What are you looking for in your ideal hobby related website?

If you were given the opportunity to start your own hobby related website, what direction would you give to the designers and programmers to create the site? What would be your must-have features? What would be the things you would want to have the would continually bring you, and other hobby enthusiasts, back to the site on the daily basis?

• Checklists
• Card Values
• Have/Want Lists
• Trading Partners
• Image Library

What else would you ask for?

Knowledgeable folks for both player collectors and box busting folks.

Informed members that care about building relationships, not just making another sale.

If you'd like to discuss, I have some plans, PM me or email me at my user name @aol.

Ryan

Solid member content. I was heavily involved in hobby message boards 2005-2008. Got side tracked and kind of fell off the map in 2011-14. Back into the hobby now, and most of the message boards I used to frequent are either gone, or are ghost towns with very little activity. I have been lurking here for quite a while and see that this is one of the most active boards in the hobby. I also like how a variety of things are collected. All that being said, the main thing I look for is community. A forum to rdad, learn and share different aspects of what makes this hobby great, and why we have the passion we do for it.

Friends

Fair deals

Checklists

Content

I look at two message boards I have been over the years as examples of what I personally like to see in a hobby related website.

Beckett boards (the old one)
The old Beckett boards had just about anything a person could ask for. A great mix of older and younger collectors with differing opinions and ideas who actually liked to have a conversation and not an argument. Although arguments did occasionally break out it does seem that we all respected the opinions of others and grudges were not held against posters for the most part. We had vintage and modern guys who really knew their stuff and were not afraid to share their knowledge. We had the marketplace available as well as checklisted information. Was the old boards perfect? Anyone who spent any time on their knew they were not but I think those boards were the closest to a real community I have ever felt in this hobby.

Net54 boards
The Net54 boards continue to be a constant source of knowledge and collectors willing to help out others on any and all topics. In my opinion, they are the most complete and total hobby related web site on the internet today and even though they deal mainly in pre-war cards, you can certainly find a great group of people who do dabble in modern and can offer educated opinions on both ends of the hobby spectrum. They have a great b/s/t board there and all aspects of the site are moderated to allow for spirited discussion of topics. And where they heck else can you actually have a conversation with the great Walter Johnson's grandson and hear about his memories of his grandfather.

I think these boards have great potential but we need those who have hobby knowledge to contribute. I would say look back at the old Beckett boards and think about what drew many of us to them. Spend some time on the Net54 boards and see how they operate. Emulating these two sites will, in my opinion, help to lay a blueprint for where FCB should go.

Is some kind of price guide, based on a mix of prices from different sources, such as eBay, dealers, shows, online deals and auctions even possible? Or just too big/hard to do?

I dont think pricing is as important as being a community to discuss this hobby of ours. We can all look up Ebay ending prices as well as look at other sources for pricing. I think if you made an attempt to compile a price guide for this forum you would pull your hair out trying to keep up. Perhaps if you wanted to report prices realized on the B/S/T forum here that might be more relevant but an overall price guide from al the other sources you mentioned is just not something I feel this or any message board site could do with any degree of accuracy.

I would want little to no accessibility for new members, constant sniping by current members, and trashing of new products months before they arrive, and little to no original content.

Oops, sorry - I described blowout by accident

In all seriousness - checklists are good, reviews of current and older products are a must, and original content by informed members that can spark a discussion is as well. I also wouldn't mind a column discussing hobby trends - a hot list is good, but market analysis and grading updates would be cool too. FCB has been hitting out if the park recently with the "featured threads" , that should be the content basis for anyone going forward. If you could somehow merge baseballcardpedia and FCB, it would be a match made in hobby heaven

I want a specialty website called 1of1finder.com where people can list which 1 of 1 cards they own; fully searchable by sport, set, player, team, year, etc.; in which members can catalog which 1 of 1 cards they own - with a photo - and list them as not for sale, fielding offers or BIN price. It'd be great to have a resource for tracking down the most elusive cards. I'd list the misc. 1 of 1 commons I've got that some obscure collector might really want, and I'd check for my player PC's all the time.

For checklists, I'd like teams listed as well.

I cannot stress this point enough, especially for collectors who root for crappy teams. When going through baseballcardpedia trying to checklist everything from 1993-present, I spent half my time checking to see if 2002 Preston Wilson cards featured him with the Marlins or Rockies. Same with a million other rent-a-players they had for 1-2 seasons.

Price guides, meh. That's what Ebay is for. Same with pictures. Nowadays, you can find every image you want (and many you don't!) online

bradical said:

If you were given the opportunity to start your own hobby related website, what direction would you give to the designers and programmers to create the site? What would be your must-have features? What would be the things you would want to have the would continually bring you, and other hobby enthusiasts, back to the site on the daily basis?

• Checklists
• Card Values
• Have/Want Lists
• Trading Partners
• Image Library

What else would you ask for?

Click to expand...

As a player collector for Fred McGriff plus some others accurate checklists would be a biggie for me.
Here is an example of what different sites have for McGriff.
Sportscardlist has 2304 items listed
tradingcarddb has 2529 items listed
Zistle has 2102 items listed
Beckett has 2736 items listed
My list has 3069 items listed granted some of these are minor variations and errors.

The task for a complete checklist is even more daunting for a team collector. I have been putting together a Chicago Cubs checklist and its pretty hard to do. Plus some information is inaccurate when searching by team on several sites.

An easy to use interface to enter your collection plus what you want would be awesome. Also something to match up trades with others would be great as well.

Image library is somewhat important and it would be nice if images were included with the checklist.

Pricing information to me is the least important.

Just want to add here. With some other hobbies I am involved in past/present have some good models of how this can be done. Discogs is a good example for music collectors. Collectorz.com has pretty good services for movie, book, music, comic books and video games. Although Collectorz does charge for the service it can be well worth it. I am really surprised Collectorz or no other companies have stepped up to do something for trading cards. I know Beckett does this but the site they have completely sucks. Plus I think Beckett wants to charge to much for the service. I could live with a yearly fee or something but not monthly.

gracecollector said:

I want a specialty website called 1of1finder.com where people can list which 1 of 1 cards they own; fully searchable by sport, set, player, team, year, etc.; in which members can catalog which 1 of 1 cards they own - with a photo - and list them as not for sale, fielding offers or BIN price. It'd be great to have a resource for tracking down the most elusive cards. I'd list the misc. 1 of 1 commons I've got that some obscure collector might really want, and I'd check for my player PC's all the time.

Click to expand...

I think this may be my favorite idea - I collect many, many lower-tier players, and having a resource for these rare cards would be great. It's currently a pain to search eBay for these types of players.

JoshHamilton said:

For checklists, I'd like teams listed as well.

I cannot stress this point enough, especially for collectors who root for crappy teams. When going through baseballcardpedia trying to checklist everything from 1993-present, I spent half my time checking to see if 2002 Preston Wilson cards featured him with the Marlins or Rockies. Same with a million other rent-a-players they had for 1-2 seasons.

Price guides, meh. That's what Ebay is for. Same with pictures. Nowadays, you can find every image you want (and many you don't!) online

Click to expand...

And this is my second favorite idea

I've been running into the same trouble, I started trying to put together a comprehensive checklist from 1996-present, and it has been a task and a half. I haven't really gotten that far because there's no accurate way to do it without massive amounts of frustration currently. I have about 3 or 4 different sources that I compare and try to figure out exactly what was in which set. And that's only 1998, I can't imagine how annoying it'll be in say, 2004 or 2005 when there was so much product.