Welcome to the forum Bill and thanks for the new resource.
Scott Smith
Thanks Scott. I really do welcome any comments and ideas. Like I said, we're just getting started with model trains, but we have more than half-a-million action figures under collection with the platform, and more than 13,500 collectors signed up. I think the platform is even better suited for model train collectors, and you guys are much more fun to work with!!! 
Originally Posted by BillDASH:
Hi folks, this is my first post to OGR. I run Collector-ModelTrains, and I really appreciate your use and feedback about our new site. The showcase page that Scott pointed folks to is really cool, but it used to be a "premium" feature on our platform before. We decided to make it part of the free user set of features, so I apologize for the bugs we found (and corrected) after Scott sent out his note. Also, although we've been live for action figure collectors for a while with NO downtime, we did see about a 2-hour service interruption two days ago (the 503 errors). Again, sorry about that! We work really hard to deliver a quality product. (By the way, you can easily opt-out of making your collection public, and you can also very easily click "Private" on any items you don't anyone else to see in your showcase page.)
A couple of points about some comments made earlier.
1. We are well into a pretty massive project to improve the depth of the "taxonomy" of the Catalog. When we roll it out, you will immediately see a MUCH better and deeper structure than we have right now. I'm sure you are going to really like it. It will automatically reorganize and improve existing collections and marketplace navigation too.
2. The Catalog will never be complete or perfect. We're beginning to work pretty closely with some manufacturers to be sure we get the best info up there, and that's pretty cool. However, the Catalog is YOUR resource...not ours. We work on it, but DASH puts all of the power to edit and add to the Catalog in your hands, as a community. PLEASE feel free to edit the catalog...add pictures, add items, add subseries, etc. I suggest that you wait for a week or two until we can get the taxonomy update complete, but then please edit away. When we launched Collector-ActionFigures.com, we had only 35,000 items in the Catalog. We're now live with more than 48,000!
3. The value guide is a "living" tool too. We update the values based on sales data from our partner, Trainz, as well as from sales that happen in the DASH Marketplace. No, we don't have complete coverage today (heck, there are more than 90K items in the Catalog, and keeping that up-to-date is hard!), but we're set up to keep ourselves as current as possible, and that's a really great thing for the community.
4. We aren't really turning up the volume on our presence yet until we work out some of the kinks still in the system. After that, watch out! :-) We're very excited, despite our very limited exposure, how many collectors have found us, updated their collections and many people have upgraded to get the premium features. (My favorite is the way we make trading really useful.)
Please let us know if you have comments or ideas about how we can make DASH even better for the model train collecting community!
- Bill, from DASH
Bill,
Your site is reminiscent to me of a website that I utilize regularly for my personal wine inventory, and I applaud this online web-based style of scenario that you have similarly implemented. I am not trying to advertise for them on a model train site, but I mention them here as they have, perhaps, a slightly more entrenched and "kinks worked out" model than you guys currently have -- please understand this is not a slight against your website, which I so far enjoy, having just started playing around with it. This is just an opportunity to compare and contrast with a site that's been around for quite awhile and has become incredibly robust and yet more user friendly over the years.
The site I am referencing is called 'cellartracker', and it is an amazing model for how personal inventory control and community sharing can be implemented, how mobile integration can be optimized, how downloading info to a custom spreadsheet can be a breeze, and how a website such as this can be supported more on the back of sponsors than users (I wish you could match their 'totally free but with a suggested donation' scenario, but that's just me being a cheapskate). You might take a look, though. Build upon what others have perfected.
On another tact, I have searched unsuccessfully for your iPhone/iPad tool on the App store. Perhaps I am deficient in my searching abilities, but I cannot find it. Is it actually there?
Keep up the good work.
- timbo
Well, how's this for a TARDY reply. if you search for "model trains" in the Apple AppStore, you will find our app now. It took FOREVER (and we won't start getting the word out until next week), but I really like what came out!
