Set Registry award idea to bat around

Buckwheat

The set Registry awards will be decided soon. The reality now is that most of the major sets all have some incredible sets that very few can ever challenge for.

What if the "standings" at the end of October were fixed, much like the baseball standings. Perhaps the top10 or the top 20 could be marked on a persons set for the following year, much like the gold star is put beside the top set. It wouldn't require any certificates or plaques, but simply a little software work on PSA's part.

I realize that we all collect for a lot of different reasons, but most people wouldn't bother to list their sets unless they wanted to see how they compare. This would give everyone a chance to "improve" their place in the standings before the end of the year, and this achievement would be recognized for the next year. It is not difficult to get into the top 20 of any set. I think that you might see a lot of people with nice sets, though not necessarily mint sets, make an extra attempt to complete or improve their set, which would of course be good for maintaining a strong market in PSA cards.

It seem to me like a simple idea with a lot of potential upside, and very little work to do and no downside. downside. What does anyone else think?

AlanAllen

Cool idea. by the way, does anyone know if you can register cards all the way up to midnight on the 31st?

Joe

wolfbear

Buckwheat - great idea !

Joe - BJ left all the details in this thread.

AlanAllen

<< <i>Buckwheat - great idea !

Joe - BJ left all the details in this thread. >>


Cool, thanks Paul.

Joe

murcerfan

I believe a "most improved" category was added, based on the past year for a time frame. was that what you were driving at?

one that come's to mind is Shane Leonards 1934 batter-up set.

Buckwheat

The most improved category is probably a good idea, but not what I am getting at. I was thinking, for example, starting in November, and running for 1 year, a person's set that is in the top ten or top twenty would have a number beside it that represented it's position on October 31st. So it may be #18, or something. If the collector improves his set and gets it up to #12 by January, it would still have the #18 beside it, and people could easily see that the set is moving up.

The idea really is to allow people to work on sets and get recognized, even when they have no chance to ever be #1. While people are motivated by just the idea of collecting, I think that people like to see their sets move up the list.

A similar thing may be to just start a file on the site where the set rankings for the end of the year(October 31) are permanently displayed.

Davalillo

Rob,

I think this is a great idea. Especially for those doing multiple sets, it gives a reminder of the rankings as of a point in time. There will probably be those however who think that this will only make things too competitive.
Sort of like Billboards Top 40 or Top 100, where it gives what the record was the past two weeks and how many weeks its been on the charts.

FB

Rob, Dav,

I'd like to take this idea one step further...
Instead of just posting the ranking number from the past year next to your current set - I think that the Registry is getting popular enough to warrant a Set Registry Historical section. Set it up so that you go into the Set Registry Histrory Section and it allows you to click on

2003
2002
2001

Each of these years would bring you to another page containing

Baseball
Football
Hockey
Basketball
Non-Sports/Misc

When you click on any one of these it would give you one static page containing the 10 or 20 best sets at the Set Registry Award time in each category with Ranking, Completion percentage, GPA and Set Rating. Yes - it would be a large page (especially for Baseball) but you could scroll up and down to find the sets that you have interest in.

I think that it would be even better if each individual could pull up that info on all of their sets at those same points in time. These wouldn't be viewable by anyone but the set registry member - but I would love to be able to keep track of progress year after year.

Just some thoughts.

Davalillo

Frank,

You are a genius. Now that you are open to job opportunities, I am nominating you for president of PSA.

Jim

Davemri

I always thought it would be cool for each person with a set, have their own profile page. Each member could post a picture of themselves, give a small background about yourself or collection, and have links to every set you have listed on the registry. Everyone could put a link to that page on their sig line. Maybe even have room to post pics of your top 5 favorite cards. Maybe call it "PSA's personal set registry page" or someone could come up with a unique title. Just a thought

dave

helionaut

For a few days last year I had the #9 All-Time 1975 Topps set. I got bumped down as low #18 for a few days. I'm now in a tie at #16. I think probably half of the sets that jumped ahead of me were mostly-complete sets registered all at once, like the one that was purchased from Lafayette. Another was Vargha's transfer of Mike Castaldi's set. The other half were people who simply outraced my accumulation.

I guess my point is it that it doesn't matter where you rank on any given day of the year if you aren't finished, and if I was given a #9 tag but later was in 18th place, that seems like, you know, I'm not active in the set when I add at least a card or three to the set almost every week. Maybe just a "Top 10" or "Top 20" tag would be good, but recording an empirical score would be better. This sort of notation would be great for someone like SEinBigD who was the first to complete the 75 set but then broke it down some. For the hotly contested sets there is too much flux amongst the half-complete sets for rankings to mean much.

Incidentally, while looking at the 75 rankings, I am wondering what really is the top set. Obviously, Frank's Funky set has the highest set rating by a fair margin, but Kurt's set (#4) I think would be my pick. He's still about 50 cards short of completion, but his GPA is a not-insignificant .16 higher, and getting dangerously close to an overall Mint set. In baseball, if there's a hitter who has the highest BA but not enough plate appearances to qualify for the title, they add the number of AB's to his total to bring him up to the minimum (with no extra hits), and recalculate. IIRC, this is how Tony Gwynn beat out Mike Piazza for the batting title one year. Anyway, I wonder what his numbers would look like if you added the @50 8s Kurt's missing. Would he still have the highest GPA and therefore set rating? I'll try this out when I get home.

Tipem

Buckwheat,

Great Idea!!! Way to get the ball rolling.

Frank,

Way to expound on a great idea with an even bigger approach.


Top notch thinking and I nominate the two of you to set it up and run it.

Dave,

Your idea would add a very interesting and informative approach,although you can already do that somewhat with the individual set preface.

Vic