Building a library of sports cards that our members can search and use to organize their sports collections is really the key to the Zistle experience. Without a comprehensive library Zistle cannot offer much value to its members. This is why the central mission of Zistle is to build the largest online database of baseball, football, hockey and basketball cards in existence. It didn’t take us long to realize that with millions and millions of cards, the only way to succeed in this mission is to leverage the information that each member has in their own collection and provide an easy way they can share it with the community. This is why we have built a platform which enables members to add and edit to the Zistle library while they are building and organizing their own collections. While we have used a variety of tactics to create as much content as possible to seed the library, we have developed several tools that allow users to add and edit our library if any cards are missing or incorrect.

If this doesn’t make sense, just think of Zistle as the Wikipedia of baseball, football, hockey, and basketball cards. The possibility is really amazing. How cool would it be if Zistle users could collaboratively create the most authoritative source of information on card collecting? We think that is pretty freakin’ awesome and we are betting that other collectors will agree with us and join our cause.

Of course we realize that we need to do our part which means creating the tools to make this sharing painless and perhaps even fun. For Zistle, this means integrating this process seamlessly into the normal interface of the site as well as making the process easy and not disruptive to the main experience. We have spent a lot of our time thinking about these features and how we can optimize our members’ experiences with our site. Initially to maintain the quality of our library, we plan to review all entries to the library but eventually we want to turn this function over to the community. For now, we have created a flagging system so that members can easily flag cards that are duplicates, inaccurate or missing information. We can see that this system could potentially become more robust and collaborative. What we are really excited about is to watch how our users will utilize these tools and to hear feedback as well as new ideas for creating and moderating the library. That is where the fun really begins.

If you have any feedback or ideas about the library idea even at this stage, we would love to hear it. You will find us very humble about the fact that we may not have the right solution but we sure will try. Just leave a comment or email me at [email protected]

One of the main reasons we decided to create Zistle  is the fact that there isn’t a viable online collecting experience that successfully leverages the web. Beckett.com has attenpted to create such a community but their Becket.com is practically broken and the buggiest web app I have used in a long time. Beckett has great presence in the card collecting community and they obviously provide value to card collecting. However, they have been unable to translate their brand and market dominance into a functional online community and after visiting their site, it is obvious why.

Visit #1

On my first visit, the site seemed about one click away from crashing the entire time I used it. The load times were pre-historically slow and several times the site completely froze or timed out. After several unsuccessful attempts to add a card to my collection and several error messages, I decided to come back later because nothing frustrates me more than websites that aren’t working. Strike one Beckett.

Visit #2

This time, the site was actually working so I was encouraged. Maybe they had a rough day when I was visiting the first time. My goal was to add a Joe Mauer card to my organize tab. Thinking this would be fairly straightforward, I searched for Joe Mauer and it successfully loaded 2,422 results. I clicked the add icon on the first card to add it to “my organize”. But rather than adding just the individual card, it added all 2,422  Mauer cards from the search query. Nice! Now, in order to change this error, I would have to go back to the organize and delete every single card that I didn’t want in my collection. This is officially strike two.

Visit#3

A new day and a new set of bugs. This time, I tried to add a Johan Santana card to my collection but when I tried it told me I was not logged in even though I was (see pic below). So, I logged out (although it took me a while to even figure out how to do that since the logout button is a cleverly disguised key icon) and tried again. Again, it didn’t work so it wasn’t just a fluke. I also tried out their pricing tool to see how much my collection is worth. This is where Beckett has a huge advantage and an amazing feature to offer. So how much is every Joe Mauer card and one Johan Santana autographed rookie worth? $0.00. Nice work guys, seriously.

Now, I have not completed a full test of all of the site’s features but after three separate visits, every single action I attempted utterly failed. Being in beta does not excuse you from having a decent product. If it isn’t working, you shouldn’t deploy it, period. I mean at a certain point, aren’t you worried about negatively affecting the Beckett brand? I would think that anyone who tried to use this site would walk away with a more negative view of Beckett and their services. I guess they pretty much have a monopoly but still…

I think they have missed an amazing opportunity to create a compelling online community for card collectors and we know that Zistle will be better. Zistle is an easy way to build a collection online that automatically organizes your collection and makes it easy to complete your sets. Oh yeah, and our site will actually work.

Well, this is the first post for the Zistle Blog, the official blog of Zistle.com, which we hope will become the premiere online card collecting community and toolbox for card collectors everywhere. What in the heck does that mean? Well, imagine a world, where you could quickly build and update your collection online, where you can instantly find people with the cards you need to complete your set and you can browse an online card library with millions of cards. We want to be the most extensive resource of card information while providing collectors one of a kind tool to organize their sports card collection. And that is just the tip of the iceberg for what we have planned. Sound cool? We think so but we still have a lot of work to do to reach our dream.

How did we decide we wanted to build a card collecting site? Well, we recently rescued our childhood card collections from the obscurity of our parent’s basements. We immediately began sorting through our collections which not only made us reminisce about our youth and collecting cards but it also reignited our curiosity in the hobby. As we acquainted ourselves with the world of collecting, we realized we were having conversations like “wouldn’t it be cool if we could do this?” or “I wish I could find better information on this card”, etc. It didn’t take long before those conversations turned into an idea for a website and we knew we had to get to work right away.

So we have been working nights and weekends to get this site up and running. Our goal is to launch in beta on January 1, 2008. It will most likely be by invitation only so if you are interested, please let us know and we will be sure to invite you. We will be making frequent posts about our progress. Feel free to let us know if you have any ideas and keep collecting.