Messages

1

Help Us Build the Database / G1 Prices: New source?

February 09, 2012, 01:38:59 PM

Hi, gang.

I had a fortuitous find today while working on my semi-whenever update of my collection's value (for insurance purposes), and at long last I came across a top-notch source for original retail prices for G1 releases, at least through 1987.

Behold: http://pleasesavemerobots.com/vstp/vstptf84.html. BOOM.

The question on the table: As with my own Access file, there's a dearth of info on G1 MSRPs on Shmax (dozens upon dozens of data points by my reckoning). Is this an acceptable source for the board for G1 pricing? If so, a follow-up: The retail prices vary widely, based (at least partially) on geography. Where I grew up (mid-Atlantic), the prices are higher than some locations in Texas, but lower than California and (of course) Alaska. For my purposes I'm picking regional prices and rounding or averaging to the nearest dollar. What would be a suitable formula for the db?

2

Feature Requests/Announcements / Re: Repaint/Remold info

January 07, 2011, 11:56:42 PM

Totally and completely. You've still got the best object-oriented relational approach out there. I haven't been able to spend a lot of time here in the past few months because of RL stuff, but I try to keep my collection stats up to date, at the very least. One of these days I'm going to tackle the list I get of info on figures and packages that I have that still need some TLC, but my Shmax bookmark still lives at the top of my TF folder.

For whatever it's worth, I ended up mothballing that ColdFusion-based thing I had been mapping out oh-so-long ago. My job took me in a different direction (and directly into the belly of SQL Server and the Business Intelligence tools therein), so my own local collection information lives on as an Excel sheet until I get that elusive downtime that lets me build a dev server and play around with some of the XML functionality in SQL Server '08 (which, for my money, is probably one of the more efficient ways of migrating/mirroring data between Shmax proper and something like an iOS or Android app, something I'd pinged the board about a few months back and haven't really given much more thought to in the interim).

3

Feature Requests/Announcements / Tools for mobile collectors?

September 16, 2010, 02:41:32 AM

I've recently joined the smartphone-weilding masses with an iPhone purchase a couple of weeks ago. It's already replaced my regular laptop for a massive number of things, but the one thing I still haven't been able to do is locate a database app that will do things we do so ably here. There are apps that do admirable jobs with books and DVDs, and there's an app tied to the atrocious database at collector-actionfigures.com. I'm just curious if anyone here has purchased something like the HandBase app or another similar tool to keep track of your TF collection on a mobile device.

4

Bugs? On www.shmax.com? Ha ha, you kill me... / Re: Mold Completion Zero?

June 28, 2010, 11:58:59 PM

The Flash and GIF stickers aren't calculating the figure and mold completions the same way. Here's a screenshot from my version of http://www.shmax.com/sig_help/ in case that helps.

5

Feature Requests/Announcements /

November 08, 2007, 11:14:22 AM

I wouldn't sweat the folks-not-showing-up thing just yet. I remember plunking away at the TF wiki for the better part of a year almost by myself (and not getting very far at all) before someone on Allspark or TFW got a group together to flesh that thing out. And now look what it is.

There's definitely a helpful element within the fandom. You've built it. They will come. Or something.

6

Feature Requests/Announcements / Variant Tracking

November 07, 2007, 12:05:23 AM

Dang. Some high praise from the Superuser. Thanks.

Believe me... finding this place has cleared out some cobwebbed portions of my brain and got me rethinking about all of this afresh. As the rest of my life allows, I will be chiming in.

One problem I couldn't quite wrap my head around in my design process was the whole issue of variants. What does one do about a red versus a yellow G1 Bumblebee, or the three in-line variants of Armada super-con Prime (and that's not counting Nemesis)? Is each one an individual package?

One of the ways I was leaning in solving this (aside from just putting my fingers in my ears and going "lalalalalalala" until I forgot about it) was to have a handful of variations checkboxes (variant1, variant2, etc) that would in theory attach to pictures and text displaying/describing each variation.

The problem I ran into with this solution was that I couldn't figure out how to build a function to establish a valid count for the checkboxes; i.e., if a figure had no variants, I would set a master variants-allowed variable to 0 and none of the checkboxes would respond to input, and if it had two, the first two boxes could be checked, etc. I know there's a way to do it... or at least there should be. Some sort of data validation subroutine or something.

It was about this point in my thinking that this whole issue almost caused an aneurysm, so I set it aside.

I think, at some point far off on the horizon, this db will have to wrestle with that issue. There are some almost crazed variant collectors out there who have devoted a tremendous amount of time and energy into tracking these things down. In case you're not aware of this site, it is absolutely indispensable when thinking about variants - Fred's Workshop. It'll make your head spin. I think if you're going after that powerhouse collector, the db's going to need some powerhouse capabilities for them, like Variant Tracking.

So anyway, yeah, I'm on board to help as much as I can. I'll probably start posting some resources of info that may or may not be familiar to the rest of the board, but will be useful points of reference. I'll get around to that either Thursday or (more likely) this weekend.

7

Feature Requests/Announcements / Collection Value

November 06, 2007, 02:22:17 PM

So, the reason I started my own tracking efforts was to keep a detailed list in case I ever needed it for insurance purposes (fire, theft, etc.), so the backbone of my list has two components - figure ident and price. Since I started building my list a couple of years ago, it's taken on a maddening life of its own, and I now track monetary value in two ways: what I spent for a figure, and what it's now worth. (I track worth data by checking completed eBay auctions periodically.)

With that data, I can get a quick look at what I've spent in the past 12 months (or any other time period), which months I spent more, average price per figure, plus the total fair value of my collection should it need to be replaced.

That's all food for thought. I don't know if you want to turn the db into some customized version of Excel.

But, with the retail value field, is it possible to do something like "Total Retail Value of Your Collection" and just summing up that dollar value field for everything we have checked as being in our collection?

8

Feature Requests/Announcements /

November 01, 2007, 07:48:25 PM

I see you are wise in the ways of DBs. As a matter of fact each toy only points to a single other toy, but I can still generate a list of shared molds that way. Pseudo statement:
"select all figures that have as a repaint source the repaint source that this figure has". Should be easy enough to rig up--maybe I'll take a crack at it tonight. In the meantime, I'm glad to hear you're enjoying the site. Think it'll take off in a big way down the line? I have yet to see more than 2 or 3 folks on here at a time...

- shmax

Man, I hope so. Every TF database out there (including Seibertron's Vector Sigma and TFU) has some critical flaw that prevents it from being completely awesome. Seibs' db focuses more on the characters than the actual figures, and TFU suffers (at least, as near as I can tell) from not having any sort of db backend at all (i.e., it looks like he takes an existing page, copies it, then adjusts the code to point to new pics and such). Don't get me wrong, they're both great resources, but I've been wanting something that's figure-oriented and query-able. This is the first thing I've seen (besides my embryonic CF project) that has that promise. That you're tying in stuff like Hasbro serial numbers makes it easier (at least, in theory) for collectors to pinpoint the items in their collection. I think there are some ways that the UI can be cleaned up, though I love the drill-down idea. But I think you're on the right track by focusing on the code first rather than the glitz.

Also, I love the idea of the sticker. I only became aware of this place because another member, who also frequents Seibertron, had it in their profile. FWIW, there's now two of us over there.

9

Feature Requests/Announcements /

November 01, 2007, 05:55:55 PM

Ok, this feature alone is worth the price of admission. Quick question: are you using an intermediate "mold id" table, so in the future the user could run a query or check a box or something and find "Molds like this one?" I get all mold-completist on a few things (most recently, E:Arcee & her buildkin). If there's a mold-ID table (instead of just manually pointing to every other similar figure manually a la tfu), I might be able to mothball my hobby project of teaching myself Coldfusion to build a DB that does that sort of thing.

(Yes, all of that was by way of intro as well. I love this thing. Excellent work so far.)