Another bold new direction...

Or, perhaps, a foolish one?

The local comic shop where I get my weekly "fix" (come on - you already know I read comics or you haven't been paying attention!) also sells Magic: the Gathering booster packs. [Most comic stores have to also sell gaming and various sci-fi & fantasy stuff to stay afloat.] Free Plug for the gang: Beyond Comics in Gaithersburg!

I was approached by the owner, who knows I run my Magic store, to see if I would be interested in running a series of Magic tournaments at the shop. I'd be allowed to sell my singles there (but not my boosters - wouldn't want to compete with the host, now, would I?) and it would help the store by bringing in a regular clientele (theoretically, anyway).

So, I will soon be embarking on a fact-finding mission to attend a tournament at a gaming store that's a few towns south of here. They run regular Friday Night Magic tournaments, as well as more major pro-tour qualifier tourneys and even host Magic pre-release parties. I'd like to attend a FNM shindig, and also attend their Conflux pre-release party at the end of the month (Conflux is the next set to be released, to come out the first week in February - the pre-release events are the last week in January).

I've never been to any kind of official Magic event before, despite being in the business of selling cards, packs, etc for years now. Since I don't play too often any more, I've been a little nervous. But if I'm going to be running one of these things, I think I ought to see how they run at a place that's been doing it (and doing it well from what I understand) for a while now. I'm not sure yet if they are deserving of a Free Plug so I will refrain for now (especially if I find out they deal in Magic singles also - I can't advertise my competition!!!).

I will, of course, report back once more is known....

Okay - one other note. Is anyone else saying to themselves "WTH?!?! Not only is this the fourth post in one month, but it's the second in one DAY?!?!" Yeah, I know, I'm freaking myself out too......I guess I just am THAT excited about all this stuff!

I'm so excited!

And I just can't hide it!

Okay - enough of the lyrics (but now that song's stuck in your head, isn't it? Bwa-ha-ha-ha!).

This weekend we relaunched Don's Magic and Sundry.

• The whole site got a major overhaul, with a new "Theme". I think the new layout looks MUCH more professional. There's a "Shopping Cart" button, many more cards show up per line on a search, the colors are SO much more attractive than the old look....
• The old Abilities and Shipping pages (along with this Blog) were brought into one site [they used to be housed on a separate server from the Store itself]. This allows the Abilities & Shipping pages, for example, to have the Catalog links in the left-hand margin like every other page, making the place feel more like a cohesive unit. Also, hopefully, making it more likely that people who find the site through a Google search for a Magic Ability will then proceed to go shopping!
• The new, stronger, Advanced Search (see last post) continues to become more useful as I get more and more inventory updated with the proper tags that the search can recognize. As of this writing I've made it through 8th Edition in the Core Sets. Once I get through 10th Edition I will start the expansion sets, and I think I'll start with the latest (Shards of Alara) and work my way backwards.

If you haven't yet, PLEASE pop over to http://www.donsmagicandsundry.com/ and take a look. You won't (I assure you) be disappointed.

On a related note: My wife (who usually prefers to hide in the shadows here and will probably not be thrilled with the mention here) dedicated many hours of service in this endeavor. She is my webmistress, and while I continue to learn more and can do more myself, she is the one who worked so hard on getting the theme to work, getting the Blog moved over, setting up a new mailing list process (the old one had to be sacrificed in the move - thankfully only 8 people were registered!)...I owe here a HUMONGOUS debt of thanks, and so here, publicly, I give it. Thank you my dear, I really appreciate your time and effort (especially for what you no doubt still think is just a silly hobby. ).

Okay, enough sappy stuff. Go look at the site. Ooh, aah, buy something...

Excitement abounds - new search at The Sundry

[Yeah - I know - two posts in one month. Can you believe it??!!!!!]

As part of the move to get the "branch store" busier, I have decided that the Advanced Search function needs to be more user-friendly, and more useful as well. Towards that end, I am, as I go along getting the eBay inventory moved over to http://www.donsmagicandsundry.com/, adding four "tags" to each inventory item. These will be searchable, and should increase the flexibility of a customer's quest to find the perfect card. You can check out the new search page at: http://store02.prostores.com/servlet/donsmagicandsundry/Catalog

The four "tags" (technically called "Custom Fields" in the ProStores jargon) are:

1. Color: This has five search fields, and a user can enter into each of the fields any of the five colors (White, Blue, Black, Red and Green) or "Colorless", plus "Multi" if the card is more than one color. So far I haven't been able to fine-tune the search process, and if you enter "White" for Color 1 and "Red" for Color 2 you get all items that are White and also all that are White and Red. What should happen is you only get the items that are White and Red. I need to work out this kink.
2. Card Type: This has two search fields (I may add one more later) and a user can enter into each of the fields any of the eight card types (Artifact, Creature, Enchantment, Instant, Land, Planeswalker, Sorcery, and Tribal). As with color, a card may be multiple types (a "Tribal Sorcery" for example), so this should, if Tribal is entered as Type 1 and Sorcery is entered as Type 2, produce only cards that are Tribal and Sorcery, but I suspect that doesn't work right yet either.
3. Card Sub-Type: This has three search fields and a user can enter into each of the fields a Creature type (like "Goblin" or "Elf") or several other sub-types that distinguish one card from another (some Enchantments are "Aura", and some are "World"; any type of card may be "Legendary").
4. Rarity: This has only one search field, and a user can enter any of the five rarity types (Basic Land, Common, Uncommon, Rare, or Mythic Rare). This is a somewhat redundant search, since I include this information in the title of each inventory item (example: "Llanowar Elves - 10th Edition - Common") but just in case it's not obvious that the rarity is searchable within the name, I am including it as its own Custom Field.

What has me baffled at the moment is that searching for two different Custom Fields produces a Boolean relationship I would expect. In other words if you search for Color: White and Card Type: Creature you get all the cards that are labelled as White and Creature, but not cards labelled White that aren't labelled Creature, or Creature but not White. That's what I want if you search within a single Custom Field as well (Color: White and Color: Red yields only things that are White and Red) but I haven't gotten it licked yet. I may not be able to.

So now, in addition to moving over 3000+ items from eBay to the other store, I also need to edit the 50,000+ items already over there. I may be done before 2010. Wish me luck!

A New Year, a New Direction

I can't believe I'm doing this to myself....

I have decided, due to various factors including eBay's crazy changing of rules all the time, that what I need to do is take all of my single cards down off of my eBay store and move them to the "branch store" at http://www.donsmagicandsundry.com/ instead.

I am staring down the barrel of another great "culling" by eBay of my inventory. As you may recall, last year (October?) I lost about half of my inventory as eBay took down any items that were listed at under $1. Well, eBay's latest policy change is that personal checks and money orders (in short, non-electronic payments) are no longer acceptable for eBay transactions.

The problem is that for the last who knows how long, my boilerplate "checkout message" has said that PayPal is preferred, but that checks & money orders would be accepted. If eBay lives up to their promise, then come January 16th any of my items with this wording will be taken down, and I'd have to relist them all at that point.

My only other option would be to edit 3000+ items one at a time, because the checkout instruction message is not one of the things you can edit by a bulk edit. And even if I could, I would be unable to edit the message on any item where even one of them had sold (you may recall me hitting that problem last year when the USPS got rid of "Air Mail Letter" and replaced it with "First Class International").

So, essentially, I have finally had it with eBay as far as having a massive inventory over there is concerned. I will still leave up my booster packs and complete common sets as they are more easily dealt with over there. But the bulk of my inventory will move to the "branch store". The big pluses include:

• Easier to control inventory (adding/subtracting cards)
• Easier to bulk edit if need be (I can download my inventory as a spreadsheet, do a massive "Find/Replace" and upload the file back up and there you go!)
• I can still move selected items over to eBay, but if purchased they will be taken to my branch store's checkout, and may then go further shopping over there
• Fees on successful sales MUCH lower through ProStores than at eBay (or as some have taken to calling it, "feeBay")

This decisions brings with it some pains in the butt, however:

• The branch store's website needs some revamping to make it more attractive and user-friendly to encourage more people to buy there
• I have 3000+ items that need to be moved (UGH!) - which means modifying the old photos to the "branch store" standard, typing the descriptions, etc.
• I need to increase advertising and the like to bring customers to the branch store, because it doesn't have as many purchases as I need to justify it

All in all, I now have my work cut out for me again. And to think I was wondering what I was going to do with my free time now that I finally got all my English cards up!

I'll try to make regular updates as I can to let you loyal readers (all 2 of you!) know how things are progressing. Hopefully I can get a large number of cards moved over before the forced purge from eBay later this month.