Coin Compendium testing begins!

[Panda Express]

The 2000 and 2002 Pandas are in their correct locations.  Rest assured that future images of my coins will all have that uniformity.  If I may add, the CC is starting to take a life of its own.  I'm starting to appreciate this site more and more each day. I hope other CCF members will take advantage of the enormous knowledge and image base that the CC has to offer.

[badon]

Right now, our goal is to gain 100% coverage of all NGC and PCGS modern Chinese coins on eBay, so everything that's on eBay will be searchable by the CC. I think we're about 80% there. Once we reach that goal, we'll start looking towards pre-modern Chinese coins, American coins, and everything else we can think of. At the rate we're entering data, I think we have a realistic shot at achieving the holy grail of nearly 100% numismatic market coverage at some point in the future.

Imagine that - one place to find information about every publicly offered coin in the world. Right now, no one even knows how big the numismatic market is. I added some features a few days ago that will let us produce solid numbers about the value of coins trading hands each day. We'll be able to find out exactly how active the market really is. Is it growing? Shrinking? Flat? Instead of me saying it's "hot", or in a "slowdown", I'll be able provide exact, verifiable numbers to prove what's really happening.

It's not like a stock market for coins - all we're doing is collecting the data. How the data gets studied and used is a complete mystery. There's so many possibilities!

[Gilmore]

Just out of curiosity, has anybody filled in the "owner" cell yet, or do users prefer to keep this information private?

[badon]

It's not supposed to be there. It's on my to-do list to remove it. I decided the CC needs a much better collection management system, if it has one at all. What do you think? So far, a way of recording sets has been requested.

[Gilmore]

I think the "owner" should stay. Since some users enjoy posting their newly purchased coins here on the forum I thought they would like the "owner" feature as well. Also, this information can be useful when trying to acquire specific coins once you know who holds them. Some users would probably like to keep this information private.

Enabling users to record their sets and manage their collections will increase the number of coins registered on the CC which is a good thing.


 

[badon]

I agree, I just want to do it in a bit different way so owners can have control over their claim for ownership, and no one else can change it. Also, I have studied the privacy issues involved, and I think they're much easier to handle than on eBay, for example. Basically, I think it's possible to stay totally private and still keep your collection organized on the CC.

A little hint:

The basic prototype inventory management system is barely functional. On specimen pages, click the blue "Tools" bar, and you'll see some options to add coins to your inventory. It doesn't do very much, but that basic test did seem to work, and you can try it out if you want. Maybe I'll experiment on you, and use your collection to test some improvements in presentation of the collection data.

One issue I haven't decided how to handle yet is, do we want collections to be unlimited in size? The prototype inventory system is limited to about 2 MB of data. That works out to a theoretical maximum of something like 200,000 to 300,000 coins in one person's inventory. That sounds like a lot, but what if we want to maintain historical data too? A big dealer could go through that many coins in a few years, and then something would have to be deleted. Plus, the method of storing that data is unreliable for historical purposes, since the account owner can add and delete things whenever they want. Maybe that's good, maybe it's bad, and maybe it just depends on the circumstances.

I need to study the problem a bit more to see if there's maybe a hybrid way the CC can handle things. Historical ownership data on individual coins probably is not important in most cases, and may be impossible or impractical due to the privacy features of the CC. But, for complete sets or collections, I think there might be a way to handle those in the same way we already handle sightings. It would maintain a permanent record if the owner chose to create one, and it could work in conjunction with the simple inventory management system with its theoretical limit of 200,000 coins.

My study of privacy issues with the CC has proceeded much better than expected. It turns out to be less of a problem than I thought it would be. In fact, the CC can actually be used/abused as a tool for the purpose of enhancing privacy. That part was a surprise for me.

[Gilmore]

Badon,
The options that are added to the page when clicking on the "Tools" menu are new to me, I had no idea about it. What is the difference between "add to your collection" and "add to your inventory"?

I added CC6472 to my inventory and when clicking on my user name at the top of the page, a "collection" tab that appears first while the inventory is at the bottom inside the facts about the user. Will "add to your collection" present the coins under the collection tab?

[badon]

I don't remember, try it! I haven't settled on a terminology for it yet, either. So, I put both "collection" and "inventory". I'm not sure yet if I really want dealers to use the CC as an inventory management tool - the only reason I would do that is to bribe them into entering their coins for us :)

[Gilmore]

I tried both inventory and collection and don't see a difference between the two.
 
The coins listed in the inventory/collection as CCxxxx. Probably will not be easy to manage the inventory without seeing the year and name of the coin in case you have a large list. Would it be possible to display them on the user's page together with the year and name of the coin? Maybe some sort of a simple table that will include the CCT number, CC number, year, name, etc. 

[badon]

Yes, all that can be done. I'll just have to put some work into it so it looks nice and is easy to use. It will take a lot of testing, but I think it's something important for one of my next projects, since the rest of the site is running so well now.

I would like to make it possible for people to name their collections, sets, etc, and be able to move coins around. I'm not yet sure exactly how that will work, or what difficulties I will encounter along the way.

In the meantime, you can already manually save coins to your user page. Just type in something this:

# {{CC | CC123456 }}

I'll put that on your user page for you, so you can copy and paste. It'll make it easier to keep track of your coins until a real inventory system is working.

[badon]

I forgot to tell you to click the "Edit source" tab on your user page to enter that code in under the stuff that's already there. I put some examples there for you.

[Gilmore]

Nice. I really think that collection management feature, once available, will attract more users fo the CC.

[dobedo]

Just found 1 instance of duplicate sightings of one coin. Same NGC certificate #, ebay picture and everything else, but when searched (used 1982 1/2 oz gold panda), one listed with one price (1st sighting or initial bid) and the other the final sold price. Is this a systemic problem or unique?

[badon]

Nice. I really think that collection management feature, once available, will attract more users fo the CC.

I'll definitely have to get to work on that then, now that I know somebody is interested in it.

Just found 1 instance of duplicate sightings of one coin. Same NGC certificate #, ebay picture and everything else, but when searched (used 1982 1/2 oz gold panda), one listed with one price (1st sighting or initial bid) and the other the final sold price. Is this a systemic problem or unique?

That's actually the normal operation of the site. Duplicate sightings serve as confirmations that the information is accurate, especially when the same data is entered by different people. So, although we prefer to not waste effort entering duplicates, they do end up serving a purpose when it happens.

Also, there are usually supposed to be 2 sightings for each coin offered on eBay. First, the ongoing sighting at the starting price, and then the ending sighting that describes how the sale ended (sale price, date, etc.). Most of the time ongoing sightings and ending sightings are almost identical, but sometimes they can be very different, like when a seller changes his pricing. That information is helpful because it tells us whether prices have been increasing or decreasing, even if no sales take place.

[Gilmore]

Badon, SANDAC,
I came across the following website http://search.numismatics.com.au/
It has a list of graded Chinese coins along with their NGC numbers and recent sales history. Is there a way to pull out the data and import it to the CC?