I am continually amazed by the value SCN as a collector's resource.
We've added big enhancements
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Server Upgrades
HTTPS on SCN
We made some pretty big upgrades to infrastructure that runs the site.
- We moved the site on to much faster hardware.
- Traffic on SCN is now sent via SSL encryption. Our home page is now https://www.sportscollectors.net.
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Trading Dashboard, Leaderboard, and Trade Manager Enhancements
This feature release introduced:
- New Trading Dashboard
- New Trading Leaderboard
- Pretty significant enhancements to our Trade Manager
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Leaving Bulk Feedback
This feature release introduced:
- You can select the checkbox for up to 20 trades and leave them all feedback at once.
- You can see the type of transaction. along with details for private signings.
- You can see if the other trader has left you feedback on the transaction.
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Signing Fee List and Icons
We added some nice info for members:
- Signing Fee and Signing Note icons where we show player records
- Signing Fees Pages for each sport
- Categories for Notes and Fees
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Track Fees with Requests & Successes
You can see the new Fee column throughout the site that displays individual request details. The red box in the screen below shows the Fee Column on the page that lists all of your Requests
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Last Success and Success Rate on Search My Request page
We added 2 optional columns to the Request Tracking function:
- Last Success - date of last recorded success (in yellow box)
- Success Rate - ratio success compared to total requests (in green box)
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Archived Private Messages
We introduced the ability to archive old Private Messages, so they won't clutter your inbox and you don't have to delete them.
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Many of our heroes have passed away
It has been gut wrenching to check the Passed Away section on our Message Board throughout this year. I counted 456 people in our database have been marked as passed away in 2020, including the 31 Hall of Famers below:
My personal collection
I am not just the person who runs SCN, I am also a collector (like most of you folks). I wrote the most letters this year that I have written since 2003 (before my kids were around). My success rate is at 62%, quite a bit lower than previous years. I have gotten a bunch of successes I am pretty psyched about.
I used to be fairly obsessed with getting multi-signed cards, but I had a nice pile of cards that I had started and never finished... until this year.... (click on thumbnail for larger view)
I made some nice progress with my obsession for trying to complete tri-cards from 1980 Topps basketball:
I am still on the hunt for the following 3 signed cards to finish my sets:
1993 Pro Line Portraits Wilber Marshall
1989-90 Hopps Sylvester Gray
1978-79 Topps Pete Maravich
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