CheckOutMyCards.com Blog

I finally set aside some time to make improvements to the site. Here are some of the things I was able to get done this weekend.

Performance Improvements
Now that we have been getting a lot more data, there have been some noticeable slowdowns on certain parts of the site. Here are some areas where we improved performance this weekend.

• Home page average render time was about 3 seconds, now the average is 0.03 seconds
  • This 100x performance improvement was achieved by using a technique called Partial-Page Output Caching. We couldn’t use the simple output caching because we display the number of items in your shopping cart, and this always needs to be calculated.
• Search page render time was commonly 3-10 seconds, now it is almost always less than 1 second

Quantity Manufactured now displayed in the search results
You no longer need to dig into the card details page to see if a card is serial numbered. The quantity manufactured is now tacked on to the end of the description. Also, you can choose to sort the search results by the quantity manufactured.

Sort by Quantity Manufactured

More Meaningful Sorting by High Book Value
Cards that are listed in Beckett but do not have a book price are now mixed in with the rest of the cards when sorting by highest book value.

We have been getting more and more cards that have very low serial numbers and do not have a price listed in Beckett. The previous default sort order would put all of these at the top, and this kept burying the legitimately high priced cards further and further down. Now we try to weave in the un-priced cards approximately where they might be if they had a book value.

For the past year or so, I have been doing all of the work to identify the cards that people send us. Now that we are getting more cards than I can possibly identify on my own, we have started hiring more people to help us with that step.

While people are coming up to speed with our system and all of the different kinds of cards, there will be some mistakes. Though I review the data before it goes live on the site, I may miss some of the errors, but you can help us!

How to let us know about listing errors
I added a couple easy links for you to inform us of any errors on the site.
If you see anything that you think might be an error, you can simply click on the “Something is wrong with this listing” link from any card details page.

If you are a seller, you can click on the “Wrong data?” link when you are managing your inventory.

I finally got an opportunity this weekend to polish off the counteroffer functionality and push it live. It was an immediate hit. This has nearly eliminated the rejected offers, and it seems to have increased the total number of offers. Maybe people aren’t as shy about making offers if they know that the offers can be countered?

Today there was a perfect example of your site enabling collectors to do what they love… haggling over prices.

GrahamsCards sent a $47.50 offer for 35 cards in my LowPriceCards account. The original asking price was right around $90. I countered by asking just under $70. GrahamsCards countered my proposal by offering $60. I countered again with a $65 proposal, and GrahamsCards accepted my proposal.

Here are a couple of the cards that were included in the transaction.

To my knowledge, CheckOutMyCards.com is the only site that allows buyers to make a single offer on multiple cards and let the buyer and seller haggle back and forth over the price. This was truly a beautify interaction to watch. This is only a small taste of the many innovations that CheckOutMyCards.com will be bringing to the online sports card community in the near future.

When you create an account at CheckOutMyCards.com our server sends you an email. Sometimes email from our server gets blocked by your email provider. The easiest way to unblock our email is to add staff@checkoutmycards.com to your contact list. To do that with Yahoo! Mail simply click on the Contacts tab or go to http://address.mail.yahoo.com.

Then click the Add Contact button.

Specify staff@checkoutmycards.com as the email address and click Save.

Now email from our server will arrive in your inbox and you will be able to activate your account.

To request a new activation email go to the following page, sign in (if necessary), and click the ‘Request a new activation email’ link.
http://www.checkoutmycards.com/manage/activate.aspx

Background
As part of the account creation process at CheckOutMyCards.com we verify that the user has specified a valid email address that can successfully receive email from our servers. This is very important for sellers on our site because they need to be notified if a potential buyer sends them an offer on their cards.

Unfortunately many people have trouble receiving email from our servers. In the past 30 days most email domains have had a 65-75% success rate in receiving our emails and activating their accounts. However there are two outliers, @yahoo.com and @gmail.com. As we have seen with just about everything from Google, their services appear to be superior. 95.74% of the users from @gmail.com successfully activate their accounts. Even though Yahoo! Mail is the post popular email provider it appears to be on the other end of the spectrum. Only 47% of the @yahoo.com email addresses are able to receive our emails.

In my last post I mentioned that it took 50 days to get from 1,000 to 2,000 unique visitors in a day, and it took 10 days to get from 2,000 to 3,000 unique visitors. Well, it took 4 days to get from 3,000 to 4,000 unique visitors.

Yesterday we had 4,041 unique visitors. That was more than 20% better than our previous best day. CheckOutMyCards.com is really taking off.

On another note, you may have noticed that we now have the Hacker Safe logo on our site.

We have started using the services of ScanAlert.com to help keep our website safe.

Today Leif from Louisiana placed a record setting order for us. He purchased from 7 different sellers across 4 different states. Because we house all of the cards for sale on our site, we were able to only charge $5 in shipping for the 15 cards ordered.

Try to order 2-3 cards from 7 different sellers on any other website and see how close you can get to $5 shipping. This is just one of the ways we are changing the game and making a more efficient, safer, and easier place to buy and sell sports cards.

Below are examples of a few cards that recently arrived from all across the US and were sold to a man in Louisiana.

bfarbman was the original owner of this 1958 Topps Stan Musial which arrived from Pennsylvania a little over a week ago. It has a book value of $50, and it sold for $45.

wildpionther10 was the original owner of this 1998 Topps Clemente reprint which arrived from Ohio on Friday. wildpionther10 set his asking price on Saturday, and the card sold on Sunday. This card has a book value of $8, and it sold for $5.

DavesCards was the original owner of this 1991 Topps Archives Ted Williams which arrived from Everett, WA on Wednesday. DavesCards is a new member of our top 10 sellers featured on our home page. He set his asking asking price on Saturday, and the card sold on Sunday. It has a book value of $10, and it sold for $7.50.

First, here is a quick follow up to my previous post about breaking records… We crush our page view record that Thursday with 38,296 page views. That Saturday we crushed our record for unique visitors with 1,312, and we have consistently had more than 1,000 unique visitors a day ever since then.

We just recently started to compile some of the things that people have been saying about our site and our services. Here are some of the items we added to our new Testimonials page.

“Thanks. After I received my first batch of cards that I ordered from your site, I promptly logged back in and purchased more. Thats how impressed I am with your service. The site is remarkably easy to navigate and makes the shopping experience quite fun and addictive [which is of course to both the customer's and your advantage =)]. The shipping costs are the cheapest I’ve seen and the delivery time is pretty darn fast too (less than a week from the US to Australia).

Now only if you could chase up some vital cards in my collection for me…

Keep it up and even if I am moving overseas in a week I will still keep on shopping with you guys as longs as you have the cards I want”

- Arthur, New South Wales, Australia

“Hi. I just wanted to let you know that the cards arrived today. They are in great condition and well-packed. I am very happy with my purchase and I would order from you again. Thank you for the good deal and excellent service.”

- Matt, Portland, OR

“I can already see it, u r the next ebay but better and more people freindly.
Good luck to u and your company.”

- Amit, Fort Pierce, FL

“Thank you. Your site is excellent! I appreciate your help with everything!”

- Jake, Flemington, NJ

“Nice job on the site! It is truly an impressive combination of technology and passion.”

- Kevin, Denver, CO

“Thanks, your service (and the website) is absolutely OUTSTANDING!!!”

- Jerry, Palm Bay, FL

“The cards arrived today (Friday) in great shape!

Thanks very much, I will be back with another order.”

- Bernard, The Netherlands

“I just found your site tonight. It is a very interesting concept… One of the things that struck me first about your site is it is a great place to find the pictures of the cards I need to fill my want list. It made it quick and easy to see exactly what I was looking for.”

- Joey A.

“I really like the way your web site is set up… I like the way your
search and cart are set up.”

- K. B.

“I have searched a lot of sports card sites but this one beats every one I have ever seen hands down. I filled up my shopping cart with absolutely no doubts on what I would be receiving - another words, no surprises. The fact that I can view each card front and back is awesome. The discounted prices are great also but with such a fantastic experience shopping on your site, I found myself much more impressed with the quality of the site. Kudos to everyone involved and I hope to be filling my order very soon.”

- Tim C.

“Buying the exact card viewed is GREAT! Very cool indeed.”

- Jerry A.

“do you know if anyother website like yours exist on the internet? I’m curious because I think this is a much better way to purchase from than ebay.
Thanks
James”

- James, Decator, GA

“I just bought some cards from your site for my son. I was VERY IMPRESSED at the way you set up your website and cart.”

- Joe, Massapequa, NY

“I enjoy your website! I have many cards that I would like to sell in a similiar mannor…”

- Derek, Daytona, FL

If you are writing a blog post or creating an eBay listing and want to include any of the images from our site, you are welcome to do so. You just need to follow these instructions.

With a simple copy & paste you can add something like this.

I like to collect cards of players who I have played basketball with or against.

Jeff Hagen was a freshman at Hopkins High School in MN when I was a senior.

Kris Humphries also went to Hopkins High School, and I played against him many times at open gyms.

Hiram Fuller played a few games at South Sound Athletics with the Club Seattle pro-am team that I played with for several years.

Doug Christie also played a few games with my Club Seattle team when we played in a league at his al-ammeter Rainier Beach last summer.

Martell Webster played on another team in that same league at Rainier Beach.

Jamal Crawford asked me to play with his team in a tournament at Green Lake after playing against him at the Redmond Athletic Club several times a few summers ago. My Club Seattle team also faced off against Jamal in several other Seattle area tournaments and leagues. Jamal is one of the nicest guys I have ever met!

Will Conroy was also on our team at Green Lake. He had just graduated from the University of Washington at the time.

Brandon Roy was our coach for the tournament. He couldn’t play because he was going to be a senior at the University of Washington.

Nate Robinson dunked on me during that tournament.

Shawn Kemp took my spot in the championship game at Green Lake, and Nate Robinson’s team crushed us. We only lost by 2 points on a last second shot by Nate when we faced them earlier in the tournament.

Kevin Garnett… well almost. He often played noon ball at Northwest Athletic Club in MN during the lock-out of 1998-99. My brother had played against him several times, so he got me into the club during one of my lunch breaks. After a long wait I only had time for one more game, and it would be against Kevin’s team. Unfortunately, there was only one spot left, and it was between my brother and me to shoot for it. I and still annoyed that he didn’t just let me play. The dork out shot me for the last spot, and I never got my chance to play against Kevin. He used to live about 3 miles from where I grew up in Minnesota, but now he is off to Boston where he and Ray Allen are going to win a championship for the Celtics.

Note: All of the images for this post were added by simply copying the HTML code generated by the “grab this card” feature I just added to all the card details pages on CheckOutMyCards.com. You are welcome to do this with any of your blogs or eBay listings.

Thanks to $15,000 worth of cards from eaglescards, we have a new #2 seller on CheckOutMyCards.com.

LowPriceCards (the predecessor to CheckOutMyCards.com, more about the history…) still has firm hold on the #1 spot with nearly $175K worth of cards, but local sports card dealer Egil Knutzen from Kent, WA easily passed up my childhood collection, timgetsch, to claim the #2 spot.

In addition to Eagle’s Card Shop (14320 se 272nd st. Kent Wa. 98042), you can find eaglescards on eBay. Like many dealers on eBay, Egil knows how time consuming it can be to list hundreds of auctions. With CheckOutMyCards.com, Egil was able to drop off more than 1,000 cards at a local card show, and we did all the work to scan in the cards, enter their descriptions, look up their book values, upload them to the site, and default the prices to 40% off Beckett. To date, Egil has given us just under 2,000 cards, and due to our patent pending system our team was able to process all of these cards in less than 2 days!

Join Egil and many other dealers that are starting to see the advantage of outsourcing the labor involved in selling sports cards online. Send mail to staff@checkoutmycards.com and mention this blog post to learn about how to get a discount on listing your first 1,000 cards.