Wigix, Autograph Offering: Favre-Fest

I admit the requirement to list an etopps in-hand on Wigix is unusual to say the least even though it is being done on Amazon. I'm sure this is reflected in the poll. Even though more people signed up with the website than voted, Wigix may not be for everyone and that's fine.

Just keep in mind to form a template of a card you want to list before you can start selling it.

On Wednesday I'll post about another online secondary market that (hopefully) will require less work to list cards.

* * *

Once again there are delivery delays for in-hands. This time it is 2008 Baseball:

Due to production issues beyond our control, etopps is experiencing delays on delivery of the following cards:

2008 Baseball

Jimmy Rollins 2008
Carlos Quentin 2008
Clayton Kershaw 2008
Seth Smith 2008
Joe Saunders 2008
Tim Lincecum 2008
Alexei Ramirez 2008
Armando Galarraga 2008
Cole Hamels 2008
Carlos Gonzalez 2008
Charlie Morton 2008
Cliff Lee 2008
Max Ramirez 2008
Brandon Jones 2008
Jair Jurrjens 2008
Brett Gardner 2008
Chris Davis 2008
C.C. Sabathia 2008
Chris Volstad 2008
Steve Pearce 2008
Jeff Samardzija 2008
Taylor Teagarden 2008
Clayton Richard 2008
Manny Ramirez 2008
Ivan Rodriguez 2008
Jason Bay 2008
Gio Gonzalez 2008
Mark Teixeira 2008
Cliff Pennington 2008
Daniel Murphy 2008
Greg Maddux 2008
Adam Dunn 2008
Daric Barton 2008

We expect to have these cards available for delivery on Monday, October 20th. Please continue to check eTopps Updates for additional information.

Sincerely,

etopps Team

* * *

Etopps surprised its community by offering not one but two Brett Favre autographs, 25 of the 2006 and 25 of the 2007. Both cards at $149.99 each. Along with this Favre will be offered during this week's IPO in a Jet uniform.

Only caveat to Favre's autograph offering is he's now a Jet. I always have qualms about how sellable an autograph is if the player goes to another team (I brought this up when I reviewed Josh Hamilton earlier this year after being traded from the Reds to the Rangers in the off-season.) But if the player is good enough or great enough (like Favre), I don't think there's much to worry about.

I'd be worried more about getting one when they become available at 3pm EST on Thursday (10/2).

So beyond etopps-land, is this worth getting? After doing my usual search on ebay, here's what I found: for 2006 and 2007 autos of Favre, most of what I've seen on ebay are stickers on cards and are nearing the price that etopps is asking. With the combined demand for Favre's auto, his first etopps auto and the fact that the signature will be on the card with his jersey number, it's a safe bet that both of these will do well on the secondary market.

* * *

Cal Ripken Jr. will be signing at the

If you live in NJ or the general area, bring your Cal Ripken etopps in-hand with you to Montclair State University in Montclair, NJ at the home of the Yogi Berra Museum. Cal will be signing autographs at the museum on Tuesday, November 11th from 1-3pm. He will only be signing 500 items. What's cool is pre-orders are encouraged and accepted: 973-655-2378.

I highly recommend the museum. It's loaded with Yankee history and rare memorabilia. Last year I pre-ordered Don Mattingly signing his book on hitting. When I went to the museum to pick up the book, I got a chance to see Yogi Berra.

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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WIGIX Update

An update is long overdue about the Want It Got It Exchange website or wigix.com.

Since introducing Wigix here, I have been doing some back and forth with the staff at wigix for setting up categories and what they call attributes (year of the card, player's name, specific things similar to ebay like grading, serialized, manufacturer, etc.).

For some reason, I wasn't getting notified by email when a Wigix staff member sent me an email in my Wigix inbox. Scrolling through the back-and-forth messages, a week would pass before they responded while other times it would take less than a day to get back to me on a question or submission I had.

At one point, there was a huge lag when I depended on my gmail inbox to tell me I had a message from the Wigix staff because it never came.

Since then, I have logged into my account almost every day. Yesterday I worked on the attributes as mentioned above and this morning I received an email notification in my gmail inbox that I had a message waiting for me in my Wigix account. Go figure.

Nevertheless, I hope we can start listing in-hands on Wigix soon, perhaps within the next week. Once this is a Go, I will post here and will list a few in-hands to see how it happens and will report back here how listing a card went.

Kudos to all of those who have signed up for Wigix. I appreciate your patience.

Enjoy the video:

Powered by Wigix

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No Listing or Final Value Fees For Items Under $25

Can you imagine not paying any listing or final value fees for an auction or fixed price listing that ends under $25?

No upgrade fees, buy-it-now fees or additional picture fees.

On the same site, what if you could list your in-hands under an etopps categories like Event or Allen & Ginter?

Enter the WantItGotItExchange or Wigix.com

There are a lot of different ways to be involved on the site. It takes a web 2.0 approach to its members.

Two months ago, I applied to become what Wigix calls a "category expert" for etopps in-hand cards. After some back and forth by email, I finally got the approval yesterday.

To make myself as transparent as possible with this site, the banner in the top right corner and the word Wigix in the secondary market links or linked to my account for referrals. I'm sure either I will get either some kind of wigix "points" or pennies for this.

The so-called "perks" of being a CE is (1) any etopps in-hand listing will need my approval and (2) I will receive a whopping 1% revenue from the final sale of all etopps in-hand listings.

Needless to say, I won't be quitting my day job over this 1%. But more importantly, I will have a say about whether or not an in-hand listing that has the words "1 of 1" or "1/1" in the title or some other "fuzzy math" fraction in it will appear.

As a "CE," I can create subcategories (or "taxonomy") for etopps in-hands to make finding the cards to list and (and to buy) easier. Right now, Wigix has added etopps only under baseball cards. I am in the process of getting Wigix to provide etopps categories under other sports card categories. Right now they are still "under construction" for the basketball, hockey and NASCAR categories.

I submitted a bunch of baseball subcategories under etopps for approval so, for example, if you wanted to list a 2005 Yankees team card, you would go here:

all categories>sports memorabilia, cards and fan shop>baseball>etopps>2005>Teams

I have also included Allen and Ginter under etopps so there can be subcategories for Presidents, Presidential Candidates, Milestones and Moments (and later on, Yankee Stadium).

I've even added categories for NSCC - hotboxes and promo.

I will provide updates for subcategories and when etopps will be added to football and other sports card categories.

Here's an excerpt from the page that breaks down the transaction fees:

Want It Got It Exchange

Buy and sell with Confidence again

Wigix is the new way to buy and sell online. It's a socially-driven marketplace, where you can communicate with like-minded collectors and traders. Get a live pricing history for each item and negotiate prices intelligently. Social communication encourages informed buying.

Stop buying in a Web 1.0 world, and start buying with the strength of your friends and fellow owners!

Make money without having to sell a thing

Our catalog is constantly updated by members like you! If you add or perfect item descriptions in our catalog, you earn a piece of its revenue.
Learn more!

Keep Fees at Bay

Stop guessing your fees. Wigix doesn't aim to gouge its members.

For items sold between $25 and $100, we ask for a buck and a half from both the seller and the buyer.

We ask for an additional 2% of the portion above $100 from the seller if the price goes over $100.

If the price goes over $1000, we ask for an additional 1% of that portion.

For items below $25, we charge nothing!

Stop letting other marketplaces chip away at your profits with multiple fees. Wigix asks for no listing fees, and has no hidden fees.