New certified coin sales database is complete!

coppercoins

Some of you might remember a conversation last week about my interest in building a database driven search page for completed auctions of certified copper on different online auction houses. I worked through the week refining the way I collect the data and coded the pages that drive the program, and now it is tentatively done. There are still a couple of minor bugs to work out, such as getting the database to understand that grades are not ordered alphabetically - currently it understands AU as being a lower grade than VF and EF because it's lower in aplhabetical order. I'll get this kink worked out in time to come - the purpose of this post is to announce that the work is mostly completed and give you a chance to take it out for a test-drive.

Remember - this is only for copper, and right now it only has information included for small cents. It will eventually include all the other copper, but as a test bed I used what I like most. I'll begin to add the other series when I get the time.

So with no further delay, here it is...what do you think?

Certified Coin Auction Search

nwcs

The best way to take care of the AU being less than a EF is to add a column to the grade table called "weight" and assign weights to each grade to put them in order. That way you can differentiate normally. Good luck with the site!

coppercoins

Well, I was thinking of it a different way in that there would have to be some way of pulling a substring of numbers out of a grade string - such as having vg10 pull "10", and ms69rd pulling "69"....then run a test against all grades 60 and above to differentiate those beginning with "m" from those beginning with "p", and separate those. Thing is, I haven't fould a good logical way of doing that without making the code REALLY messy. Anybody out there willing to give some code syntax logic pointers?

abmluce

This could be the start of a very nice thing. Way to go. Tried it, it works !

lincolnSence

impressive! Great start. Alot to maintain, how will you do this?

bennybravo

Good Job!Very nice work.

merz2

This site is indeed needed badly.From my conversations wit copperccoins,it will grow.Pass the word,and add this to your favorites.Watch this site!!!!!

Lakesammman

It would be useful to know the source of the auction data so images could be pulled up. For instance, a price realized for a 1866R IHC looks rather low - would like to find a pic, if possible, to know why - Heritage?? Bowers?? etc. Same for a 1856 - $12 for a P64???. Where is the current info. drawn from?? Is it reliable??

Looks like the data base is being built from now going forward - any chance of incorporating current data bases such as Heritage, Goldberg, etc. to give a longer history from the start??

Looks very promising - will follow with much interest!

robertpr

Coppercoins, I don't know what programming language you're using, but most languages allow the use of arrays in one form or another. I would define an array of all the grades PO-01 through MS/PR70, and simply sort against your array.

coppercoins

The source of the data is currently single fold, but I will be including other sources in the future, as soon as I can figure out a good way to mine the data from them. The current single source is Ebay completed auctions. Once I do include other sources I will add a column to the results page so you can see what source the data came from. Right now that's not an issue.

Regarding linking to the auctions for photo viewing, etc. I cannot do any of that for legal reasons. What I'm already doing is skirting infringement, but is legal.

The invalid information is to be researched. I think something happened in the data conversion - I will look into that tonight. Thing is, with the sheer size of something like this, one invalid entry to 100 valid ones will end up coming out in the wash. It really shouldn't be a problem. This database will eventually include over half a million entries - the current information is for only the past three weeks. Once the data collection has gone on for more time, the question of data validity will wash out. If you see twenty results for something and 19 of them are $10,000 or more, and one item is $12, you can pretty much sort out the invalid item yourself.

I cannot go back further in time with eBay information than I have...they simply don't keep information available back that far (beyond 15 days) and I didn't start collecting the information before last week. Again, once this has gone on for a couple of months, the question of history of items will wash out. I will be keeping an entire year of data (once this has gone on for over a year). Just remember....the space required for just what I am working on here is enormous, and if you've ever researched web hosting, you know it's expensive when you start talking over a gigabyte in disk space necessary for a single application on a multi-faceted web site. Fund collection will eventually be necessary to keep this project alive.

Maintenance of the data is being performed in a half-automated fashion with a bit of hand-editing on the back end. It takes me about two hours a week to do this, on average. That part I don't mind at all if the service is worthwhile and the data is viable.

There are still some bugs to work out of the whole thing - remember that I have been collecting dta for a week and this application was finished this morning....it's fresh and new. I'm sure with a single person coding all the pages and gathering the thousands of items of data there are sure to be a couple of snafus.

dpoole

Chuck,

That information is wonderful. That site's been marked as a keeper. Thanks so much!

grip

coppercoins
Great start ,I put it under favorites as soon as I looked at it.Al

coppercoins

I thank all of you for the compliments on my efforts. I just hope it becomes an extremely rewarding venture for all involved. As with any service oriented project I need your input as to how you'd like to see it change, if at all.

Regarding using an array - I didn't think of that, and will explore that issue. I'll also work with using the substr() function to attempt to pull just the numeric out of the grade so I can sort them that way. I think that would be more realistic and simpler to code if I can get the function to do what I want it to do.

Eventually I intend on adding some comparison math to this database - which companies sold for more, and more frequently (as if we didn't already know this). Which ones received more bids, what sells most often, and averages of the prices the items sold for under each grade, each slab name. It should prove to be a very useful and interesting projection forecasting tool once a few months worth of data have been collected.

As for where this whole thing goes from here - I'm not completely sure. Like I've said before, it's still in its infancy stage. As I get time and ideas for what to add to it and how, I will be sure to let you folks know. Thanks a bunch for the support!

coppercoins

The problem regarding an 1856 cent that showed up at $12 and an 1877 cent that showed up at $1 has been solved. Semms I forgot to format out the comma in the thousands place in my data before I uploaded it. The results were correct, considering the info after the comma was deleted upon loading the info into the data tables. The 1856 was actually over $12,000 and the 1877 over $1,000...the information has been updated and re-included in the tables. All should be somewhat correct now. Sorry for the inconvenience.

merz2

coppercoins
I am sure you'll only get better at this as time goes by.As the word gets out more people will use your site.It will help the newbies and old collectors alike.If you could post pictures of the different grades,it would help the newbies see the coin and value.Kudos!!!

MICHAELDIXON

Great site! I used it this morning.

coppercoins

A full copper grading guide will come with time...I'm still working on all that and much, much more. Eventually the site will have:

1. the certified coin auction search.
2. an online newsletter with searchable archives.
3. the threaded message board.
4. the full CGI chat with functioning private messages and private rooms.
5. full date guide information for all dates of copper issues including:

history for the given year

mintages for the given year

special notes about that year's coinage

6. a fully searchable FAQ.
7. complete listing information for all US copper varieties including marker photos for each one in each major die state.
8. a comprehensive copper inventory in an online store.
9. copper classifieds where people can sell their own coins.
10. member maintained want list trading boards.
11. a comprehensive numismatic book review.
12. a wide assortment of educational information from errors to searching for varieties to detecting cleaned and counterfeit coins.
13. a complete grading guide (in color) to US copper coinage.

If that's not enough, I have a family of three, I attend college full time, and I have a full time job that works me 45-60 hours a week.

Eventually this site is going to eat into my pocket enough that I will have to create a membership database and start charging for entry into the more space intensive areas of the site (such as the die variety marker photo area and this certified coin auction search) and areas of th site where I need to control access because of security...the fee is still up in the air, that depends on how much interest is generated by the whole thing, but it will probably be less than $5 a month.

In addition to all of that, I am also writing a book on the die varieties of the Lincoln cent, which will list ALL known dies, not just the top 10% like all the other books out there. This book will be very large in size, but for those interested, it will be issued in three ring binder holed "packets" at a subscription rate per year....Basically, you'll get pages to your book as a newsletter/magazine over a period of a couple of years. Overall size of the book is estimated to be 3,000 pages.

Hmm....I guess that's all. LOL!

Whew!

nwcs

Well, I would need to see the database structure to understand your approach. But the way I've approached coins in dbs (note: simplified representation) is as follows:

tblGrade
Col_GradeID
Col_Description
Col_Weight

tblMint
Col_MintID
Col_Description

tblCoin
GradeID
MintID
Date
etc.

then you can do various joins on the tables and sort by weight or by date, weight, and mint, etc. You can do all this through sql and don't need any arrays. Arrays for grades is not practical in such a db centric program. You've already got the connection and the database, the best approach is to let your database manage the content.

Almost all the things you're looking to do are basically sql statements. As far as message boards, if you can use Microsoft .NET on your web site then go to www.asp.net and download their free forum application. It's way cool. It may be a bit difficult to install, though, if you're not familiar with .NET.

If you're able to use .NET on your web site, I'd be willing to help out now and then. I went straight from desktop development to .NET so I'm not as familiar with asp. But asp can run within .NET.

Neil

nwcs

Hmm, I just did a lookup on your web site and see that I won't be able to help. Didn't realize you were using Apache 1.3.26 with FrontPage 5.0.2.2510 and PHP 4.1.2 on a Solaris box. Have to wait for Microsoft's UNIX version of .NET to come out. Sometime next year, I think.

beorn

you computer literate type guys never cease to amaze me this knuckle dragger certainly appreciates your efforts

moosesr

Great information!

Thanks for all the hard work you did to set it up.

Charlie

coppercoins

I'm actually not using front page anything, I can't stand that app.

Regarding the DB approach, that might be fine if I weren't collecting mounds of data from a different source like I am. It's not something that's built to slowly. I am rather going to approach it with tables by the month and dump all the data for each month into them.

Regarding the code, I think I have a handle on it. I'm going to change the table structure today so I can easily handle the grade sorting - it won't be a problem once I add a column - I just didn't want to have to add the column.

As for the message board and chat - those are already done and on the site. The list of features includes those which are already completed along with the ones that are yet to be done.

As I get more data and start adding more complex features to the application I will figure out ways to handle what I've got sitting on my lap at the time. That's unfortunately the way I have always handled it, and it has worked fine for me. Unfortunately I don't do this professionally nor do I have training at it. I taught all of it to myself - it's probably not the A#1 approach, but it's what I've been faced with having built a popular site that always needs additions and work done, and very little time remaining to figure out what's the best way to handle everything.

The way your database structure looks to me would be very, very cumbersome for what I'm doing - especially since I don't even understand it. For a different application I could see where it would work just fine, I guess.

nwcs

Now, the programmer in me is really going to come out on a Saturday. The best way to handle diverse sources of information is to develop an XML parsing system and an intermediate communication layer. I'll attach a pic of what I'm referring to. Since I'm at home, I don't have visio to give me a good representation. So I'll just do a photoshop mockup.

Lakesammman

Coppercoins:

Great effort - I've added to my favorites too. My comments weren't criticisms - just trying to figure out how accurate and useful the info is going to be - sounds like your on the right track - thanks for doing it.

mnmcoin

Looks good, now can you do one for every denomination!

mo <><

coppercoins

<< <i>The best way to handle diverse sources of information is to develop an XML parsing system and an intermediate communication layer.

<< <i>

You are way, way ahead of me...no way could I do anything like that. Like I said, I taught this stuff to myself as I went along, and I've been doing it for less than a year. The way I'm trying to handle it is best for me. By the way, there's no XML involved in it.

dbldie55

I would skip all the .CRAP (.NET) stuff. Why pay money when you don't have to? Would be interested in how you get the data from Ebay though. I have been keeping track of all Liberty Nickel sales from Heritage, Bowers, Superior and Goldbergs for over 2 years now. Thought about teletrade, but prefer to keep them sight seen auctions as it keeps things into a better prospective. I would think getting teletrade stuff would be rather easy, as you can do a search from the beginning on their site to get your initial results.

Site does look good for just starting out though. I am impressed.