[tkaplan]

It’s time! September is Beckett Customer Appreciation Month. For anyone not familiar with it, this is the time we get to say Thank You for being a member on beckett.com. Each day in September, we will draw one name (from the list of registered names) to receive that day’s giveaway. We will also have random BONUS drawings throughout the month.

Interested in registering for the drawings? It’s easy.

Beginning September 1st, you can start registering daily.

1. Login to www.beckett.com
2. Go to www.beckett.com/customerappreciation and click ENTER THE CONTEST.

And that’s it. You’re registered. You can come back daily to register again.

A full list of giveaways will be posted on the forums on August 30th. http://www.beckett.com/forums/thread-1543328.html

As an added Thank You, we are also offering Free Shipping on all price guide books to U.S. customers through the month of September!


Updates on beckett.com

For the past month, we’ve continued with our Organize performance improvement project. Right now we are knee deep in the re-indexing of the data. That is why you are seeing the early morning maintenance messages. It is taking quite a bit longer than we had anticipated because of the incredibly large amount of data involved. At this time, we are targeting completion of the indexing around the 4th week in September. When the indexing is complete, this will open the door to finish the project and allow us to implement even more features on the site. We’re sorry it is taking so long, but we have to do this in small batches. The only other option would be to take the site down for several days. Since that is a poor option, we will continue with our daily maintenance.

While the Organize project is in full gear, we’ve also been able to push a new policy and a couple new features to the website.

1. Links on the Forums

There has been a change in the policy about links in the forums. We’ve been pretty strict about not allowing links (other than PhotoBucket) on the forums. We have eased the restrictions somewhat and are allowing: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and blog posts on the forums. The only restriction is that the links cannot be e-commerce sites. You can still enter your eBay username, Facebook Username, Twitter Username, Flickr Username, and Photobucket Username through your My Account/Contact Information page. This information will appear on your Profile page.

2. Search Tips

In case you were not aware, there are some pretty cool search tips available. We’re preparing a video and will also enter these details into the FAQs, but in the meantime, we’re describing them below.

a. Search a set for specific card numbers
Enter the set name and then enter the card numbers with the vertical bar (or pipe) between each number without spaces. This will bring up search results only for those particular cards in the set.

Example: You are looking for 2013 SPx cards 12, 18, 57, and 105
Enter: 2013 SPx 12|18|57|105 and hit enter

These are the search results you will see: http://www.beckett.com/search/?term=2013...m=extended

Not sure where the vertical bar key is? Look at the key above the Enter key. It is the back slash key. If you use the shift key and the back slash key, then that will create the vertical bar.

b. Exclude something from your search

Let’s take the 2013 SPx again for this example. Suppose that you did not want to see any of the jersey cards. Use the minus sign to indicate the word you do not want to see in the search results. You will need to make sure there is a space after the keywords you entered (2013 SPx), and include a space between the keywords and the minus sign (SPX –jersey)

Enter: 2013 SPx 12|18|57|105 –jersey

These are the results you will see: http://www.beckett.com/search/?term=2013...m=extended

c. You want to look for a specific set, and not all of the other sets that have a similar name.

In this case, let’s look at Topps Finest. If you were to just search Topps Finest, you would see search results with the words Topps and Finest, but not just Topps Finest. Use quotation marks to limit what comes back in your search results.

Enter: “Topps Finest”

These are the search results you will see: http://www.beckett.com/search/?term=%22T...m=extended

3. We have made some changes to the Marketplace homepage. Take a moment to check them out. http://marketplace.beckett.com

a. We have added links that will take you to newly added items on the Marketplace. These are items that have been added by our dealers within the past two weeks. To find the link, look at the SEARCH BY line just underneath the search bar. There is a drop down menu on the right. Hold your cursor over the down arrow and you will see your link. Click on the link to see search results for all Newly Added items.

b. On the same SEARCH BY line, you will also see CATEGORY. Hold your cursor over the down arrow and you will see that we have added some new categories to help you browse through the Marketplace:
Cards – Sports,
Cards – Boxes,
Cards – Graded
Cards, Cards – NonSports,
Autographs – Photographs,
Autographs – Balls/Pucks,
Diecast – NASCAR,
Collecting Supplies – Trading Cards,
Price Guides – Magazines,
Price Guides – Books, and
Toys – Sports Figurines.

c. Soon, we will also be implementing these features:

-- Quantity Discounts. Dealers can participate in quantity discounts which would offer a discounted price on single cards that reach a specific quantity.
-- A link that will show your WANTS (from Organize) in a Marketplace search.

What do we have in the works for the rest of beckett.com? Glad you asked. Here are some new features that are currently in the design phase.

1. Matchmaker - a single page that will show you your best options for trading and buying.

2. U.S. Coins - a new collectibles option on beckett.com. Collect, organize, trade, buy, and sell coins through our new U.S. Coin database.
3. C2C Selling - a restructuring of our current Trade system to make trading, selling, and buying between collectors a breeze.

There are a lot of details in this letter, so if you have questions, contact us at customerservice@beckett.com and we’ll be happy to help you out.

Don’t forget that Customer Appreciation Month starts September 1st.

Thank you for being a member!
Your Beckett.com Team

[jacobystealshome]

im glad the trade features are being worked on. one feature that i have not seen any talk about is a sortable value column. will this be implemented in the trade section? it would make life a heck of a lot easier

---

also, the search tricks would be nice if they would universally through the site

for instance: in the opg, i can search for partial words, or even numbers. this is usful in numerous ways. say i want to search for a carl yastremski card from the 1970's but i dont know what year it is from. i can search for "197 carl yast topps" (because who wants to try to spell yastremski) and it will pull up all of yaz's topps cards from the 70's. also, it's nice for shortprint A and B variations. if you have a stradburg topps card #661, bur dont know which variation, if you type strasburg 661, all the variations come up. if you just want to be lazy, it's helpful: if i want to find say a "2007 Bowman Chrome Draft Draft Picks Blue Refractors #BDPP57 John Tolisano", i can just type 2007 bow blu ref joh tolis" and get my result

that capability is not available in the org. though in the org we search for things using parenthesis (which is similar to the vertical bar search in the opg)

[snobles]

What do we have in the works for the rest of beckett.com? Glad you asked. Here are some new features that are currently in the design phase.

1. Matchmaker - a single page that will show you your best options for trading and buying.

2. U.S. Coins - a new collectibles option on beckett.com. Collect, organize, trade, buy, and sell coins through our new U.S. Coin database.
3. C2C Selling - a restructuring of our current Trade system to make trading, selling, and buying between collectors a breeze.

Thanks so much for the update and it is nice to know things are being worked on. The item above called "matchmaker" has been in the works for years now. Is this something that is seriously in the works or is this more smoke?

It would be nice to get an honest answer for once.

[elberson]

I would like to see sets and wax added to org, rather then adding every single card

[taffster74]

Tkaplan, all this is good (about the updates) but it still doesn't not explain - nor offer an opology for - the forums being completely unaccessable this last weekend. xx

[iamralpho]

I dont want to ruin a positive thread either, I am glad we have some information.

I am still waiting on an explanation on what happened to mine and others organize's, no one ever gae me an answer.

Pretty upsetting if you ask me

[jacobystealshome]

Tkaplan, all this is good (about the updates) but it still doesn't not explain - nor offer an opology for - the forums being completely unaccessable this last weekend. xx

they have already explained this in other posts: they tried to implement new functionality, but it caused problems, so they had to revert back to the old site

[taffster74]

Jacoby, rather than hearing it second hand, i'd like to hear it directly from beckett. Second hand information is no good - especially when those other posts are not presented. Nor does it explain 2 whole days of the message boards being down.

[jacobystealshome]

Jacoby, rather than hearing it second hand, i'd like to hear it directly from beckett. Second hand information is no good - especially when those other posts are not presented. Nor does it explain 2 whole days of the message boards being down.

it was posted right on the boards by either beckett staff or by the mods from the beckett staff. the search function is your friend.

and while im sure your IT credentials are writ large, im sure you have no earthly clue from a tech standpoint why the forums would be down for two days. even if it was explained to you

while i have been extremely critical of how they handles these updates (i had one thread deleted, and i posted something to their fb page), criticizing beckett for not doing they actually did do seems, well, counter-productive.

i do think they do a terrible job of communication, and i think they do not do some simple things that most web developers do, for whatever reason.

Im not trying to attack you personally. your larger point that you are trying to make is fine, but your specifics are actually wrong

[tkaplan]

im glad the trade features are being worked on. one feature that i have not seen any talk about is a sortable value column. will this be implemented in the trade section? it would make life a heck of a lot easier

---

also, the search tricks would be nice if they would universally through the site

for instance: in the opg, i can search for partial words, or even numbers. this is usful in numerous ways. say i want to search for a carl yastremski card from the 1970's but i dont know what year it is from. i can search for "197 carl yast topps" (because who wants to try to spell yastremski) and it will pull up all of yaz's topps cards from the 70's. also, it's nice for shortprint A and B variations. if you have a stradburg topps card #661, bur dont know which variation, if you type strasburg 661, all the variations come up. if you just want to be lazy, it's helpful: if i want to find say a "2007 Bowman Chrome Draft Draft Picks Blue Refractors #BDPP57 John Tolisano", i can just type 2007 bow blu ref joh tolis" and get my result

that capability is not available in the org. though in the org we search for things using parenthesis (which is similar to the vertical bar search in the opg)

Thanks for the details. I'm going to make a copy of this and as we continue to work on Organize and other search areas, I'll bring this to everyone's attention and see what may (or may not) be possible.