I just wanted to write a quick note and let everyone know what we’ve been up to–because we’ve been busy. We’ve recently made a lot of progress on the site, especially considering that we can really only work on it during nights and weekends. So here are some of the highlights:
Improved Search
For those of you that used some of our earliest versions of the site, I’m sure you can tell the difference in performance. We have increased many of our search times by at least an order of magnitude. In addition we have really expanded the search syntax that you can use. For example you can now include sport names, years, player names, brands, numbers and even some properties. Keywords such as “relic”, “rookie” or “autograph” can be used. So you can now look up “Kirby Puckett 1985 Topps #536″ or “Adrian Peterson rookie” or even “Hockey 1999 Gretzky autograph” and you’ll find what you’re looking for. As we get more data we hope to expand even further potentially including teams and more.
Revamped Trading Lists
We now use smart lists to help you let people know what you want or are willing to give up. By that I mean that you can say I want “Kirby Puckett” cards and your want list will show you all of the Kirby Puckket cards on Zistle that you don’t have. Whats great about this is that as we get more and more cards your lists are automatically updated. We have many, many more improvements in the pipeline with respect to trading, including trade reccomendations and the ability to embed these dynamic lists in your blog allowing you to manage your cards in on place and access it from many. Expect to hear much more from us about this soon.
Bugs galore!
We are really happy with the quality of the site right now, but we wouldn’t be here without the help of our users. Thank You! Please use the feedback tools or send us email, we love to hear from you. In the end this site is about user participation, thats what will make it work. So let us know what you want, we’ll be happy to talk with you about it and see if we can’t get it into Zistle.
Information is power and traditional information sources are slowly losing the battle to control the dissemination of information. Newspapers are losing their control of the news to bloggers, record companies are seeing their profits plummet due to file sharing services, people are watching their favorite movies and TV shows online, authors are self-publishing or writing e-books, and the list goes on and on. Beckett, the reigning source of information in the card collecting hobby, is next and they know it. There has been a firestorm of opinion (
here,
here, and
here) regarding Beckett and its various transgressions: loaded box breaks, inflated and inaccurate pricing, bogus grading, among other controversies. Regardless of your opinion on Beckett’s intentions or practices, they are an information cartel and their supremacy over the hobby will eventually lose to the democratizing power of the internet.
Don’t believe me? I have one word for you: encyclopedias. There was a time when encyclopedias were indisputably the most widely used and trusted source for reference information. They cost several hundred dollars, took up lots of shelf space and quickly became outdated. In the 90′s, Microsoft Encarta enters the scene and creates a software version of an encyclopedia severely undermining the business model of the encyclopedia. It was less expensive, easier to update, and took no shelf space. Then the unthinkable happened: Wikipedia. The canons of knowledge were turned upside down by a free website written by volunteers. It is free and can anyone can update the information instantly. While it may seem impossible to think about a world where Beckett is no longer the dominant authority in the hobby, there was no one who ever imagined that the authority of an encyclopedia could be challenged by a website written by you and me. Encyclopedia Britannica sure didn’t and while they are still alive, they are being
forced to open their tomes to stay relevant in today’s information age.
We believe that Beckett is facing the same fate. There is nothing they produce that a group of passionate and knowledgeable collectors can’t do better. Ask yourself if a publication that relies on the advertising dollars of the card manufacturers can ever be as objective as the enthusiastic and knowledgeable collector who simply loves the hobby. It is impossible. Beckett isn’t in the truth business; they are in the card selling business. The more they inflate the prices, the more cards are sold, the more advertising revenue they receive. Why does anyone expect them to be objective? It isn’t how they make money. The lack of competition has allowed them to sacrifice their objectivity and they have tried to suffocate any bloggers who have raised their voices in dissent.
Zistle thinks it is time that Beckett’s stranglehold over the hobby is challenged by the collectors themselves. Our mission is to build the tools to empower collectors to do just that–take back the power of information in the card collecting hobby. Zistle can be the Wikipedia for card collectors. We can change the way pricing works, we can make tools to create transparency in the hobby, we can demand honesty from the card manufacturers–if we work together. We are just two collectors with no budget and we can’t do it alone. We need you. Will you
join us?
It was inevitable that I would start collecting again. While I knew I couldn’t live vicariously through Josh’s collection forever, the combination of building Zistle and finding my childhood collection intensified my hunger for starting up again. After some deliberation, I decided to begin by building a football collection. It is by far my favorite sport and since Josh collects baseball, our collections would complement each other.
So for Christmas, we adventured to our local hobby store and I decided on a box of 2007 Upper Deck Artifacts hoping that I might get lucky and score an Adrian Peterson rookie card. I wasn’t quite that lucky but I was extremely pleased with my pulls from my first box break. I scored four relic cards including a Michael Vick, which supposedly Upper Deck removed from all of their 2007 releases. TO was another great one for me.
I pulled six rookies as well including a gold parallel of Trent Edwards numbered to 99. I also nabbed a red parallel of Philip Rivers numbered to 99.
I was a little disappointed that I didn’t get an autograph but the shop owner made it up to me by giving me a Jay Cutler rookie (since we share the same last name). A nice touch I wouldn’t get with an online retailer.
My first box break was awesome but using Zistle to add the cards to my collection and using the Box Breaks feature was by far more exciting. For the first time, I could enter my box breaks and build my collection using the site that we had been laboring over the last few months. Pretty cool.
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