Topic: New to Deckbog, a few thoughts

I have been using Deckbox for a few days now and I really like it. I think there is room for improvement. I sure hope this site is still being maintained! I'm sure some of these have been already suggested. With these changes, I think this could be the best hands down! A force to be reckoned with.

Improvements:

1. More sorting options. By rarity, expansion, etc. And then have nested sorting, so first sort by rarity, then color, etc., e.g.
2. A duplicate button should be added. When adding a new card that is the same as another card you JUST added (only a different expansion) it would be easier to duplicate an old card you just added, and then switch the expansion it came from. This is instead of retyping the card name and pressing click to verify. One less step makes it faster.
3. Basic Lands. When building a deck, it would be easier if your basic lands didn't always have to be added to each deck. Your basic lands should be freely available from the get go. In other words, accessible from almost anywhere during the deck building.
4. Trading. If you have an item up for trade, and it's a big ticket item, it might be worthwhile to have a unique option to actually show a picture of the card the person owns. They could scan it in to show condition for potential traders.
5. Expansion symbols need some cleaning up. Some look very pixelated like Avacyn Restored. Other's like Chronicles and Portal need be color coded for rarity. I know that not even The Gatherer database does this, but in my opinion, this needs to be done. It's been done for stuff like A,B,U,Revised, and Fourth editions, so it's not a stretch to do it for Portal or Chronicles. Right now, if I want to see what rarity a Chronicles cards is, I must leave the Deckbox site and go look it up on The Gatherer.
6. When changing card amounts to a card you just added, it would be nice if you could adjust the green count box, much like the master list only requires one click to edit, as opposed to the two clicks it requires to edit, then apply edited changes.
7. When you add a new column, why does it keep disappearing? If I mean to add it, it should stick.
8. More card expansion options. This list needs Duels of the Planeswalkers (with color coded symbols for rarity), prereleases, judge foils, weird promos like Xbox/PS3 et al., right now, I have several prerelease cards that I have no way to identify other than assigning an expansion symbol (sometimes erroneous) and labeling it as a promo.
9. Total worth of cards needs to be listed, and it should be able to eliminate certain cards that fall within a price range. Say anything under a dollar. Because realistically, you can't give some of these cards away, so they sure aren't worth 30 cents, 20 cents, or even 10 cents. But in the end, I would love to know the  net worth of anything over $2 at the very least.
10. Additional column for amount paid for card. This would allow you to track profit on any given card. In other words, what you paid for it versus what it is currently worth. It might be worth the effort to also include a little editable box that allows you to note if you purchased a specific lot of cards (for a certain price) and note the cards that came from that lot (you know, assign it an arbitrary number or letter to denote), and then note how much you paid for the lot. Example: I paid about $50 for a box lot of 4,000 cards a couple years ago. It had older stuff mostly from the Shards of Alara Block, but it also had some Future Sight, Eventide, and other random stuff. It had a Tarmogoyf in there, which is now worth around $90 or so, plus many other high-priced cards like Noble Hierarch (x2), et al. Since I can't say how much I exactly paid for Tarmogoyf and the Nobles, I would have to divide $50 paid for them into the 4,000 or so cards that came in the lot. A small program could determine the fraction of a dollar I paid for them in total, as well as the other 3,997 cards in the remaining lot.
11. Improve the prices of the cards? I hear the prices aren't as accurate as they could be. I'd like a midrange value, something like TCGplayer, or even the going rates on eBay.
12. Prices should reflect foiled versions and condition. This is tough implementation I would figure. Perhaps a generic ratio would cover most of the cards?

Question - Why do some cards list as a 0.00 price?

I'm sure I've had other ideas for improvement, but this is all for now. I hope many of these can be implemented.


Thanks!

Last edited by leitmotiv (2013-03-14 22:28:28)

Re: New to Deckbog, a few thoughts

As a basic reply to your requests:

There is a [ + ] button when you add cards. It will add a new line to the current entry of the same card and let you choose new set/rarity/language, etc.

Expansion symbols could use some work, but Gatherer actually *does* have the older symbols color-coded for rarity: black, silver, and gold. It was a change they made for Magic Online and ported it into Gatherer for easy reference.

I am with you on the expanding the Expansion Sets. I have mentioned at least 3 (now 4 times) that they really need to remove "promo" as an add-on to a card and instead include ALL of the promotional Expansion sets that the cards come from including at least: Pre-release, Launch Party, Buy-A-Box, FNM Promo, Grand Prix Promo, Judge Promo, Textless Promo, Junior Super Series (aka JSS), Summer Magic, etc.

The prices are reflective of the TCGPlayer pricing, by the way. Unless you change it, the prices are based on the "average" price, but this can be set to use "high" or "low" if you like by way of your preferences. Some cards list for $0.00 due to error with either TCGPlayer or DeckBox.

You can see the total value of your collection while on your inventory screen by hovering over "View" and clicking on "Show Value". This only throws the value up based on your total cards. I could see a reason to exclude all your cards of $1 or less, and could be a neat add-on just to give a person a reasonable idea of what their collection is worth minus all the chaff. Maybe even make it scalable by value? Like, it gives you the option to exclude cards with value less than $X.YZ? Seems cool. Might be difficult for DeckBox to program as I think there are hundreds of other places they could utilize their time and energy programming though.

I *really* like the idea of being able to add a scan for a card that is unique. I have many "big ticket" items that I would want scans of. Of course, you can always scan them for anyone interested, but it definitely would save time if there was a way to have them uploaded into your inventory already. Great request! Don't know how difficult this would be for DeckBox, but one to keep in mind.

Re: New to Deckbog, a few thoughts

The + button works, but it doesn't duplicate a card. It's more laborious to do it the + way because you have to edit every piece of info (i.e. language).

The Mirrodin Besieged symbol looks atrocious, as does Avacyn Restored. Portal 1 and Chronicles should reflect color of rarity. This would be a simple thing to do in Photoshop, I would think. Deckbox.org should take the lead on coloring these symbols, even though The Gatherer database has not.

Yeah, this site is in dire need of expanding more expansions like you said. All those Duels of the Planeswalkers, Promos, FNM Promos, Judge Promos, etc.... When more sets and promos become available for categorization, I will immediately want a way to sort by promo, that way I can recatalog everything I own that is currently labelled generically as promo.

Yes, you are correct. When sorting the total price value of your collection, it would be nice to get rid of the chaff (anything below an arbitrary amount, like a dollar, or two dollars).

More suggestions:

1. Some of the Unlimited and Chronicles cards don't reflect the proper card previews. For instance, my Birds of Paradise from Unlimited has a preview for Revised.
2. This site should allow you to sort and find cards by foil, promo, full art, etc. More sorting options... MOREEEEEEE!!!!
3. An internal way to message a friend. I don't see how to right now.

Re: New to Deckbog, a few thoughts

leitmotiv wrote:

2. This site should allow you to sort and find cards by foil, promo, full art, etc. More sorting options... MOREEEEEEE!!!!

On your Inventory pages, click Search and Filter (top right region of the page).  At the far right of the screen area that appears, you'll find many sorting options in the drop-down at the far right.  Filters include:

  • Name

  • Rules Text

  • Type

  • Subtype

  • Is Foil

  • Edition Owned

  • Edition Printed In

  • Format

  • Rarity

  • Color

  • Cost

They are simple queries, but you can you multiple of them together. For example, setting filters for

Format==Standard
Color==Is Exclusively All of Black, Red
Rarity==Uncommon

will net you a list of all your Black/Red uncommons that are legal in the Standard format.

leitmotiv wrote:

3. An internal way to message a friend. I don't see how to right now.

There is an email link on each user's Deckbox profile page.  It generates a message to the member's external eddress.  There is no system within Deckbox at this time to view or respond to messages outside of the trade chat interface.

Things keep changing around here, with the goal of making things better.  Sebi (The Admin) and company are currently working through upcoming changes to the trade interface.  Welcome aboard!

Profile - Wishlist - Tradelist

Black and Blue--not just for bruises anymore.

Re: New to Deckbog, a few thoughts

Thanks for the tip on sorting by foil. I don't see a sorting by promo though. Am I missing something, or it doesn't exist? It'd be more intuitive to sort this in the columns instead.

Last edited by leitmotiv (2013-03-25 21:15:48)

Re: New to Deckbog, a few thoughts

No promo sort at this time.  There have been many comments requesting promos as sets of their own.

Profile - Wishlist - Tradelist

Black and Blue--not just for bruises anymore.

Re: New to Deckbog, a few thoughts

Okay thanks. Also,

Add:

1. Emblems
2. Tokens (every available token, not just Unglued, or Unhinged; including Poison tokens)
3. Previews for the Unglued Tokens don't work, add them

Seeing as how WotC is considering adding colored rarity to the tokens and emblems, the collectibility of these types of cards will increase demand and prices.

Last edited by leitmotiv (2013-03-26 21:29:42)

Re: New to Deckbog, a few thoughts

leitmotiv wrote:

Okay thanks. Also,

Add:

1. Emblems
2. Tokens (every available token, not just Unglued, or Unhinged; including Poison tokens)

Seeing as how WotC is considering adding rarity to the tokens and emblems, the collectibility of these types of cards will increase demand and prices.

I keep all really unique tokens, like the WB angel from Gatecrash. They are $1 each roughly, can only go up.

Re: New to Deckbog, a few thoughts

HikingStick wrote:

No promo sort at this time.  There have been many comments requesting promos as sets of their own.

Actually, there would be both the promo sets as their own. Ones like the comet symbol ones and other promotional releases, then you also have the ones that are part of their set with symbol and all.

For the first, you can look at the Walmart/Target Angel of Glory's Rise, for the other, you can easily look at the Dreg Mangler that came with the christmas boxed set

Re: New to Deckbog, a few thoughts

SotF wrote:
HikingStick wrote:

No promo sort at this time.  There have been many comments requesting promos as sets of their own.

Actually, there would be both the promo sets as their own. Ones like the comet symbol ones and other promotional releases, then you also have the ones that are part of their set with symbol and all.

For the first, you can look at the Walmart/Target Angel of Glory's Rise, for the other, you can easily look at the Dreg Mangler that came with the christmas boxed set

The issue with these promos isn't that Deckbox doesn't handle them it is that Gatherer doesn't handle them.  Deckbox takes all of its information from Gatherer, and they don't list most of the special types of cards. 

There has been discussions about loading that type of additional information from magiccards.info, but that would take a relatively sizable redesign to parts of the system and probably won't be done in the near future.  In the mean time, we kind of have to just deal with it.

Re: New to Deckbog, a few thoughts

I realize you are dealing with an API from TCGPlayer. Does it not handle any promotional sets from TCGPlayer?

Re: New to Deckbog, a few thoughts

qasur wrote:

I realize you are dealing with an API from TCGPlayer. Does it not handle any promotional sets from TCGPlayer?

Disclaimer: I don't actually work on Deckbox, I'm just a seasoned member with a little window behind the scenes from time to time.

First, TCGPlayer's support for promotional cards is spotty, at best, and not kept very well up to date.

Second, TCGPlayer doesn't supply all of the information that Deckbox needs to actually populate the card information (up to date card text, color, mana cost, etc.), and the names through their API aren't always kosher with what everyone else is doing (see Lim-Dûl's Paladin and its lack of price, which is caused by TCGPlayer using names that aren't processed correctly due to special characters), so it can be hard to relate cards correctly.

Could it be done?  Possibly.  But I think it would cause just as many issues as it solves because of missing/differing information.  And Deckbox would most likely, again, have to undergo a bit of a redesign to handle that type of gathering from TCGPlayer (if the API even supports that type of queries).  Personally, I'd rather wait to get the same type of data from magiccards.info that will be fully sustained and more robust.

Re: New to Deckbog, a few thoughts

So what you are saying is we need to set up a campaign to have WotC update The Gatherer database with the missing promo/token information...

Re: New to Deckbog, a few thoughts

NullParameter wrote:
qasur wrote:

I realize you are dealing with an API from TCGPlayer. Does it not handle any promotional sets from TCGPlayer?

Disclaimer: I don't actually work on Deckbox, I'm just a seasoned member with a little window behind the scenes from time to time.

First, TCGPlayer's support for promotional cards is spotty, at best, and not kept very well up to date.

Second, TCGPlayer doesn't supply all of the information that Deckbox needs to actually populate the card information (up to date card text, color, mana cost, etc.), and the names through their API aren't always kosher with what everyone else is doing (see Lim-Dûl's Paladin and its lack of price, which is caused by TCGPlayer using names that aren't processed correctly due to special characters), so it can be hard to relate cards correctly.

Could it be done?  Possibly.  But I think it would cause just as many issues as it solves because of missing/differing information.  And Deckbox would most likely, again, have to undergo a bit of a redesign to handle that type of gathering from TCGPlayer (if the API even supports that type of queries).  Personally, I'd rather wait to get the same type of data from magiccards.info that will be fully sustained and more robust.

Are they planning to use Magiccards.info instead of TCGPlayer then?

Re: New to Deckbog, a few thoughts

qasur wrote:

Are they planning to use Magiccards.info instead of TCGPlayer then?

That, I believe, is the long term plan, but I don't know when it will actually come to fruition.

Re: New to Deckbog, a few thoughts

qasur wrote:

Are they planning to use Magiccards.info instead of TCGPlayer then?

That wouldn't really change anything since Magiccards.info also pulls their prices from TcgPlayer, so they are exactly the same prices smile

Re: New to Deckbog, a few thoughts

laura wrote:
qasur wrote:

Are they planning to use Magiccards.info instead of TCGPlayer then?

That wouldn't really change anything since Magiccards.info also pulls their prices from TcgPlayer, so they are exactly the same prices smile

Prices really wouldn't change, but being able to mark the cards as the correct promo set and other such things would still be highly applicable.  Then people are at least aware that they may need to look at the price elsewhere since it wouldn't be listed on Deckbox if it isn't supported on TCGPlayer.

Re: New to Deckbog, a few thoughts

Just joined here today, and have loaded up my collection. The classification of promos seems a bit crude: in my own database I have a more refined taxonomy. e.g. what kind of media was a Media Insert inserted in? Also Junior Super Series seems to be missing - they are physically different from regular Super Series.

Re: New to Deckbog, a few thoughts

anselan wrote:

Just joined here today, and have loaded up my collection. The classification of promos seems a bit crude: in my own database I have a more refined taxonomy. e.g. what kind of media was a Media Insert inserted in? Also Junior Super Series seems to be missing - they are physically different from regular Super Series.

I think a lot of this categorization is taken from TCGPlayer. Do you just wish the labels were more precise, or are there actual ambiguities you're running into, eg. there's a card in both the Super Series and Junior Super Series with the same name that can't be distinguished under the current system? That is, there's only a real problem here if the name + set labels are not sufficiently unique for a given card.

Re: New to Deckbog, a few thoughts

9700377 wrote:
anselan wrote:

Just joined here today, and have loaded up my collection. The classification of promos seems a bit crude: in my own database I have a more refined taxonomy. e.g. what kind of media was a Media Insert inserted in? Also Junior Super Series seems to be missing - they are physically different from regular Super Series.

I think a lot of this categorization is taken from TCGPlayer. Do you just wish the labels were more precise, or are there actual ambiguities you're running into, eg. there's a card in both the Super Series and Junior Super Series with the same name that can't be distinguished under the current system? That is, there's only a real problem here if the name + set labels are not sufficiently unique for a given card.

Thanks for your reply.

I think mostly I am looking for a more detailed classification. Like I wouldn't describe the "Buy a Box" cards as "Media Inserts", which is how they are classified here. Magic Librarities imho has a better structure: http://www.magiclibrarities.net/rarities.html.

I think this merging can lead to overloading of name+set. For example: http://www.magiclibrarities.net/35-128- … tml#return shows a card I have which is Junior Series (not Junior Super Series - I misremembered). The card looks similar to https://deckbox.org/mtg/Slith%20Firewal … ting=23273 but if you look at the foil it says Junior not Super.

Does it matter? Well, if one is going to track all these wretched promo cards, one might as well use the best map.

Thanks again
Andrew