its probably ridiculously easy, but i have no idea how to use this site, am i supposed to take pictures of my own toys and enter them on the site? i dont get it...help would be great...thanks!

 

slowly?

Isn't that the answer unless they upgraded something?

Terribly slowly...

 

I found it was easier and faster just to create a list or spreadsheet on my own computer and create a backup. That way I never have to worry about losing it if their site crashes or if they just fail to renew the site url and stuff.

 

Shmax works great but you need a lot of patience. Just search the database for your figures and hit add to collection. And wait.

 

Sums it up nicely.

 

I have to admit I found that site pretty confusing.

 

Actually, the best place to seek help with shmax.com is, surprise, surprise, over on shmax.com. We have our own forums 'n everything, and if I don't help you personally one of the other members will. But since you asked for help and no one here has provided anything but misinformation, I'll take a quick shot at it.

You ask how to use the site. Well, it's primarily a reference site, so you use it the same way you would use imdb or wikipedia--just browse the database or search for items you're interested in.

Its second function--and probably the one you're interested in--is its collection interface. There's not much to it--you just navigate around through the database and any time you come across a toy that you happen to have in your personal collection, you click the "Add to my Collection" link. You then have the option to enter little details such as how much you paid, what condition it's in, which parts are missing, and so on.

That's about it. Occasionally folks get confused by the "Add it Yourself!" link in the upper right area of the page--that's for adding missing entries to the database, and has nothing to do with your collection.

As for photos, well, we always encourage people to submit them, of course, but these are for the benefit of the general database, and show up on the regular reference details pages. We don't currently have the resources to allow people to store personal photos of each of their collection items, but it's something I'd like to one day support.

Well, I hope that's helpful.

I'll quickly address the other two (somewhat negative) posts in this thread.

As a matter of fact we did upgrade the server, almost a year ago. It's now much faster and more responsive.

We're not going anywhere, but I can understand this kind of worry, which is why we have a "Download Collection" link. It produces a spreadsheet file that can be viewed in Excel or Calc. That's been there for several years, now. I see your last visit was around a year ago, so I guess you just didn't notice it.

 

It was a negative response. I gave it an honest effort. I wanted to use it but it would take an insane amount of time for searches and loading which would cause impatience on my end and I'd unitentionally click twice on things. So it is good to hear that it's faster now.

 

Probably just me but I don't search one item at a time, except when I have say 30 Optimus Primes to add then I search for Optimus.

When I have 20 Animated or 40 Movie toys I just browse by line and click click.

To me it's a nice host.

 

I did not know about the download collection link i will check that out it sounds like another great feature!

 

"Slowly" was also my first reaction to the thread title.

 

Here are my thoughts:

As shmax said there are really two uses for the website; a database and a collection mechanism. Both of these features tie together nicely. The website is an ever-growing and improving website. I've given constructive feedback to shmax and he's either implemented them or put them on his to-do list.

Because of the limited resources and funds, shmax used to be very slow. It has gotten a lot better this past year. It isn't google-blazing-fast, but it is within the tolerable range for me.

You can either search for a product OR browse by category.

If you become a free member, you do get more features, like the ability to add items to your collection and download it into a spreadsheet.

Although I also keep a secondary list of what I have on google notebook, I like shmax because it tracks more information and it constantly improves as people add to it.

The intention of shmax, from what I understand, is to expand outside of the transformer realm, once the website has been perfected to a specific unknown level. So if you have other collections too, it might be more beneficial.

Overall, I don't think it is any different than any new website; you just have to play around with it. Good luck!

 

thanks for your help! i will try again -

 

Shame there's not an "Upload Collection" option... (Yes, I realize that would be a little impractical to program...)

It's a neat system I'd like to be able to use, but for someone like me who has been collecting for years and has thousands of toys, it would just take far too long to add each of my toys one at a time. Until there's some form of "mass add" feature, there will be a start-up barrier to people with large collections.

What I'd like to see: A page that lists all the toys from a given year with checkboxes that would let you add a whole year's toys at once.

 

Advanced search (Shmax.com: Advanced Search) can give you a page that looks like http://shmax.com/search/?searchTerm...fore_d=1&date_before_y=1985&r=0&Submit=Search and you can refine the search or the sort to your pleasure. You then go down the page and just keep on clicking on the "Add to my collection" link and you theoretically don't need to do anything more. If you WISH, you can add more info like the purchase price, the date, notes, the condition, etc.

 

For me it did not take long when i first set it up i only had 100 or so toys and even now i have at most 180.

 

I've tried that. Still way too slow. The site response was simply too slow to deal with for adding a thousand plus entries one at a time.

What I need is one page, click all the boxes I want to add, and go.

 

I just signed up, looked figures up on the site, added to my collection, and found out how little my collection was worth, and cried.

It's pretty simple. Really, if Dran0n can figure it out, you can too.

 

I understand your plight. I have a large collection as well (not as large as yours). My outlook was to do as much as I could at a time. I tried to break it up into section. I started with the small sections, like alternators, animorphs, crossovers, go-bots... etc

It took me months to do (and that was when the site was slow). Personally, I am very glad I did it.

 

DranOn,

You actually hit upon a slight issue with shmax - the price estimating. Currently the system works by looking at recent ebay auctions and determining approximate value. HOWEVER, many items have not met shmax's strict ebay criteria for price estimating and therefore the value is currently 'unknown'. Here is the thing, for all 'unknown' values, shmax calculates that as $0! So your collection is probably worth 10x what shmax shows. We discussed this a few times and he is thinking about defaulting the price to your purchased price if the ebay system hasn't calculated anything.