Collectionbuddy

Data Data Everywhere

A huge game changing alteration has been been made to the Collectionbuddy catalog and eBay listings page.  Instead of clicking through links to get to historical ebay information it's all right there in the items list.  This change is important for further Collectionbuddy developments in the future, as it allows for all sorts of data sorting and filter funtions. 

We thought that bringing all this information up to the front and centre would slow the searches down a bit.  We were mistaken.  Bringing all historic information forward into this view required the same resources as simply bring the price up.

Here is a look at the new information set for each item listing.  We have included information that is most relevant to appraising your own items, checking the value of current auctions, and seeing what is popular and what is readily available.  

We should have filter and sorting soon to take advantage of this new development.   

Announcing the New and Improved Collectionbuddy.com

Its been almost a year since we first launched Collectionbuddy.com. I would like to say that we started out humbly trying to build a great site for collectors, however, in reality we started out with a somewhat unachievable goal of trying to build the ultimate online database of collectibles. We realized that it would be impossible to achieve the goal by ourselves and we would have to rely on our users uploading their collections. Most collectors we spoke to believed that in theory this was a great concept but in reality nobody was going to spend the time scanning in their collection and uploading it to the site!

We started to look at alternative ways in which we could acquire data that would be valuable to a community of collectors. At the same time we took a hard look at the usage paradigm and started to consider how we could make the site as usable and friendly to the widest range of users, from the tech savvy to the collector who just uses email and eBay.

The result is the new and improved Collectionbuddy.com. 

The new Collectionbuddy consists of many collecting clubs. Each collecting club is a place where collectors of similar items can "gather" and find relevant and timely information about their collections, research collectibles and engage in conversations and discussions with like minded club members.

Now there are many sites and forums on the internet where collectors already congregate and meet. There are vibrant discussion groups in many categories and lots of web sites that offer advise, blogs and feature collectibles. 

Our goal with collectionbuddy is to create a platform where online collection clubs would benefit from the latest web technologies and would be able to present collectors with information and tools that they have never had access to.

As an example, we have concluded license agreements which will show collectors in a particular club the value of their collectibles ( based on previous historical sales data). Collectors can now spend time researching the value of collectibles and finding items that they would like to acquire. There is no membership fee and no cost to research.

Each club will have many more features, such as the latest news and information written by experts in the field, a membership roster to contact other collectors, a forum for discussions and the ability for collectors to manage and value their collections online.

We are starting out with a beta version of the site and have licensed content in the categories of Comics, Postcards, Hot Wheels, Watches and Murano Glass. We are gong to spend the next few months tweaking the site (with feedback from our users), making it faster and more usable and we will start incrementally expanding the number of clubs we have.

We are actively looking for collectors who would like to operate a club. We provide all the technology to allow you to write articles and moderate discussions. Contact us for more information.

Finally, this is just the beginning of the next phase. We have lots of ideas and we are confident that we will achieve our goal of being the ultimate destination site for collectors.

A Streetcar Named Vengeance

A Streetcar Named Vengeance

Who knew that Tennessee Williams' first published work (a short story)

was for the pulp Weird Tales.

Imagine my surprise at finding the great American playwright Tennessee

Williams' name on a Weird Tales pulp. This is the guy who wrote A

Streetcar Named Desire, The Glass Menagerie and The Night of the

Iguana. While Weird Tales is known for its horror and fantasy stories,

Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard are names I'd expect to see and did

see, but Williams - wow!

 

In 1928, Farnsworth Wright, the editor of Weird Tales, put 17-year-old

Thomas Lanier Williams' (Tennessee Williams’ real name) short story

"The Vengeance of Nitocris" in its August 1928 issue. The story was

about an ancient Egyptian Pharaoh named Nitocris. Nitocris was a Queen

of Egypt who had killed the murderers of her brother. Williams' story

details the queen’s careful plan of revenge.

 

After that, Williams did not write for any other pulps and Weird Tales

continued its tradition of horror stories.

 

Who knows what other literary heavy weights wrote for the pulps, since

pulps were a popular form of fiction back then, and was an

easy way for upcoming authors to get published. Who knows what other

authors I'll discover.

 

[insert image]

 

- You can buy a replica pulp of Williams Weird Tales pulp from one of

our featured pulp dealers Girasol Collectables just click on the link

and go to Weird Tales August 1928 (#59)

http://www.girasolcollectables.com/rep.html

The Movie Collector

And now for today's installment of Movies About Collectors:

Ghost World

This movie is a collector movie for many reasons:

1) It is based on a graphic novel / underground comic book

2) One of the characters, Seymour (played by Steve Buschemi), collects old records

3) Another character, Enid (Thora Birch from every 90's kids movie), is a budding artist

4) It is in many a DVD collectors' collections

5) It rocks your world and mine 

Ghost World, which is based on the comic of the same name by Daniel Clowes, was nominated for best adapted screenplay at the 2002 Academy Awards and won several festival awards for writing and acting. Watch for scenes in Seymour's apartment where Enid looks through his large collection of records, which he orders in a particular fashion. 

Vinyl Show

I just got back from a record collectables show [or as they called it the record collectibles show, I think it’s a collectable not -tible]. Anyways the show was in a building near Bloor and Broadview in Toronto. Joining me on this excursion were my friends Mike and Jon, we arrived around 2:30pm and the show was going until 4, so we hoped we would have enough time to see everything.

We were not sure what to expect, Jon read about the show in the Toronto Star  newspaper, knowing that Mike and myself are fans of vinyl he suggested we all check it out. As we entered the show we were welcomed by many boxes filled with cheap vinyl LP`s, most came from before 1980, and the rest were new re-issued prints and a few modern records.

 This show was ideal for a true record collector. The place was full with unorganized boxes containing old LPs at really cheap prices, so if you had the time, patience and interest you could scourer the place and get great deals. I personally am into records for the cover art as much as the music, I am perfectly happy with CD quality music that comes out of my iPod, computer or car stereo, not that I don`t appreciate the sound I am just a 21st modern guy. Lots of the new music being sold was very expensive and the good quality i.e. not folded, bent, new looking LP`s were expensive I saw various LP`s with asking prices in the hundreds. I only bought a few things mainly cause the cheap stuff I wasn`t too interested and the rest was too expensive.

I did see many interesting collectables for sale such as a Beatles concert t-shirt from one of their shows at the Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto, Canada in the 60's and Ozzy Osbourne's album Blizzard of OZ signed by Randy Rhoads (who died in 1982). Overall I had a good time and enjoyed the show, it was well worth my time. One of the dealers their was Sonic Temple check out their site for info on buying LP's.

The Internet works in mysterious ways

To show off our new publishing tool, a link to a publication was posted on i-am-bored.com last month.  The publication was a rather strange collection of 'horrific dolls'.  It was a tiny experiment to see if we could boost hits to our website with a little bit of viral marketing.  The results were pretty extraordinary.

The day it was posted, just shy of 4,000 unique visitors came to check it out!

We were all pretty surprised that something so bizarre became so popular within just one day.  It really goes to show that the Internet works in weird and 'horrific' ways.

Check out the publication-sensation here.

Its all in the BAG

I am flying Air Canada back to Los Angeles after spending an invigorating day in Toronto with the Collectionbuddy team. Eight hours of brainstorming and deliberation with only one interruption for cheese-less pizza and a salad. Collectibles are going through my head; in fact everywhere I look these days. I see a potential collectible. Right in front of me is an airsickness bag. 

Do I grab it, just in case I start my own collection? It’s pretty drab, a white paper bag with a red maple leaf logo and the words AIR CANADA.  “Why not?” as I slip it into my copy of Wired Magazine. Actually, my obsessive nature, and my collector’s instinct to engage in a treasure hunt, has led me to quietly sock away 5 airsickness bags from five different flights that I have taken in the last few months. It’s pretty crazy, because as I write this blog, I have pulled them all out and I realize that three of them don’t even have the name of the airline printed on them.  One is completely white. Doesn’t everyone need a white paper bag in his or her collection? One of the bags gives very clear instructions: 

FOR MOTION DISCOMFORT. What they really want to say is: THROW UP IN THIS BAG or WE WILL NOT LIKE YOU IF YOU MISS!  Further instructions follow: Call flight attendant for bag disposal. This is important to know. Call the flight attendant. As you die of embarrassment what are the options? Quickly stuff it into your backpack, give it to the guy next to you?

 

I now have five airsickness bags. I have a collection. Another collection to add to my Airport postcard, my McDonalds toys, my Halcyon Days Pill Boxes, My Pins…its fun, its an investment…its a treasure hunt that will pay back with pride dividends.

Tuesdays with Morris

Morris Norman is one of the largest collectors in Canada. Last week I had the chance to sit down and chat with him about the collecting world – what I thought would be a relatively short meeting turned into an hour and a half long discussion on the state of collecting in Canada and the world. I also had one of my first chances to check out some of Morris' collectibles.

I've known Morris for about 4 years now but have never really known what he collected. I mean, I knew he collected Canadiana – but what IS Canadiana? Sitting down at his office I quickly realized that Canadiana is anything that has to do with Canadian history. Morris collects things that have significance to our country's history like all things to do with the Riel Rebellion or the Fenian Raids, for example.

The most beautiful part of Morris' collection had to be his broadsides, posters and maps. It's funny to think that when these pieces were printed the artist had no idea his work would be chased after years later. Did anyone think their poster art announcing the opening of Union Station in Toronto would be hanging on walls alongside works of art one day? If there's one thing I took from my meeting with Morris it's that one-day something can be worth nothing and the next it can be the most sought after collectible in the world. Hey, who knows – maybe this blog will one-day be printed in compilation with Wordsworth, Plath and Frost. One can dream, right?

Tony ran into Morris at The Thornhill Nostalgia Show and Sale this past weekend:

I must have missed Tony by a split second, because I was there as well! Good thing we didn't see one another. We were wearing the same ensemble -- how embarrassing! 

The Movie Collector

One might think a movie about a collector and their collection couldn't be interesting, so today I challenged myself to think of the top ten movies about collectors or collections over the next few weeks. Yes, I know, there's The Bone Collector. I'm trying to get to ten without using films that have "Collector" or its derivatives in the title. I will only use The Bone Collector if absolutely necessary. That means a life or death situation similar to what The Bone Collector's victims faced (i.e. being abducted by a psychopath posing as a cab driver that steams me to death and takes a tiny piece of my bone). Then, and only then, will I invoke the use of the Denzel Washington vehicle (or if I run out of options for movies, whatever comes first).

Today's Movie About Collectors:

Everything is Illuminated

This movie, directed by Liev Schrieber, is based on Jonathan Safron Foer's debut novel about a young man (also named Jonathan Safron Foer) who keeps artifacts from his life in little baggies and travels to Ukraine to find the woman that saved his grandfather's life during World War Two.

Aside from Jonathan's collecting of old photographs and sentimental items that he keeps in Zip-Locs, his tour-guide is also a sort-of collector. Alex, a Ukrainian traveling with Jonathan to help him find the woman, speaks "premium" English and seems to have collected all his knowledge of the United States from early 90s movies and a thesaurus. His "collected English" is a brilliant invention taken from the novel the film is based upon.

The film explores the collecting and piecing together of memories and family histories with a mix of humor, whimsy and, at the end, solemnity.

Trailer:

 

A Scene:

Obama Wins!

To mark last night's historical victory, take a look at these awesome Obama pins posted on Collectionbuddy:

Check out the publication here or visit the group page.