Website to manage collection, trade and more

[clive]

I'm looking for a site that I can use to track my collection and also mark cards as wanted or available for trade/sell (which would prompt me for other users who are doing the opposite on those cards), but I can't seem to find anything!

I've only really come across the Beckett site, which has a pretty good database behind it but I don't really want to pay to get access or add my full collection.

And I've had a look at the tradingcarddb and while it's got some of the basic features, from what I can tell you can't mark cards as wanted and see other users who are willing to trade.

I did see a thread on here a while ago who was building their own site and it looked really good, but I can't for the life of me find that thread again! The person making the site said it was only in development at the time, that they help run a website to manage comic books and were going to include comics in that but ended up making it a separate site.

Does anyone have any suggestions or am I looking for something that doesn't exist?

 

[ozfootball]

Try http://www.zistle.com/

 

[rishgoon]

http://sportscardalbum.com

 

[clive]

Zistle looks pretty good - I'll give it a go. Thanks!

 

[clive]

So I've signed up to Zistle and functionality wise it looks pretty good but it is heavily sports focused, both community and database wise.

Does anyone know of any sites that have a reasonable non-sports community?

 

[nichj99]

TC Collector

 

[tak35bne]

I went the other way......instead of using a database or a site that revolves around the use of a db I bought my own .com domain and paid for a license to Ewisoft Website Builder. It suits my needs for tracking my wants and trades.

For my small comic collection I bought a license to Comic Collector and it works fine also.

 

[clive]

Thanks again for the suggestions.

Unfortunately everything I search for on TC Collector comes up empty (Simpsons, x-men, walking dead). Again it looks very sports focused which is fine, just not my sort of thing.

As for the DIY website, I'm comfortable with building my own site as I've built a number for various companies and projects over the years. The main problem I see with that approach is the isolation that running my own site brings. It's the community that I'm looking for ALONG with the management. If only Oz Card Trader had that side to it....

I'm happy to add data so I guess I'll push on with Zistle. Hopefully once some non sports data arrives, others will follow.

Also, of anyone else comes through looking at this page and is considering their own site, I would strongly suggest using a free content management system such as Joomla or WordPress rather than spending money on software to manage your site. Your hosting provider will typically provide a wizard based install so setting the base of the site up is a breeze. Theres usually nothing wrong with most of the commercial software packages, but when you can get a comparable and highly customizable product for free then you are much better off. Reducing your capital to start your project allows you more freedom later on and you can always donate to these free packages to show your appreciation.

 

[JoshZistle]

Hey this is Josh, one of the creators or Zistle.

clive, you are absolutely correct that our non-sports community is small, and part of that is the lack of data, but it is growing! We do have a number of non-sports people that are pretty active on the site, but it is nowhere near the volume we have for sports cards.

I hope it ends up working out for you, and please feel free to reach out (I don't want to hijack this thread) if you have any ideas on how to make the site better/grow it for non sports collectors.

Regards,
-=Josh

 

[clive]

Hi Josh,
So far from what I've seen the site seems to do most of what I want, great work! Shortly I'll see if there's any data import functions I can use to push in a heap of data, then once I've had some more time with the site I'll startup a new thread with suggestions.
Cheers

 

[clive]

For anyone cutting to the end, here's the results so far:

FYI - I'm a non-sports guy so I'm looking at these sites from that perspective only

http://www.beckett.com/ - seems to be "the" card site with heaps of data but some features are accessible through a paid subscription only, including adding many cards
http://tradingcarddb.com/ - has lots of data but I personally didn't find mass update of insert cards very quick, although commons are easy. Doesn't seem to be able to compare your want list with others trade list but I'll keep playing with this to see how it goes
http://www.zistle.com/ - this is the one I'm trying. Non-sports card data is limited, but functionality looks good
http://sportscardalbum.com - name says it all
http://www.tc-collector.com/ - almost no non-sports data, didn't even really try functionality

And DIY sites are too isolated for my tastes - what's the point going through all the effort of setting up your collection of trading cards with a site if you can't trade your cards with others on that site?!?

 

[Mr Paparazzi]

I went the other way......instead of using a database or a site that revolves around the use of a db I bought my own .com domain and paid for a license to Ewisoft Website Builder. It suits my needs for tracking my wants and trades.

For my small comic collection I bought a license to Comic Collector and it works fine also.

Comic Collector is that this site http://www.comiccollectorlive.com/ ???

 

[condo_3]

Is there anything like zistle for australian sports trading cards e.g. rugby league

 

[ooneil]

Is there anything like zistle for australian sports trading cards e.g. rugby league

Not quite yet.

 

[GiRDS-]

get onto it owen.

 

[West Oz Cards]

@JoshZistle Why does Zistle use images from COMC?

 

[JoshZistle]

@JoshZistle Why does Zistle use images from COMC?

At one point a few years ago we had a relationship with them that allowed us to use their watermarked images if we did not have any higher quality user scanned ones. That stopped a while ago, so what is left are remnants of that (notice the old versions of their watermarks). Even so, we encourage our users to upload higher quality scans to replace them.

 

[troy titans]

@JoshZistle Zistle looks great, would be cool if we could start getting Australian cards on there

 

[JoshZistle]

@JoshZistle Zistle looks great, would be cool if we could start getting Australian cards on there

Rugby has been added. Given our crowdsourcing model, there isn't any content there yet, but you can start managing your cards as long as you are willing to add them!

 

[joho22]

@JoshZistle, good site mate, needs more AFL content though