Summer Contest & Prize Giveaway

The results are all in, and it is time to announce the prize winners. We had a tremendous response to the contest, with 89 users picking up a free entry for logging into their collection managers, 63 new users signed up for the ToyTracks newsletter, and a total of 2,390 missorted listings corrected or removed. The first Grand prize goes to Goliath from Switzerland, who made 1,209 of these updates himself! Other very notable contributors include exjedi with 856, FSFAN with 144, csi_123 with 86 and lcummins with 77. Fittingly, the second Grand prize drawing was won by exjedi from Illinois, the second highest editor. Their selected prizes were the Sideshow Darth Vader Premium Format figure, and the Sauron 1/6th scale polystone sculpture by Sideshow*Weta, each of which would make a stunning addition to any collector's display. The 'status flags' also got an impressive tuneup, with 969 total changes made. Goliath again led the charge here, followed by lcummins, and nash. The third prize lottery went to Nash from Hawaii, who made another great selection with the C-3PO 1/6th scale sculpture by Gentle Giant.

I offer congratulations again to the winners, and express my sincere thanks to ALL participants for their great efforts to make ToyTracker a more reliable and accurate resource. It is my hope of course that enthusiasm for the editor will continue to keep things sharp long after the contest and system debut have passed. A final thanks to Sideshow for generous donation of the Sauron figure, and to our friends at Azog's and the Freaks message board for promoting the contest over the last several weeks.

Happy Collecting!
the SpaceMan

The three contest winners have now been contacted by email. My thanks to ALL participants, and Sincere Congratulations to the three winners. Once I have their contact information and prize selections all verified, the winning names will be posted here.

The Editing System Contest is now officially closed! Thanks again for all the hard work helping to clean up lingering data sorting errors! It will take a few days to validate edits, talley totals, handle the drawings, and contact winners for their prize preferences. I'll be posting final results here following that process, of course. Best of luck to all who participated, and thanks again for a successful launch for the new editing system. I'm hoping it continues to get a healthy usage as needed to keep the sorting clean. I'm also looking forward to improving the sort filters from my end, based on all the great input collected during the contest run.

During the next month, ToyTracker.Net will be running our most outrageous contest and prize giveaway yet. TWO lucky site users will have the chance to pick their own GRAND PRIZE from a choice of: The Dark Lord Sauron, Aragorn on Brego, Legolas & Gimli on Arod, The Mumakil of Harad or The Morgul Lord by SideShow*Weta, as well as the Luke Skywalker 12-Inch Jedi Exclusive or Luke Skywalker, Darth Vader or Han Solo Premium Format StarWars figures by Sideshow Collectibles! Free worldwide shipping is also included, pending availability of USPS post to your country.

First, a HUGE thanks to Sideshow for sponsoring half of the contest value by donation of a Sauron Figure to the Site.

And now the details ... After literally months of planning and related programming, the LONG rumored system to allow site users to correct missorted auctions in real time is now nearing completion. You'll have to log in with your Collection Manager account to do so, and will have a daily quota of real-time edits (which will be increased as trust is developed). The basic idea is that the more VERIFIED corrections you make over the contest duration, the more times your name goes in the hat for the Grand Prize! The first winner will be the user with the greatest number of edits straight out. Grand Prize number two is open to all (other) site users as a drawing, but number of edits still raises your odds. You get one free entry for just logging into your Collection Manager account at some point during the proceedings. Another one goes in the hat for signing up for the newsletter (must be enrolled at the time of contest close). Your first five edits are each one additional contest entry. Thereafter, you get one extra shot per three completed corrections. The first winner will have their choice of any of the nine available prizes, and winner number two may choose from the remaining eight options.

Besides the ability to fix mistaken auction sorting, you will also be able to add and remove "flags" which indicate special status or conditions which apply to a given sale and may effect value. This is one of the most important recent upgrades at ToyTracker, whereby any of the cases: Artist Proof, Autographed, Low Edition Number, Mint or New Condition, Postage Discount and Item Damaged or Incomplete may be taken into account. (The valuation algorithm now weights items which carry these markers somewhat less strongly, and VERY much less strongly for the cases AP, Autographed or Damaged.) Each auction listing in a given detail view may now carry one or more of the icons: which correspond to these categories. Sale data points on the history plots are also now color coded to indicate these conditions. Even better, the Custom User Average tool has been updated to filter on these flags (plus much more!) and easily allow the creation of personally tailored value reports which match your own shopping or selling scenarios. Do you want to know the average price for Cave Trolls sold in EUROS during the last 3 Months, excluding Artist Proofs? Give it a try - your answer is just a few clicks away!

The contest is now officially set to start on Monday, the 14th of August. It will run for just over a month, ending at midnight Monday September 18, central. If you don't already have a collection manager account, you will first need to Register. The exact start time will be sent out in the inaugural issue of the site newsletter "ToyTracks" on Sunday the 13th. This infrequent report will be your best way to stay informed of new features, prize giveaways, events and updates at ToyTracker. I hope you'll take a minute to subscribe by logging in to your Collection Manager Profile and enabling the mailing. (forgot password?) Remember that: 1) accessing your CM account and 2) signing up for ToyTracks will also get you two free entries into the contest!

Please note that all activity of the editing system is logged for review. All edits may be subject to verification, and any users found to have intentionally abused the system will face closure of their accounts. Reversed or undone edits will not improve odds of winning the contest. Redundant accounts created for the purpose of additional contest entries are strictly disallowed. Edits to status flags will not contribute to success in the contest - this will based solely on corrections to item sorting itself.

I'm hoping that this will be a lot of fun, and help make ToyTracker a more reliable community resource in the process. Good Luck to you All!

And As Always,
Thanks So Much for Your Support and Happy Collecting!
the SpaceMan