6/26/2021
Topic:
New in town - some newbie questions / observations
Alphasuntory
|
Hi all —
Recovering collector / pack-rat here; in the interest of massively thinning out my collection after decades of lugging longboxes from cramped apartment to cramped apartment, I'm finally making a concerted effort to crack open these heavy-ass time capsules and make a detailed assessment of what I've got.
Having been out of the collecting loop for a long time, it's been interesting and enlightening to see what current tools and processes are available now, from online resources to professional grading & slabbing.
As an avid collector of music as well, and I have to say I was honestly quite surprised that among all the changes and advancements in the comics-collecting world, there does not seem to have emerged any single, dedicated, centralized, de facto authority for comics info — whether as a marketplace (to gauge pricing history / current value) or even just as a database-indexed repository for metadata. Sites like Discogs and MusicBrainz have spoiled me I guess.
So I looked around, checked out a few sites geared toward collection-tracking and value estimation, kicked the tires, and it seems like this place has the best balance of what I'm looking for for my needs — tracking the specific items in my physical collection, making record of their current condition, and monitoring their value over time. ComicsPriceGuide seems to have an enormous weath and depth of preexisting information, and a nicely granular approximation of value-by-condition for everything. I sprung for a gold tier membership, and I expect to be spending a lot of time on here in the days & months to come.
With that said, a few first impressions from a bright-eyed newbie —
1. The ability to export an entire collection & all relevant fields to a single .csv file seems like an incredibly important feature, I imagine for most. I recognize that this can be done on a by-publisher basis; this is definitely better than nothing but it seems arbitrary and frustratingly piecemeal. To me exporting by "box" would seem more intuitive, but I recognize different people use the site in different ways. In any case though, I think there is a legitimate need for an export-entire-collection-at-once option.
2. The "box" concept is useful, but also seems on first impression to be limiting in some ways. There are certain basic collection management tasks, tools, and features that seem to only be available in "box" view. When opening one of my boxes, I can see that there's checkbox selection functionality (individually and en-masse), enabling various item management options; and there's an at-a-glance overview of total box value and item count. Which is great. When viewing my entire collection all at once (at https://comicspriceguide.com/collection/{username} ), I would have expected the same thing; I was surprised that this view is only broken down by series title, not by individual issue. There's no way that I can find to get a comprehensive "bird's-eye-view" look at my entire collection of issues, regardless of box or title — but I may also be missing something.
Overall though I've been really impressed by the resources this site offers, and am glad to have a spot where I can dig in and start getting my stuff catalogued & to get a frame of reference for present-day worth. So I appreciate all the work that's clearly gone into it!
edited by alphasuntory on 6/26/2021 |
6/26/2021
Topic:
New in town - some newbie questions / observations
Alphasuntory
|
Continuing the newbie questions:
When incorrect info is found in the database, what's the proper process to get that corrected?
For instance, the entry for Mek #1 currently lists a "Published Date" of November 2002.
Looking at that issue's indicia (copy in-hand), the date listed there is January 2003. Which is consistent with the "JANUARY" printed on the upper right corner of the front cover, under the prices (also visible in the existing scan).
Don't see a way to edit it directly, nor to submit a correction or report an error or anything. |
6/26/2021
Topic:
New in town - some newbie questions / observations
Alphasuntory
|
…and ongoing newbie observations:
When looking at the contents of one of my boxes in the "View List" view, basic details are nicely and neatly summarized next to each thumbnail — issue number, publishing date, age, cover price, paid price, grade, value, and any notes. Which is great.
Would be really helpful to have the series title in there as well! Helps for zeroing in on something using ctrl-F in a browser.
I know there's the series title dropdown menu up top for filtering the list — but to me that's a less intuitive / more laborious way to find something. |
6/26/2021
Topic:
New in town - some newbie questions / observations
Alphasuntory
|
Noted — many thanks! |
8/7/2022
Topic:
Can we PLEASE have an EXPORT to Excel
Alphasuntory
|
Ronbatman wrote:
I do not see this happening. We are constantly dealing with people trying to steal our data and that would really help them. For security, we will not be adding that feature.
Ron
Gold-tier subscriber here, and for all the great things about this site & service, I have to say that the absence of a user's ability to export / locally manipulate the items in their collection (so that they can sort, aggregate, filter, sum, whatever) is really conspicuous. Especially with a $50.00/year membership. For music collectors, sites like Discogs allow you to do all of this, for free, so it was a bit of a shock to me to discover that even with a paid membership here, there's no such option.
If data theft is a concern, then I think the site, at minimum, needs to give users a way to do some of this basic info manipulation within the browser. I was astonished for example that within my collection boxes, there were no sorting options, at all. After spending a lot of hours meticulously going through dozens of comics and marking down their condition grades here, I was disappointed that there was no way, for example, sort the comics in my "box" by value, by condition, by date entered. No way to sort or filter by anything really, except series title from what I can see.
Speaking frankly, this puts users in a tough position. Those of us that have invested time and effort in entering our collections here have two unpalatable options -- find another site/service that allows users to perform these tasks and spend the time to enter one's collection all over again somewhere; or, stick with this one and hope these functions get implemented here at some point. From what I can see on the forums here, discussions / requests on topics like this have been taking place for years. So that's discouraging.
Without the ability to do some of these basic things — and I mean "basic" in the sense that these are things that anyone making use of a database would reasonably expect to be able to do by default — the paid subscription starts to feel less and less worth it. I think if you want to retain paying users, you'll want to allow them to perform these very standard, reasonable things with their collection data. |
8/12/2022
Topic:
Missing series (likely one-shot): Top Notch (1998)
Alphasuntory
|
Came across a comic book in my collection that isn't yet catalogued on the site. Details below. Details not supplied below are unknown and/or unspecified in/on the book.
01. TITLE:
Top Notch
02. PUBLISHER:
Fantagraphics Books, Inc.
03. COUNTRY PUBLISHED:
United States
04. COUNTRY PRINTED:
Canada
=====================================================
05. ISSUE #:
1
06. COVER PRICE:
$ 4.50 US
$ 5.95 Canada
07. DATE:
November 1998
08. ISSUE NOTES:
09. PRINT RUN (If Known or Listed):
10. ISBN/ISSN# (If Listed):
11. URL TO COVER SCAN (If Available):
More information: https://www.comics.org/series/82638/ |
8/14/2022
Topic:
Missing Series: Altercations (2002)
Alphasuntory
|
Came across a comic book in my collection that isn't yet catalogued on the site. Details below. Details not supplied below are unknown and/or unspecified in/on the book.
01. TITLE:
Altercations
02. PUBLISHER:
Sleeping Giant Comics
03. COUNTRY PUBLISHED:
United States
04. COUNTRY PRINTED:
United States
=====================================================
05. ISSUE #:
1
06. COVER PRICE:
$ 8.95 US
$14.85 Canada
07. DATE:
November 2002
08. ISSUE NOTES:
09. PRINT RUN (If Known or Listed):
10. ISBN: 0-9722646-1-2
11. URL TO COVER SCAN (If Available):
More information: https://www.abebooks.com/servlet/BookDetailsPL?bi=30916444496&cm_sp=det-_-bsk-_-bdp |
9/5/2022
Topic:
Missing series (likely one-shot): Top Notch (1998)
Alphasuntory
|
Thanks! |
9/5/2022
Topic:
Missing Series: Altercations (2002)
Alphasuntory
|
Thank you! |
9/19/2022
Topic:
Problems editing issues' collection details
Alphasuntory
|
Noticing unexpected behavior recently, having to do with the "Edit" function (for modifying collection-specific details like box, grade, price paid, etc.) on comics that are already present in one's collection.
When the "Edit" button is clicked, the fields that appear for editing don't retain their values, and seem to revert to a generic default. The Condition dropdown appears set at "(9.4) Near Mint", regardless of how that item's condition was previously set; the Add To Box dropdown defaults to "Unorganized."
The problems with this are probably obvious -- this makes it very easy to inadvertently lose certain information that you've already set, when editing an item in your collection.
This seems to be occurring regardless of which "view" one is using to display items in their collection (list-style view in a user's boxes, or in a "Your Issues" section of a series page, or in an individual issue's "My Collection" tab view).
The following fields / settings DO seem to correctly retain their preexisting user-set values:
Issue Notes
You Paid
Graded
Autographed
Screenshots are attached. (Edit: also displayed inline now, sorry if they're too big / too small, I couldn't find the sweet spot lol).
Individual issue My Collection view:
Editing an issue while in list view (within a box, or within a "My Issues" context on a series' page).
edited by alphasuntory on 9/19/2022 |
10/10/2022
Topic:
Problems editing issues' collection details
Alphasuntory
|
For whatever it's worth, I happened to notice that the above does NOT appear to be happening while editing in-collection comics via the mobile version of the website. There, any preexisting settings for box & grade are preserved when the Edit button is hit. |
10/10/2022
Topic:
Missing one-shot: Snakes & Ladders (likely 2001)
Alphasuntory
|
Came across a comic book in my collection that doesn't appear to be catalogued on the site. Details below. Details not supplied below are unknown and/or unspecified in/on the book.
01. TITLE:
[on cover] Snakes & Ladders
[in indicia] Snakes and Ladders
02. PUBLISHER:
Eddie Campbell Comics / Top Shelf Productions
[explicit wording as provided in indicia:
"Published by Eddie Campbell Comics, PO Box 230, Paddington Q 4064, Australia
American agent: Chris Staros, Top Shelf Productions, PO Box 1282, Marietta GA 30061-1282, United States of America"
A Top Shelf logo appears next to the indicia.]
03. COUNTRY PUBLISHED:
United States
04. COUNTRY PRINTED:
Canada
=====================================================
05. ISSUE #:
[no issue number explicitly listed on cover or in indicia]
06. COVER PRICE:
$ 5.95 US
07. DATE:
[undated on cover or in indicia, aside from © year of 2001. Online sources suggest October 2001, see URLs below]
08. ISSUE NOTES:
09. PRINT RUN (If Known or Listed):
10. ISBN/ISSN# (If Listed):
ISBN: 0 9577896 5 3
11. URL TO COVER SCAN (If Available):
More information:
https://web.archive.org/web/20011205110023/http://www.eddiecampbellcomics.com/snakes/
https://www.comics.org/issue/231461/
[note: this site identifies Australia as country of publication, which either is incorrect, or is correct but referring to an edition other than mine, which looks to be a US edition. For instance, the only price on my copy states, verbatim: "$5.95 United States of America"; no other price is listed.]
https://web.archive.org/web/20021204222634/http://www.topshelfcomix.com:80/topshelf/index.html
[top section of page]
UPC on back cover, if useful:
9 780957 789654-00595
edited by alphasuntory on 10/10/2022 |
10/11/2022
Topic:
Missing one-shot: Snakes & Ladders (likely 2001)
Alphasuntory
|
Ooof! Thanks, can't believe I forgot about the Country dropdown. Thanks! |
10/11/2022
Topic:
Problems editing issues' collection details
Alphasuntory
|
Thanks Ron, and no I understand that part.
It's just that, from a user perspective, that behavior seems counterintuitive.
Let's say I want to adjust the price-paid value I'd previously entered on a comic I own.
When I navigate to that issue, and hit "Edit," the behavior I'd expect is that I can adjust the price value, and hit save, and that's that.
It is not my expectation that while I'm doing that, other fields are reverting to their default values, losing whatever information I'd previously entered there.
And like I say -- this behavior I'm reporting does NOT happen when using the site on a mobile browser. The behavior I'm experiencing in that context is exactly what I would expect -- the initial state when entering "Edit" mode is that all previously-entered values are preserved (but of course available for the user to modify).
I hope this makes sense.
I'll do some more testing across platforms & browsers. The environment in which I'm seeing the reported behavior is Safari 16.0 on OSX 12.6.
The mobile environment in which I'm seeing the behavior I'd expect is Brave v1.44 on Android 13. |
10/11/2022
Topic:
Problems editing issues' collection details
Alphasuntory
|
OK -- after some quick testing it looks like this behavior is only happening in Safari. Apologies, testing other browsers should've been my first step.
In my OSX environment, entering Edit mode correctly retains previously-entered data in Brave, Chrome, and Firefox
Seems like Safari is the only one not playing nice.
Apologies for the confusion. Might be worth looking into for Safari users' sake. But for my part, I'm just going to use a different browser. |
10/13/2022
Topic:
Too Much Coffee Man mini-comic series
Alphasuntory
|
I have a couple of issues of Shannon Wheeler's Too Much Coffee Man comic in their original/early mini-comic format. From what I can tell, these early mini-comics are not yet in the database.
Details below. Details not supplied below are unknown and/or unspecified in/on the book.
01. TITLE:
Too Much Coffee Man
02. PUBLISHER:
Adhesive Comics
03. COUNTRY PUBLISHED:
United States
04. COUNTRY PRINTED:
{unspecified, presumably United States}
=====================================================
05. ISSUE #:
2 (2nd printing)
06. COVER PRICE:
$ 0.75 US
07. DATE:
October 1993 (note that this is the date of this 2nd printing edition; 1st print came out at some time earlier, I believe in 1991 or 1992)
08. ISSUE NOTES:
Mini-comic format (4" × 5½")
12 pages
Color front & back covers. All interior pages black & white
2nd printing
09. PRINT RUN (If Known or Listed):
10. ISBN:
11. URL TO COVER SCAN (If Available):
https://d1466nnw0ex81e.cloudfront.net/n_iv/600/1634681.jpg
More information:
https://www.mycomicshop.com/search?TID=25102388
(please scroll to issue "#2B")
https://www.ebay.com/itm/255718616346?nma=true&si=W5scLEhuWgSfnb2i1dIFSp9H00k%253D&orig_cvip=true&nordt=true&rt=nc&_trksid=p2047675.l2557
(expired eBay auction, but has scan of back cover for reference).
____________________________________________________________________
01. TITLE:
Too Much Coffee Man
02. PUBLISHER:
Adhesive Comics
03. COUNTRY PUBLISHED:
United States
04. COUNTRY PRINTED:
{unspecified, presumably United States}
=====================================================
05. ISSUE #:
3 (2nd printing)
06. COVER PRICE:
{none listed}
07. DATE:
October 1993 (note that this is the date of this 2nd printing edition; 1st print came out at some time earlier, I believe in 1991 or 1992)
08. ISSUE NOTES:
Mini-comic format (4" × 5½")
12 pages
Color front & back covers. All interior pages black & white
2nd printing
09. PRINT RUN (If Known or Listed):
10. ISBN:
11. URL TO COVER SCAN (If Available):
https://d1466nnw0ex81e.cloudfront.net/n_iv/600/1634672.jpg
More information:
https://www.mycomicshop.com/search?TID=25102388
(please scroll to issue "#3B")
edited by ronbatman on 10/14/2022
edited by alphasuntory on 10/14/2022
edited by alphasuntory on 10/14/2022 |
10/15/2022
Topic:
Issue Notes field "special" character problem
Alphasuntory
|
Noticed some strange behavior in the Issue Notes field. Was making a note about issue values that made use of the greater-than-or-equal-to symbol ("≥"). Saved the notes. Refreshed the page; the symbol was now showing as a regular equals symbol ("="). Edited the notes thinking it had been an error on my part; replaced the "=" with "≥"; saved; same thing happened.
(This post is gonna look pretty confusing if the same phenomenon happens here in the forums haha) |
11/14/2022
Topic:
Adding "Published" date when only year is known
Alphasuntory
|
Wanted to contribute a "Published" date for a particular issue entry in the database (A1 issue 1, https://comicspriceguide.com/titles/a1/1/pmyplq ). However in the issue's indicia (and elsewhere in & on the issue), only a year is provided (1989), no month or season. The database seemingly won't allow me to enter a year without a month or season. Seems a shame, since having the publication year alone strikes me as being better than no info at all. Any way around this? |
