The Bench - what can we do to ramp up the activity?

[katester44]

Is there a way you can make one post that lists all of the one-and-done needs with the member who needs said card? Maybe editable by MOD but that is asking a lot of the MOD. Throwing a dart here.

I love the idea of the one and done thread. Maybe instead of making it all encompassing for a single sport, we have one and done lists for specific sets as part of a forum, not sure it is feasible, but it would allow folks to find others collecting exactly what they are.

IE - Baseball Section - One and Done Forum - 2019 Topps Update Thread

Again, I need to get back through all the posts and put together a summary of what seem to be the talking points. Would love to see this type of energy and thoughtfulness put into all of the other interactive threads here on The Bench.

 

[doniceage]

Don here is the link to the One and Done thread which is found in the Baseball Set Builders Room and is pinned at the top.

One and Done set needs thread for everyone

My One and Done Want Lists are 1998 Topps TEK Mike Mussina Card #80 pattern # 35 to complete a 90 card Card #/ Uniform # set ****2000 Fleer Focus 2000 Masterpiece Mania of 247 (Eric Munson) #d to 300 to complete a 250 card mania set with each card numbered to 300 ***x 250 card Masterpiece...

thebenchtrading.com

My suggestion is to make a One and Done Room in each of the 4 major sports sections and let any member who wants to participate to make their own topic in them. Right now the current One and Done Room has not had a post in nearly a month! Add to the fact it is an unweildy 17 pages long and you can see how it became unuseable. By letting every member start therir own topics with their needs always posted in the first, original post, it would make things easier to use. I would start my own OAD topics in Baseball, football, basketball and hockey set builders rooms which would be 4 times the posts that the current thread has had in the last month!

Understand where your coming from now as this is for only one card to complete various sets (white whales for any set collector) though some might be easy but still it puts a set to rest which is nice.

Thanks, but will see if any moderators have any thoughts besides Kate.

 

[doniceage]

I think it would be nice if people kept there wants updated better when they post a thread. For Example a couple of weeks ago I spent around 2 hours pulling card based on a traders post. Sent the list and was informed" already have all of them but these three cards" That Sucks!!!! You think you are going to help some one and then found you had spent all that that for 3 cards and then you have to put all the rest back into your boxes>

This is prevalent everywhere. I always send a person a message and ask them if they are still working on the set. I even then ask them to not accept any help on the set while I look. As I do not want to pull them in say a few days or a week then when I reply they say "OH I ALREADY GOT THEM." It just covers your butt as it very frustrating to do what you are doing. Just my suggestion others might have better ones.

 

[doniceage]

While I agree with the PWE idea, a problem with it I have is there is no control over, for lack of a better word, unscrupulous traders. Example. last year I entered a trade of a single card BV around $6 with the agreement of a PWE trade. Well, his card came and he said mine did not. I waited another week and PM'ed him and he said the card never showed up. So I did the right thing and sent the card he sent back BUT with a tracking number. Now I am not saying he wasn't honest but I had no recourse. At least with tracking I feel I have some recourse.

I do deals for PWE's all the time especially low sales. I offer them the option of this price or that as it cost of a big time savings but if it gets lost no recourse from them. On a trade I understand but even if it only happens once in a blue moon your going to save so much money in the long run that you should keep doing this.

Luckily, for you I went to two different post offices and had two different tellers tell me they would not ship my pwe's as they needed to be sent as a bubble mailer and some of them only had one or two cards. Talk about a racket. The only reason I like taking them to the teller is so I can get them hand stamped so they do not go thru the machine and also to get a receipt that shows I dropped them off. I only sent a few now and that at the buyer risk as aI just drop them off at the post office box.

 

[jweech]

I love the idea of the one and done thread. Maybe instead of making it all encompassing for a single sport, we have one and done lists for specific sets as part of a forum, not sure it is feasible, but it would allow folks to find others collecting exactly what they are.

IE - Baseball Section - One and Done Forum - 2019 Topps Update Thread

Again, I need to get back through all the posts and put together a summary of what seem to be the talking points. Would love to see this type of energy and thoughtfulness put into all of the other interactive threads here on The Bench.

This is kind of where I was going with this, as an example.

Baseball One-n-dones

1994 Topps Gold #337 - jweech
1999 Fleer #500 - katester44
2021 Panini Chronicles #100 - donicage

etc, etc. My thought would be someone updates this based on cards requested to be added or cards found and completed. But one post, pinned to the beginning of the thread, in order of year or manufacturer. Something easily viewed without having to scroll thru pages of posts. I see this as a lot to ask of a MOD though. You could have one for each sport as you suggested.

 

[SymphonicMetal]

My thought on the One and Done topic is for each member to start their own thread in the various sports One And Done Rooms
andthen keep their needs on the first post. Since we can edit our posts, we can add and delete our one and dones as time goes on. We'll be able to figure out pretty quickly what members we can help. For instance if I click on member John Does One and Dones and see all his needs are from recent years, I can leave and check the next members topic to see if I could help them.

I know I could start threads for all 4 major sports and it would not be a problem to add and delete my needs as ciurcumstances warrented. I have so many One and Done needs, my user name should have been OneAndDone!

 

[jflan702]

As the creator of the One and Done thread, I am absolutely thrilled that you are discussing it 7+ years later. I initially created that thread during the down days to try and drive some conversation and trades. I think it worked!

As far as the usefullness and accuracy of the thread, I couldn't confirm all of the members posts. That would be up the each member to maintain their requests. Remember, the MODS are volunteers and are donating their time to the site, so reviewing members' post accuracy on a thread like this is too much work, at least in my opinion.

I was hoping that others would do something along these lines in the other forums, but since I don't collect anything other than baseball, I didn't want to post in forums that I don't use. You can absolutely post a thread like this and I greatly encourage if for the other forums and sports.

Just so that you know, I posted this thread when I was a Manager, and pinned it to the forum so that it would be easy to use. I am no longer a MOD, so someone on the MOD team would need to pin the thread. I tried to un-pin it, but no longer have that ability, so if you do create new threads to get this up to date, please have one of the MODs un-pin this thread and it will just go to the history after a while.

One thing that I should have done is some kind of count of how many sets were completed with trades and freebies from members on the thread. For a statistics guy, it would have been fun to know how many sets were finished to see how helpful this thread was.

Again, I am thrilled to see that so many people are interested in this and even just causing some posts and discussion is great.

Thanks,

 

[jflan702]

I love the idea of the one and done thread. Maybe instead of making it all encompassing for a single sport, we have one and done lists for specific sets as part of a forum, not sure it is feasible, but it would allow folks to find others collecting exactly what they are.

IE - Baseball Section - One and Done Forum - 2019 Topps Update Thread

Again, I need to get back through all the posts and put together a summary of what seem to be the talking points. Would love to see this type of energy and thoughtfulness put into all of the other interactive threads here on The Bench.

I like the idea of a thread for each sport, but for each set may make the thread too busy. What about a thread for each year per sport? Or maybe a thread for a block of years, like 5 years. This would give people more specific timelines to work with instead of one big thread. Just trying to expand on your idea.

 

[Mike121]

I think if we're strictly talking about adding new forums for this, and we don't want one for each sport, my recommendation would be a new forum called One and Done in the "General Trading" section. If we're talking about having one for each sport, I'd recommend a One and Done forum as a sub-forum to each sport's "Set Builders Wantlists" forums.

Either way, in this way members could all then have their own one and done threads within those forums and it'd just be up to each member to make sure their own threads are up to date just like they do (or don't do) with their individual trade threads.

Or, with either option, there could be a thread for each product/set, like what @katester44 is suggesting. I actually like that option better, but it goes back to who is going to keep those threads up to date? The person who creates them? Moderators? Either way, I don't see it being something that remains updated for long.

 

[SymphonicMetal]

I think if we're strictly talking about adding new forums for this, and we don't want one for each sport, my recommendation would be a new forum called One and Done in the "General Trading" section. If we're talking about having one for each sport, I'd recommend a One and Done forum as a sub-forum to each sport's "Set Builders Wantlists" forums.

Either way, in this way members could all then have their own one and done threads within those forums and it'd just be up to each member to make sure their own threads are up to date just like they do (or don't do) with their individual trade threads.

Or, with either option, there could be a thread for each product/set, like what @katester44 is suggesting. I actually like that option better, but it goes back to who is going to keep those threads up to date? The person who creates them? Moderators? Either way, I don't see it being something that remains updated for long.

A seperate One and Done that includes all sports (and non sports for that matter) would be fine by me as long as each member can have their own OAD thread. That is better than the muliple One and Dones rooms that I suggested earlier. I'm telling you traffic would pick up hugely with that forat as each member would be motivated to make their ow thread. The one now is just too unweildly with 17 pages and too hard to follow.

I think it would be up to each member to keep their own topic updated. If they are hard core set builders I'm certain they would be more than willing to do that for their own benefit.

 

[jweech]

In my opinion, having each member create their own OND thread just gets us back to the previous problem that I see with this thread. Personally speaking, I am not going to search thru every members one and done thread. Just won't happen. I think one post, with everyone's one and done requests, is the way to go. I'd be open to running the baseball thread. No issue updating peoples wants and completed sets.

 

[doniceage]

would It not be feasible to keep it in one thread but have the First post updated with hyperlinks to all the posts from asmembers post thrm. So no matter how old the thread came if a moderator updates it say weekly all the posts would be in post 1.
Not sure if that too much to ask of a moderator.

don

 

[PRosefan1]

If we are just talking participation, mainly from those already here, I started a "Post a random card" thread.Its had a thousand views but only a couple of the members have participated. I love checking out peoples cards and thought it would be a great way to show off cards that have been in a persons collection for awhile and not a new pickup. Be nice if more people went there and posted a pic every other day or so.

 

[katester44]

If we are just talking participation, mainly from those already here, I started a "Post a random card" thread.Its had a thousand views but only a couple of the members have participated. I love checking out peoples cards and thought it would be a great way to show off cards that have been in a persons collection for awhile and not a new pickup. Be nice if more people went there and posted a pic every other day or so.

I like that thread -- but have been derelict in posting to it.

And your comment kind of hit the nail on the head of what I was ultimately looking for -- what do we do to get participation/interaction up on non-trade threads. We have an NFL thread, one comment since the Super Bowl. We have a MLB thread, one comment since Friday. We have an NBA thread, one comment since the Finals started. It is the Stanley Cup Finals and we don't have an NHL thread. We have movie threads and TV show threads, etc. etc. and they get a post every couple weeks.

The way I see things, the more activity/interaction, the more vibrant and appealing the site becomes. And that is the ultimate goal.

 

[doniceage]

I like that thread -- but have been derelict in posting to it.

And your comment kind of hit the nail on the head of what I was ultimately looking for -- what do we do to get participation/interaction up on non-trade threads. We have an NFL thread, one comment since the Super Bowl. We have a MLB thread, one comment since Friday. We have an NBA thread, one comment since the Finals started. It is the Stanley Cup Finals and we don't have an NHL thread. We have movie threads and TV show threads, etc. etc. and they get a post every couple weeks.

The way I see things, the more activity/interaction, the more vibrant and appealing the site becomes. And that is the ultimate goal.

More activity is good as that cannot be disputed but that is only half the story. If you are getting views that is interaction as that mean people are viewing the thread. Half the battle of getting is getting folks to view the thread first. In today world there is so much social media stuff being posted these days do you really have time to comment on all the posts here or anywhere you visit. The biggest thing is you have to find things that makes people want to engage in taking time to reply to the post you put up. Finding those hot topics, keywords that bring folks to The Bench, or finding stuff that resonates with the members of the bench. Doing that and you will get the replies but it takes some time to figure that out. I am sure you can look at the organic traffic and see what brings folks to the bench and try to create topics for those folks. Doing that should help create engagement. I am assuming if you look at those a lot of the stuff will be centered around baseball hence proving why a Super Bowl thread might not get much traffic here.

 

[katester44]

Finally had some time to actually sit down and look through all the posts and break down what everyone was "talking about". Here are the topics that were mentioned (and how often) through the first 95 posts of the thread:

1 - social media (3)
2 - auction platform (4)
3 - incentives (bench bucks/box break slots) (2)
4 - cost of cards (4)
5 - The Benchies (2)
6 - sports other than baseball (3)
7 - availability of trade partners (2)
8 - trade value v. book value (2)
9 - trade follow through (4)
10 - one and done threads (10)
11 - player/team specific threads (2)
12 - postal rates (7)
12a - ownership issues (5)
14 - chat room (2)

The 12th issue - postal rates and the 4th issue - cost of cards, are really the only things we have no control over here on The Bench. Everything else, we can control at least a little bit of the input/outcome.

The most mentioned item was the "one and done thread", some good conversation about it, now we have to figure out the best way to potentially implement it to most benefit the membership, without crushing the souls of the MODS. I would like to see it implemented, but it won't be done quickly, it will need to be thought out and done in such a manner that it doesn't have to be constantly re-worked.

I am a huge fan of the incentive idea - we had a Bench Bucks store that would allow for redemption of earned Bench Bucks, but that never really got off the ground. At one point, I tried to revive it a bit with a grander plan to make it easier on everyone, but I couldn't get it up and running. My plan was to have the major card companies send us a box of new (or old) product every now and than, we would do a live break. A couple of hits would be given to members watching the break who could answer a trivia question. The remainder of the box would than be added to the Bench Bucks store to be mailed out. Unfortunately, not a single card company felt it necessary to send us a free box of cards.

I am also a fan of bringing the Benchies back -- at least on a limited basis. It was a monstrous undertaking to run them in the past with all the different categories. Maybe we try it again as we head into the fall with only one or two categories, see how it goes, see the response and than build from there.

The Chat Room - I am and always will be a huge proponent of it. I see a lot of talk about it being difficult to knock out trades, with timing being a prime culprit. The Chat Room allows for instantaneous contact, trades can be made in seconds, instead of days/weeks. the Chat Room also has a private message feature, which allows you to make the deal in private, rather than in the public eye, if that is something that worries you.

Auction room v. Ebay -- this is another function that I would be 100% on board with, if we can get it right. The ability to sell without having to worry about fees, etc., would be huge for those of us that occasionally sell cards. We have tried auctions through the chat room, and they haven't gone quite the way I had envisioned, and I am not 100% sure how to make them better. This one is probably best left tabled for a bit, as I believe other items should be higher on the priority list.

Everything else is sort of member specific - do you trade BV v. TV. How up to date do you keep trade lists? How quickly you respond? etc. If I were to wager on what items could get implemented quickly and effectively, I would look at The Benchies coming back and I would look at implementing a more thorough one and done thread that either covered more sports and/or covered more brand/year specifics within a sport.

I wish I had more time to work through things that are on the "ownership" side, but unfortunately I don't. There are probably a dozen members out there that I have started trade talks with, but have not been able to follow up with properly - so if you read this and we talked trade, reach out and remind me of what we were talking about!!!!

Hopefully this keeps the dialogue moving and continues to keep the membership involved in building this site in a positive manner. Thanks for taking the time to respond and sticking with it until I was able to bring it all together.

 

[Matt Page]

When I do set want lists, I do one brand a week for various years. That allows me to combine posts without overdoing it.

 

[brewerfan34]

Finally had some time to actually sit down and look through all the posts and break down what everyone was "talking about". Here are the topics that were mentioned (and how often) through the first 95 posts of the thread:

1 - social media (3)
2 - auction platform (4)
3 - incentives (bench bucks/box break slots) (2)
4 - cost of cards (4)
5 - The Benchies (2)
6 - sports other than baseball (3)
7 - availability of trade partners (2)
8 - trade value v. book value (2)
9 - trade follow through (4)
10 - one and done threads (10)
11 - player/team specific threads (2)
12 - postal rates (7)
12a - ownership issues (5)
14 - chat room (2)

The 12th issue - postal rates and the 4th issue - cost of cards, are really the only things we have no control over here on The Bench. Everything else, we can control at least a little bit of the input/outcome.

The most mentioned item was the "one and done thread", some good conversation about it, now we have to figure out the best way to potentially implement it to most benefit the membership, without crushing the souls of the MODS. I would like to see it implemented, but it won't be done quickly, it will need to be thought out and done in such a manner that it doesn't have to be constantly re-worked.

I am a huge fan of the incentive idea - we had a Bench Bucks store that would allow for redemption of earned Bench Bucks, but that never really got off the ground. At one point, I tried to revive it a bit with a grander plan to make it easier on everyone, but I couldn't get it up and running. My plan was to have the major card companies send us a box of new (or old) product every now and than, we would do a live break. A couple of hits would be given to members watching the break who could answer a trivia question. The remainder of the box would than be added to the Bench Bucks store to be mailed out. Unfortunately, not a single card company felt it necessary to send us a free box of cards.

I am also a fan of bringing the Benchies back -- at least on a limited basis. It was a monstrous undertaking to run them in the past with all the different categories. Maybe we try it again as we head into the fall with only one or two categories, see how it goes, see the response and than build from there.

The Chat Room - I am and always will be a huge proponent of it. I see a lot of talk about it being difficult to knock out trades, with timing being a prime culprit. The Chat Room allows for instantaneous contact, trades can be made in seconds, instead of days/weeks. the Chat Room also has a private message feature, which allows you to make the deal in private, rather than in the public eye, if that is something that worries you.

Auction room v. Ebay -- this is another function that I would be 100% on board with, if we can get it right. The ability to sell without having to worry about fees, etc., would be huge for those of us that occasionally sell cards. We have tried auctions through the chat room, and they haven't gone quite the way I had envisioned, and I am not 100% sure how to make them better. This one is probably best left tabled for a bit, as I believe other items should be higher on the priority list.

Everything else is sort of member specific - do you trade BV v. TV. How up to date do you keep trade lists? How quickly you respond? etc. If I were to wager on what items could get implemented quickly and effectively, I would look at The Benchies coming back and I would look at implementing a more thorough one and done thread that either covered more sports and/or covered more brand/year specifics within a sport.

I wish I had more time to work through things that are on the "ownership" side, but unfortunately I don't. There are probably a dozen members out there that I have started trade talks with, but have not been able to follow up with properly - so if you read this and we talked trade, reach out and remind me of what we were talking about!!!!

Hopefully this keeps the dialogue moving and continues to keep the membership involved in building this site in a positive manner. Thanks for taking the time to respond and sticking with it until I was able to bring it all together.

I just want to mention that your love and passion for the hobby and the success of The Bench is incredible. The time, thought and effort you put into this one thread/post is worthy of a Benchie.

Thank you for the work that you and the rest of the staff put into this site.

Frank

 

[NEPatriotsFan]

I know ive done this before and I really enjoyed it...have we ever done a card draft?

 

[PRosefan1]

I know ive done this before and I really enjoyed it...have we ever done a card draft?

Used to join them on another board years ago. Lot of fun. We even did one or two with TTT autograph cards.