New website building utility - Collector Focus

I wanted to survey the board about Trae Regan's new website building utility, Collector Focus. From the few minutes I've taken to look it over, it looks excellent; very clean and simple to use. Free too. Is anyone currently using it to showcase their collection? If so, I would appreciate hearing about your thoughts, impressions and experiences. I'm seriously considering converting all my vintage card images over from imageevent, which I pay $25 a year for, to Collector Focus if it's deemed worthwhile.

http://www.collectorfocus.com/

PS. Just to clarify, Trae didn't ask me to post this, nor is he aware that I did. I actually contacted him saying he could feel free to plug his site here on FC, but he refrained from doing so. The purpose of this post is simply to gather more information about the new site.

trae's come up with some good stuff. CF looks great, the selling/trading feature is also nice....but what happens 2-3 years down the line if he has kids or lose interest in the hobby and shut the site down? will we lose all the data/pics? won't be a problem for me since i own like 7 cards but people that have put out the time to make 100s of scans and lose it. that's the only con i can come up with.

cccc wrote:but what happens 2-3 years down the line if he has kids or lose interest in the hobby and shut the site down? will we lose all the data/pics?

That crossed my mind too and is a concern. I might email Trae with a link to this thread so he can address that issue. It would suck to see the site close down in a few years after doing all the time consuming scanning/uploading work.

In the meantime, any other thoughts or experiences regarding the site?

I really like the "new/for sale/trade" tab that accompanies every scan.

That's a problem with any image hosting website, quite a number of them have closed down. Personally, since there are lots of free image hosting sites, I would prefer to use one that is large and profitable, so at least it will be around for a few years. Also, it would be helpful if there was a bulk downloading capability. Any recommendations?

Thanks for the post, Ben!

I appreciate the kind words from you all as well.
Definitely happy to answer any questions or improve the site based on
your feedback.

Regarding disappearing, I understand the concern, but all I can say is
that my hobby interest hasn't waned over the past 6 years through a
major career change and getting married.

Our network of hobby sites continues to grow ( see them here:
http://www.livetocollect.com ) and I am especially excited about
launching the new T206.org website in the next few months. We're about
25% of the way into development on that right now.

I have started to use the site to post my T216's. I love it! I'll eventually get around to putting all of my cards in there. As a backup I do use photobucket just so all my card pics are somewhere in case my computer goes down.

I don't know Trae but I checked it out and I think it's a very nice site. It's great for collectors who want to post their stuff but have some of their cards graded by PSA and some by SGC and can't post on their registry's. Also just good for anyone who wants to post a collection. So I think it's a great idea.

I've also enjoyed the t206.org website and am looking forward to its update...

Jamie

I had about 80% of my collection scanned and my system took a dump.

As I rescanned everything I loaded it on Image Event.It has worked good since February. I pay about 50 or 60 bucks a year for unlimited space.

Hi Trae, thanks for responding. You've done a lot of great tech work in the past several years that has served the vintage collecting community at large. Kudos to you! I hope to see Collector Focus continue to grow. Now that you've given some reassurance that it will be around for the long haul, I plan on converting my images over from imageevent to your site. Hoping to have everything done by the end of the summer!

In the meantime, please keep us posted on any updates or changes you make to the site. Good luck!

I have scans in three places:
1. Hard drive
2. USB drive
3. Photobucket

When I receive a new card, I add it to all 3 places - along with adding it to VCP My Collection (which you can't post pictures too).

I have no concerns about losing images.

Michael

Greetings, All,

I wanted to share some recent improvements made to the site:
http://blog.livetocollect.com/recent-collector-focus-updates

Please follow the blog or check us out on Facebook to keep up with future updates:
https://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/LiveToCollectcom/142859419086989

Thanks!

One more recent update:

http://bit.ly/9mbYZr

Thanks!

Hi Trae,

I went to check out your website today. It's very nice, but I noticed that when I had more than one webpage running, when I would click to view something on the collector focus website and then hit return, it would take me to the previous webpage I was viewing.

For exampe, I have the Full Count webpage up right now. When I open another webpage to view Collector Focus, it brings me to the home page, when I click on the browse collection tab, it takes me to the list, but when I try to return to the previous page, it will bring me back to the Full Count page. Hope this made sense to you, not sure if maybe it was a gliche, but I tried it a couple of times and it kept doing that.

Mike

Hi, Mike,

Firstly, please accept my apology for the super-delayed reply!

That's a strange issue that we haven't heard about before. Would you mind telling me what web browser and operating system that you're using?

Also... we've just launched some new features - details here: http://blog.livetocollect.com/collectorfocuscom-updates-abound

Thank you!

Love the new updates Trae! Thank you so much for putting together a wonderful site. Now I'm definitely hooked and will use the site to upload all of my pics. I like the customizations way better than photobucket.

Thank you, Eric!! Let me know how it goes - I'm happy to help if anything goes awry.