A& G Yankee Tribute Set Delay, WIGIX Update & Poll

This was posted today in the updates section on the etopps website:

Please be aware that eTopps Allen & Ginter Yankee Satdium Tribute sets were printed on schedule but after reviewing the cards in person, we felt the quantity was not up to eTopps standards and therefore made the decision to re-print the cards. This decision has lead to a production delay and for this we apologize, but the eTopps team is dedicated to delivering a quality product. The sets are now nearing completion and will be available for delivery mid to late October.

Please continue to check eTopps Updates for additional information.

Again, we apologize for the delay, and we appreciate your patience.

Sincerely,
The eTopps Team

* * *

Last night I got moving on becoming the category expert guy for etopps basketball and hockey. I also approved a listing for the A &G Yankee tribute set that was distributed at the National and tried out listing one of my etopps cards I have listed on ebay. Here's the listing I did last night.

I noticed on the listing there was no mention of payment methods or anything. That should have been a red flag for me but since I was falling-down tired I waited to see what would happen next.

This morning I received a lot of emails related to wigix. The one that stood out the most was from the Director of the Catalog on Wigix:

I just noticed that the "ETOPPS ALLEN GINTER 2008 NATIONAL PROMO SET W/RUTH" page was added to the etopps category recently. However, some of the contents are not conforming with the Wigix standards and need to be corrected.

Basically, the major difference between Wigix and eBay is that our catalog is a generic one that can be used by everyone for different purposes. "Listing a page" does NOT mean list a product for sale, it's only the first step - to build the catalog. Owner- or Seller-specific information can only be filled in when you add the item to your portfolio and place a sell order on it. Therefore, all the contents in the item page need to be objective, third-person, instead of being specific and personal. Information about shipping & handling, item condition, guarantee, etc, shall strictly be excluded. Watermaked images shall also never appear on our site for copyright concerns (the image of the above item contains eBay watermark).

Please read the following guidelines for more detail if you haven't done so.

- The Guidelines for Item Submission (http://www.wigix.com/index.php/usage/faq/3)
- The Guidelines for Approving Item Submissions (http://www.wigix.com/index.php/cewhelpcenter/index/25)

Let me know if you have further questions.

Thank you very much!

--
Rena He Huang
Director of Catalog

Wigix, Inc.
Keeping fees at bay…
www.wigix.com

So in a nutshell, I listed my in-hand as if it was on ebay and even copy and pasted the photo I used from my ebay listing while in fact I was only entering an in-hand to build the etopps catalog.

Whoops!

Aside from my mistake this shows that Wigix is very web 2.0 in which we would be sharing information about the in-hand cards. And why not? When you look at the listings for the same exact in-hand on ebay the only differences are price, shipping, item description and seller's feedback rating.

So why not create a catalog of templates?
Because it's a lot of work. I don't want to guess how many hours building the etopps catalog on cardtarget has taken.

They're not trying to re-create the wheel here. Amazon is already doing this. 31 in-hands are listed on Amazon as templates.

But here's the incentive with wigix that makes it better than Amazon: they award you ownership rights for a template. Any transaction on wigix for the in-hand card that you created the template for, you will get a percentage of the revenue. I believe it's 5%. Here's info on this.

I would love to do this all by myself, get the whole etopps catalog listed, rake in all that dough (not!). But I can't. Since I introduced Wigix here, a number of you have registered already.

I am going to open a poll on whether this seems like something worth pursuing or not with either a yes or a no.


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