The Beckett Blog

Ugh, I am sorry for the horrific pun.

Today class, we are going to cover a bit of the Organize category, specifically “My Organize” and related. If you were paying attention to the last “New Beckett.com” post, then you would know that organize is the orange-labeled category. If you were not paying attention, that’s OK, now you know. (Also – everything dealing with the new Beckett.com is filed under, “Top Secret,” so you can always click that category to see all that has been previously posted.)

– Here are two screenshots we will be talking about today–

(Click to enlarge)

Feel free to ask if you are not sure how to enlarge these, or anything else you don’t know for that matter. Remember, there are NO stupid questions, just people who stupidly don’t ask questions!

OK, the first (left) screenshot is an example showing how easy it is to organize everything, once you have added it to “My Organize,” (which is also easy).

By the way, think of “My Organize” as a table, and you are putting stuff on it. You do a search and you can add whatever you want to your table, just by clicking on “Add to my Organize,” you will see that everywhere on the new site.

You can add entire sets, select some cards from a set, select certain cards from an individual player, add all the cards from an individual player, one card from one manufacturer, ect. Whatever you can think of…

Now, whatever you have added to your table is in front of you, ready to organize however you want to or need to.

In this example, you can see where I added various football cards from 2005 Absolute Memorabilia, 2005 Donruss Elite, 2005 Score, and 2007 Absolute Memorabilia. There are 7 pages, 151 total cards, in “My Organize.” When you add new stuff to the “table” (My Organize), it will show up as “Recently Added,” but this is stuff added a while back, so “Recently Added” shows zero in this example.

Of course, we will only be dealing with what we can see in this screenshot for now.

You can make different collections, label them and color-code them how you want. Think of each one of “My Collections” as a drawer. You can have infinite drawers that you sort the stuff from your table (“My Organize”) into. (By the way, you do not have to put stuff from the “table” into a “drawer” if you don’t want to, it stays on the table as long as you need it to, so you can sort (organize) a bit, and then come back the next day and do more.)

You can see “My Collections,” on the left side of the screenshot. Note that there is a (currently empty) “Manny Ramierez Cards,” collection. You can have whatever collection you want, it’s up to you. You can call it what you want, set it up how you want…anything.

You could have a “Houston players” collection, with Astros, Texans, and Rockets in it. You could have a “Ryan Braun’s minor league coaches” collection, or a “2005 Upper Deck & Topps football” collection. I am pretty sure I am going make people sick since I keep saying, “it’s up to you,” or “whatever you want,” but it’s the best way to explain it. There is no limit to how you can organize your collection, and my examples here are very small and very basic.

Now, it’s very easy to add something or somethings to each collection. For instance, I want to add all my Manny Ramirez cards on my table (“My Organize”) to my “Manny Ramirez Cards” drawer (collection).

The “Search My Organize” bar can bring up every Manny Ramirez card I have added to the table, (“My Organize”). Then I can check the box next to each one I want to add, or if there are quite a few, I can click “Select: Page,” or “Select: All” (blue text under the “Search My Organize” bar). If you want to clear what you have selected, use the “Select:None,” to clear all you have checked and start over.

(Hopefully that’s simple enough, but please ask questions!)

Ok, you have selected the cards (this is not in the screenshot), now hit the “Actions” button, which will bring up some options, one of which is add to “Manny Ramirez Cards” collection.

(Really, it will have all the collections you have created, so it depends on what you have done, but in a nutshell, you can add whatever you select from the table (My Organize) to whatever drawer (collection) you want. If you suddenly decide on a new collection, you can make one right then as well. You don’t have to stop, go make a new collection and then re-select everything for that collection.)

Got it? I hope so, because I am worried if I am making sense. Ask, and if I don’t know, someone smarter does and I will ask them!

Now, let’s take a quick break from the tables and drawers and jump around a little, to the “Views.” Those options are next to the “Actions” and “Options” buttons (much more on all that those two can do will be coming later).

This screenshot is in “Default” (list) view. There is also the “Gallery” view, which is just what it sounds like, pictures of the card along with the info from the “Default” view that you see now.

(A quick hint since we are talking about the Gallery – uploading card images is a good thing to do, I’d consider taking some time to scan cards that do not have images in our system already…starting now. Be ready to upload when the time comes, and you will be ahead of the game. This is a Behind the Scenes exclusive tip….shhhhh!) Wait, scratch that, tell everyone…I need to up the traffic in here.

Ok, with that out of the way, there is also the “Trade” view. For this, open the second screenshot, the one on the right.

Now you can begin to put all this together a bit better.

See the various columns? (Own, Keep, Want, Trade, Buy Price, Sell Price, Beckett Value) I hope they are pretty self-explanatory.

In my opinion, this is where the new site really, really gets good. One of the options you will have is a “fill” option (not showing right now). With the fill option you can quickly fill in columns.

Since there are infinite ways a person could have a collection, we will do a real simple one. If you want to either buy, or trade for, one of each of these 2008 Upper Deck Baseball cards showing on the screenshot, you would go to “Select Page,” which will put a check mark next to each card on this page, and with the “fill” option, you can put a “1″ in each slot of the “Want” column. To be clear, you can make a (whatever) collection, and you do not have to own the card…you can have a collection made completely of stuff you want…or need (my wants and needs really vary, it depends if you hear them from me…or my wife.)

Of course, you may want 2, 7 or 13, there…you may want to leave it at “0″….again, up to you. You can fill in whatever column you want, with whatever it is you want. The “Trade” column shows you, and CAN show the rest of the Beckett community (more on that later) what you are willing to trade or sell.

This screenshot is of my “2008 Upper Deck Baseball” collection, and let’s look at #239, Ken Griffey, Jr.

I have 4 of that card, and I want to keep 2, so, since I have “Trade” checked, people will (can) know I have 2 to trade or sell.

Now, look at #67, Albert Pujols. I have one, and “Trade” is clicked, so I will trade or sell it, but, look over at the “Sell Price,” I am willing to sell it for $1.50, which is actually under the $2.00 “Beckett Value” (visible to online price guide subscribers).

Once again, to beat a dead horse, it’s up to you how to fill in each of the columns.

Now, I kept saying the cards you have for trade CAN be visible to the rest of the Beckett community. Here is where the REALLY good part comes in, you can set each individual collection to private, or public, and it will only cost you $149 each month, payable directly to my personal Paypal account.

OK, just seeing if you were paying attention, it’s free, all of these organization tools are free!

(But hey, don’t worry, feel free to contact me if you still want to send me $149 every month, just kind of remember to keep it between us…you know, so I can keep posting these rambling things….)

OK, quickly back to the first screenshot, you can use the “fill” here as well, to fill in columns quickly. Now, take a look next to the 4th and 5th cards down, 2005 Absolute Memorabilia # 49 Jake Plummer, and #91 Troy Brown.

See what is different about those two?

If you have those cards graded, the column where you select the cards condition, (right now all the rest are labeled “MINT”) you can choose “graded” and then enter the serial number and the grade…and (obviously) not just BGS cards!

You can enter cards from the 4 major grading companies (BGS, PSA, SGC, GAI), so this also functions as the registry…sorry, more on the registry in a later post so it can be in depth.

OK, I am about out of steam, but I am absolutely sure I skipped over SOMETHING very obvious on one of these screenshots, so PLEASE ask questions, or stay tuned…there will be more!

P.S. Suggestions on this blog’s design are more than welcome, I am slowly (but insecurely) beating this thing into shape. If you own a wordpress.com blog and understand just enough CSS to be dangerous, then you know exactly what I mean! I kind of know what I am doing, but my “eye” for design/color is…somewhat lacking.