I’ve been toying with this idea for a while… So I’ll put it out here…
What do you guys think of a site where you can list what cards (graded/ungraded) you want to collect?
The aim of the site would be such that people that have those cards in possession can sell them, and as such an option would be available to contact the person wanting the cards. In all honesty a secondary aim could also be to try to get more people to grade those cards, which may partially be in disinterest of the collector wanting to get those cards, on the other hand if they have enough money available it may save them the effort.
I have most of the technical knowledge available for making a site, the backend, etc. Though frontend is not easy for me, what I’m mostly lacking is motivation
To be clear, you would need to actually select the set and then the card, etc. so it would also serve as a database of all available cards.
One of the motivations behind this is that it’s hard for me to get a view on what people are actually looking for and which sets they are looking to complete.
Smpratte basically made a video on this, any market place we try to make would have costs that someone has to take up, and unless they are willing to continually put work into it for free, there will be fees for users for the site to improve and be maintained
Well, yeah, and no, I wouldn’t offer any service related to the sales, as I think that’s a step too far for me personally.
Also I don’t intend right now that people can list the prices they would be willing to pay, though maybe it’s not a bad idea.
It’s kind of like a reversed Cardmarket EU as that one is for the sellers, and this one would be for the collectors
So something like this, but instead of checking off what you have you check off what you want? www.pokellector.com/
I think pieterpie makes a good point, how will the site pay for itself? Advertising or will there be a yearly fee or whatever.
Also, how will I be able to quickly check what people want (raw, psa 9, psa 10 etc). I realize you can put in a search function, but what about when I am on the home page and I see all these wants, how do I know what they want raw/PSA? I imagine it would be fun to just browse but I also think it would be nice to see what people want while just browsing.
I think letting people track their collections would be a good draw, like the site I listed.
From the site I listed I really like the visual aspect. I can see the cards in the set. Also a great way to find cards you want based on artwork/pokemon, oh, I didn’t realize x pokemon was in this set.
If this gets off the ground I have a few thousand images (5-10K) I am willing to donate if needed to help with the database, all non watermarked.
Possible? Sure. Practical? Why not. Profitable? Possible but not likely without some sort of fee/membership, most likely sinking money for hosting.
Listen, we want to make it easier to grab the cards we want, but eBay is that marketplace. The biggest hurdle something like this has is the traffic, and to build that draw would take years upon years at the very least. A smaller site could easily exist, but you wouldn’t be reaching the millions you do with something already established.
A few years ago I used to trade cards at forums, I spend hours comparing my wants list to people’s list of spares. Things would’ve been so much easier if I could just click on a list and hit a button “compare to my wants list” and ta-dah, you see within a few seconds all spare cards a person has that you still need.
I do know a lot about programming, I’m at the end of my second year of applied Informatics, making such a system wouldn’t be that hard but filling the database with all cards would be the big work.
Don’t imagine it would be to hard to write a script to grab and create an entry for each card on bulbapedia, that would instantly cover the vast majority of cards
Yes, but you would want each version. Base set for example: shadowless, first edition, unlimited, unlimited 1999-2000, the trainer deck A/B promo’s, Japanese unlimited, Japanese no rarity…
It’s a daunting task for sure, especially with a lack of knowledge on certain variations/sets and the languages they were released in. Documentation and therefore thoroughness is hard to come by on non-English and non-Japanese (assuming this would even take language into consideration).
I have a bit of practice and dabbling in html/javascript/etc so I would be up for providing help on something like that too if needed, but as stated prior I do believe that the hurdle is the time commitment involved in creating the database *and keeping it up to date*.
Excluding the PSA factor, it sounds like you guys want tradecardsonline. I’m guessing you mainly want it for promo/exclusive cards, but honestly those types of cards have a niche market and in general sticking with this board to make deals for those cards seems best / not worth the manpower to create a tco for just those few users. If you just mean regular set/promo cards, tradecardsonline is pretty nice. Technically TCO has the very rare cards in their database too, it’s just noone has that stuff listed in their haves. Being able to compare your wants with users haves on that site really is great though. Spans across most card games too.
It seems like there’s definitely some interest in it. Now onto a few questions/replies…
Would you mind if the site looked a bit dull in the beginning? Though I definitely want to use a modern theme (shouldn’t be too hard) and images should be doable too.
Monetization is no issue as long as it stays in the low double digit numbers per month. I don’t plan on running ads as I have no experience in that department, maybe it’s interesting if the traffic gets big, but there’s no point to bother a low amount of users with ads.
Rare cards are definitely going to be up for the site. Shadowless, 1st edition, etc. and error cards is exactly where it’s all about. PSA graded cards (just using as example, BGS and others are fine too, just no personal experience) are all about the rare cards.
I think I can manage myself with the backend/frontend part, making the frontend look nice is a whole other story, let alone actual professional user interface design.
Other games are a long shot for now, though it shouldn’t be too hard once it’s all up and running.
I don’t have a plan for this yet, I’m pretty busy lately, but the support gives me encouragement And if an inferior version of the site is acceptable too at the beginning then maybe I can get somewhere quicker. Also it’s no issue if card database would be the biggest amount of work, as it would actually be very cool because it would mean that the actual website would be relatively easy
Would absolutely love it if this would (have) exist(ed). And I thought about it quite a lot, not when I started collecting Pikachus, but also in the past as 12 year old kid. Would be so cool to have a single database with EVERY SINGLE Pokémon card that exist (including how many of them exist per, including misprints - on the detail-level of my collections ).
Unfortunately websites like Bulbapedia, Serebii, Pokémon-Paradijs, etc. to name a few (oh, and the E4 Forum of course!!) are the sources we’ll have to use. Luckily those are also pretty extended so far, especially Bulbapedia. Too bad it doesn’t contain a lot of languages / detail-variations.
But back on topic: Yes, I would love to just add my Pikachu and Seviper wanted threads to a website, and if someone has a card for sale I still need they can contact me; or send me a picture + invoice for all I care.
I got bored and decided I’d see what came to my head UI wise, made a very rough and quick mock up. Please bear in mind I’m a developer not a designer and so anything I make will more than likely look like poop. Any ideas or feedback on it are welcome!
Spoiler
The sets would be chosen via drop down, users could then select the pertaining card and set the condition etc of their cards and leave comments if they have a specific variant.
Another cool idea I had was that you have a virtual bookshelf with all your binders you could look at online. Select a binder and you can go through all it’s pages with the cards. So you know which ones you have, but especially how they are organised.
So you can specify in which binder on what page your copy of a certain card is located, so you can easily find your cards back quickly.
Also, I’m an android & iPhone programmer, so if you would want an app of the site eventually; I can help
I like the compare card idea. But I would automate this process and piggyback on collector’s apps such as Pokellector. The system knows what cards a user does not own - if that user has taken the time to list cards he/she owns. The system can also mix and match missing cards from a user to non-missing cards of another user. Then it would be a matter of finding ways of connecting users the right way. @justinator thanks for sharing the spreadsheet link. I would go for Json all the way., especially if variations of languages are considered, but down the line such a project is only worth the time if it can be cloned. Not only from one collector market to the other but also to other industry verticals.
