Breaking a box is one of the most exciting experiences in card collecting. How can you tell? The number of collectors who  share that experience online in card collecting forums, posting on blogs and even videos on YouTube. The reason is obvious–it is fun to share your pulls with others who are also passionate about cards and if you get screwed you want to rant. For readers, it is fun to read/watch, each break is unique, and there is a chance that someone could really get lucky or pull a really rare card.

While it is entertaining, it is also informational and provides unique insight into what breaking a box of a particular brand is really like. We want information on the number of pulls and how good they are. Which is the best box for autos? What about rookies? While individual reviews are helpful, you need to read several to get an accurate picture of how that product is performing. So when we started building our Box Breaks feature, we knew we needed a tool for members to share their box breaks but we also wanted to organize the data so that it would be a useful informational resource.  

In order to achieve this, we created a uniform method to evaluate the pulls from each box. A simple rating system would be too vague to be really useful. So, in addition to a rating, we determined the most important categories for any box: total pulls, autos, relics, parallels, inserts, and duplicates. When members break a box, they enter the cards they pulled from each category and that information is averaged with all other breaks. That information is available to all members and formatted so that you can easily sort by each attribute. So you can see which box has the most rookies, the most autos or which is the highest rated. 

This system accomplishes a few things simultaneously. The most important is that it is a really easy way for anyone to share and track their box breaks. You don’t need a camera or a blog. It also creates an unbiased, aggregated source of information on boxes from the collecting community. Zistle doesn’t sell boxes and we aren’t affiliated with any particular brand so all reviews will be posted. And most importantly, it is a really useful tool for making decisions about boxes based on a variety of attributes. 

We realize that this will not replace the in-depth commentary of your favorite blogger–and we don’t want it to!  We are trying to develop a tool that will be useful to bloggers as well as readers and of course Zistle members. If you would like to be one of the first people to try it out and give us feedback, be sure to sign up for our private beta launching in January at www.zistle.com. We need you!

When launching any website where the bulk of the content is supposed to be created by its users, you are almost always faced with a chicken and egg problem.  It takes content to inspire users to create content.  As a user I don’t want to waste my time on a site that can’t provide me with anything in return, that’s the founders’ job.  So Ashley and I realized that in order to inspire people to help us build an amazing library of sports cards we were going to have to give them a glimpse of what the final product would look like.  We had to show users how useful this thing could really be and thus we had to get enough content in there ourselves to highlight the useful features that Zistle provides.

I spent a lot of time looking around the internet to see if I could find any ready made libraries of cards, images, info, or anything that would get us started.  Ultimately I realized that there wasn’t anything out there that was going to fit our needs, so I did what any entrepreneuring computer scientist would do–I built a web crawler.

I had a couple of criteria for how I wanted the crawler to work.  It had to extract structured data so that way we could provide the pivots and search functions that make Zistle great.  It also needed to get pictures when they were available.  Finally it needed to store everything locally so that we could pay for our own bandwidth when we served things back to users.  After toiling away in PHP for a while I produced a script that we now execute periodically and scans a few of the easily schematizeable web sites out there that have cards.  It loads the appropriate schema mappings for the source and checks out the current content of the site against our existing database to see if there are cards that they have that our not contained in Zistle.  If so, we grab the card info and add it to the Zistle library.

To date we have crawlers written for 4 different sports: baseball, football, basketball and hockey, with more potentially in the pipeline.  As of this posting we have 222,900 cards in our library and this is quickly growing.  We are close to having images of quite a few complete sets and while alpha testing I have been able to enter in my personal collections with a surprisingly high percentage of the cards already in the Zistle library.  By the time we launch I expect these numbers will be even more impressive.

While these numbers are great, the success of Zistle will be determined by our users.  Creating a comprehensive library is a dream that we have, but there is only so much that we can do by scraping the web.  The reason that we started this thing is because we looked and realized that the information wasn’t already out there on the web.  If we just integrate the existing data, we’ll still fall short.  I can’t wait to see what great cards you guys have once we open the doors and look forward to seeing the library grow!

Every card collector has cards they don’t particularly want or would be happy to swap for a different card or lot of cards. Currently, the only way to really trade online is to search the blogs to see if you can organize a trade with a blogger. While these bloggers are awesome and they have done a lot to encourage online trading, it can take a lot of time to search through their want lists and there isn’t a way to connect with other readers. Zistle is trying to make it easier for collectors as well as bloggers to find other collectors who are interested in trading cards online with our Want List and Trading Bucket features. With our Want List feature, you can quickly build a list of cards you want (thus, “Want List”) by simply selecting sets, teams, and players that you collect. We will automatically create your Want List with any cards in our database that you don’t currently have in your collection. Similarly, the Trade Bucket feature allows you to add duplicate cards and other card you are willing to trade. With this information, Zistle will show you which members have cards to trade and likewise members who want the cards you are trading.

If it sounds complicated it isn’t—here is an example. You are working on completing the 2008 Topps Chrome Main Set and you need a handful of cards. Rather than adding those cards one by one, you can add the entire set to your Want List with one click and Zistle will automatically add all of the cards that you don’t currently have in your collection. Then you look at your Want List and you see that there are several collectors who have some of the cards you need. You select one of the collectors and it shows that they have 5 total cards in their Trade Bucket that you need. If you have cards up for trade that they want, Zistle displays that for you as a potential trade option. If not, you can see what they collect (e.g. Kirby Puckett, 1986 Topps, etc) so that you can propose a trade on your own. Proposing a trade is just a quick message that is sent to their email address. At Zistle, in less than 5 minutes, you can create your entire want list, find members with cards you need and propose trades with other members.

We are working on a few related features to make sure that this system works well. For example, creating a trader rating so that members can see if the people have a good trading history or not. Also, if you add a card to your collection and it is on your Want List, we automatically update your Want List so you only need to update your information once. We think that these features will make managing your collection and making trades much easier and more accessible to all collectors.

If you are excited about this idea, be sure to join our mailing list at www.zistle.com and join our private beta! We need your feedback!

We had a great Thanksgiving visiting family and friends in Minnesota but after a week hiatus from Zistle, we are glad to be back to work. While it is always great to spend time with family, the highlight of the trip was watching the Minnesota Vikings beat the Chicago Bears at home to take first in the division. It was my first NFL game ever and what a perfect game. We scored great seats in the end zone and got to see the players up close and personal. I realized that I am a true football fan because this is the first time in my life I have been star-struck. Watching Adrian Peterson warming up right in front of me was plain awesome and we took a lot of pictures.

Oh, and did I mention we beat the Bears 34-14. Do you know how many sports analysts predicted that? Not many. The defense shut the bears’ offense down and our offense stepped up to the plate and made some huge plays. Jared Allen had 3 sacks and 7 tackles and it was awesome to actually see the madman in action. The night was also special since John Randle was inducted into the Vikings Ring of Honor. Next to my wedding day, has to be one of the greatest moments of my adult life.