[ceocards]

Speaking only for myself, while I agree the board traffic is down - especially amongst the 'old guard' that used to frequent the boards, I haven't seen much of a slow down in trading activity.

I've got 24 active trades going right now...and have steadily had 10-15 at any one given time.

There has certainly been a dramatic membership shift - some really good old members have left (hopefully not for good), but new members have come to take their place. Hopefully the new members can get their feet wet and eventually fill the void.

It's true of any message board system like this that there will always be a few 'stalwarts' that will be there for better or for worse through it all, but most of the membership comes and goes on a pretty regular basis. Beckett has certainly contributed to that movement with some of the recent board and policy changes...but ultimately there are still a couple hundred new members signing up every day. Of course only a small percentage of those will find their way to the boards and become active contributors and traders, but as long as the new flow is positive, there's hope that this will continue to be a vibrant and first-class community of members.

[radarblip]

I don't see the site suddenly adding more traffic at any time soon because it has become dreadfully boring, for the most part. Minus 5 year old cards with supposed High End value is about what is offered now and maybe a double handful of the same people doing most of the posting.

I don't know where people are going. Most of the sites I've been to are too much work to try to deal with. I don't need another job, I only want to do some layed back Trading and Selling (on occasion). It will be a long time before we see that here again, if ever...

[srruss]

I find it difficult to trade here, even though I do have a couple in the works. What makes it difficult for me is:

1. I only have 1 trade to show for after all my previous activity that was lost prior to the beta site. I have made a couple trades but the site was down so they don't count either.

2. I read so many 'Bad Trader' threads that I am gun shy over sending my cards first, or even at all, with a greater probability that I will see nothing in return. This is true for even the veteran traders that have turned out to be questionable recently.

Just got to looking at some figures. There are 125 replies to the posts on the Front page. Some have been here posted for days and weeks,,,,pathetic!!!!! at best.

This site used to ROCK with 50 to 100 replies per hour for most threads and 100 new threads per night. The unenteresting Slag has taken over the site and seems to be Happy posting to themselves.

Even the Football Borads are taking over the Baseball and in the past they were never half as much, Interesting stats?

[chiefsncards275]

beckett needs to do some advertising, wouldnt hurt them at all

[ceocards]

I don't see the site suddenly adding more traffic at any time soon because it has become dreadfully boring, for the most part. Minus 5 year old cards with supposed High End value is about what is offered now and maybe a double handful of the same people doing most of the posting.

Yep - I too have noticed that. As someone who doesn't deal in the higher end stuff, I find myself skipping over a lot more trade threads than I used to. This is ESPECIALLY true on the football boards (not dissing the football guys/gals...just making an observation).

I recently posted similar threads on baseball and football, offering multiple scans of lower-end gu/auto cards that had been sitting in my bucket for a while. I managed to get 5 or 6 baseball trades off those threads, but the football one took 3 days to even get a reply (since I wasn't offering $100 autos or super hot rookie cards).

I think we 'old school' team/player collectors are still here, we're just more scarce and harder to find than we used to be.

---

beckett needs to do some advertising, wouldnt hurt them at all

Advertising where? To who?

It would be a waste of money in my opinion. Collectors already know the Beckett name and non-collectors won't have any interest.

Better that they direct their time and resources into getting the site fully operational. That will be the best way to get the old users to return, new users to come, and have the users stay once they're here.

[radarblip]

Hey Chris. being a Moderator certainly helps your Trading efforts from both ends. Your a pretty sure bet and probably no one is going to mess with you.

You are privy to a lot more info than we are and my rantings are literally based on what I can see and quasi-hear from around the Horn. I find it hard to beliebe that the site is seeing that many people per day because we see little of it here in the form of Fresh Meat but I have to take your word for it, there is no reason for you to make this stuff up...

[shivelycore]

I've noticed if I want anything for sets I'm building more than 2 years old really, is a total crap shoot. It's definitely a lot of people only wanting 150 dollar autos.

[ceocards]

Hey Chris. being a Moderator certainly helps your Trading efforts from both ends. Your a pretty sure bet and probably no one is going to mess with you.

You are privy to a lot more info than we are and my rantings are literally based on what I can see and quasi-hear from around the Horn. I find it hard to beliebe that the site is seeing that many people per day because we see little of it here in the form of Fresh Meat but I have to take your word for it, there is no reason for you to make this stuff up...

Don't get me wrong Mel - I agree with most of your points. At the bottom of the main forum page is a box that shows how many 'members' the site has...it has continually and steadily gone up a hundred or so users each day. Of course I don't know how many of those are actual users, and not just spambots or the like, and like I said only a small percent of those will become active members on the boards and such.

But I guess I'm holding out hope that as long as fresh blood keeps coming in, that the site will eventually build back to its former 'glory'. If Beckett can get everything working 100% I think that would go a long way to that end as well.

[radarblip]

I was going to take the weekend off because while doing some things inside my ORG, the system decided to remove my Trade Away cards checks and make all of them ZERO. So, now I have nothing to offer except a few I put up for another trader and some Sale items.

This morning I pulled up Pujols (because there weren't many) and tried to fix them. I marked the ones that had double zeroes (these keep showing up in searches) because I was going to eleminate them.

Sent them to the Trash and tried to empty the Trash.......NOW!, here is what happened. The screen blinked, it added check marks to my Trade column, put the removed cards back into list and the cards are still in the Trash....Lol, now! that is messed up.

Will go back a little later and see if it has fixed itself. Lol, its not like I have anything more to lose, its already gone.

[iujapander]

I do agree with all that you are saying about the site, and it is kind of sad to see how much it has gone down hill in just the short time I have been here. If you want to see something funny go to the main page and sort by views. A thread couldn't get that many views today if you paid people to reply. (I only look at the baseball boards, so can't speak for FB, BB, etc.)

I really think that the best thing Beckett could do is add a writer or something for the boards. I get little to no new information from this site (and no I don't count Mr. Olds opening up boxes as informative).

For example other sites have the top ten hot cards, the Leaf signing of Ichiro, who has been called up, MiLB stats, etc. I can find more info on the first page of many other sites than I can in the first 20 pages here.

I'm too heavily invested, and I like the concept of the org too much to leave here, but there is only so much one can take from the programming/cost side of the site. They really killed any hopes of keeping/attracting new members by charging for the organize. Or if they even delivered on anything they said (like charging for the org bc of the new match maker and other features that haven't been mentioned since May). Also what happened to the President that was going to actually listen to the people and all of this other good stuff and hasn't been heard from since, while raising the price of the OPG by 100% during my two years here.

The only thing that Beckett does better than the other sites is they at least have some class in the forums. If I read another 20 page long "discussion" on pack searching where it is just members bashing each other I'll lose my mind. (and yes I think pack searchers are vile)

I think people like me first came back to beckett because that is what we grew up with. But as they keep distancing themselves by charging for every little feature, the newer generation of collectors will (and are) gravatating to other sites. If I were beckett I would be very concerned about Zistle and other competing sites bc if you think the exodus is bad now, as soon as some one comes up with something even remotely comparable to Beckett the levee will break (if it hasn't already).