Collectorz.com Newsletter August 2008

Hey,

It's me, Alwin of Collectorz.com.

Have you ever visited our user forum?
It is a great place to exchange tips and tricks with other collectors, discuss feature requests or to get help with more advanced stuff like modding the XSL templates.

You can find the forum here.

If you don't have a forum account yet, you can create one using the Register link at the top right.

The most lively part of the forum is the Comic Collector section. There's conversations about submissions and about corrections for the online database.
And of course there's heated discussions about the pros and cons of the latest Comic Collector release, e.g. about why we removed "The Space".

Comic Collector 4.2

And it's those discussions that helped us get Comic Collector to the next level.
The fresh 4.2 release brings further improvements to the Add/Update Automatically feature AND brings back "The Space".

Much to the delight of the forum dwellers.

Screens and more information here.

Here's a topic that came up on the forum this week.

How Do I Print A Wish List?

The Collectorz.com programs provide all the tools you need to create, view and print your wish list.
Here's how it works.

First add your wish list items to your database like you do with other "owned" items (okay I admit, scanning their barcodes is going to be a bit of a problem, so you may have to add by Title this time)
Then use the Edit screen to set the Collection Status field to "Wanted"
Back in the main screen, choose:
View / Folders / No Folders
And then:
Search / In Collection Status / Wanted
And presto, there's your Wish List on screen.
Now to print this list:
Use View / Select All
Open the Print screen and make sure the "Selected ..." option is checked

And of course, we end this newsletter with a user story. This time Jeremie Landry tells us about how he is using Movie Collector to manage his huge collection of VHS tapes.
If you visit the link below, you can see pictures of his collection as well!

Meet The Collector: Jeremie Landry

I have been collecting movies for over 10 years. At the moment I have 1649 titles at home all of them are legit copies. Out of the 1648 movies 207 of them are dvd’s all the rest are vhs. Dvd's are mostly the newer stuff and tv show box sets.

I collect mostly vhs because they have a nostalgic value for me. When I was a kid I used to rent movies at the local movie stores every weekend. A lot of my childhood was passed in those stores. I remember my dad bringing me along in as a toddler in the late 80's to the video store where I would pass hours and hours in the movies as my dad talked with the patron and customers. When I grew older one of the video stores became a hang out for me and my friend's.

When I grew older I realized that I had nothing to show for all the money I spent renting movies. Therefore I concluded that I should buy and own every movie I want to watch and now I am here writing about my huge collection. I am a firm believer that by watching the old movies on vhs I am being delivered an authentic experience as thats how I grew up with them. Same as I would not want to watch the newer movies on vhs. I also love the challenge of finding the original copies. I actually find that searching for them is even more fun than watching them.

Most of the movies I bought are movies that me or someone in the family loves and all of them have been watched except for 200 of them. Every couple months I take all the movies out and dust the shelves which usually takes me a couple of hours. I used to prune my collection every six months or so bringing about a 100 unwanted movies at the pawn shop.
Recently I no longer have that luxury as they no longer want to give me a reasonable amount for them. To house my collection I have built huge shelves. With this hobby each new shelf is a temporary solution before long I will need to dedicate a room just for my movies.

Purchasing Movie Collector has helped me a lot with organizing my collection. I used to have a spreadsheet for my collection and it wasn't all that great. Movie Collector crunches statistics that would normally took weeks to tally up. Such as running time, how much of each genre etc... Sometimes I want to watch a movie but I can not remember the name. With Movie Collector I am able to do a search for the actors. This is great because by the time I would have gone trough my collection looking for the movie it's time for bed.

A few tips for fellow vhs collectors:

If you are planning to buy a vhs tapes older then the early 90’s don’t pay a fortune for it. I often gotten really disappointed buying old movies online to find out they are full of static. While most sellers will give you your money back it’s a lot of hassle and most won’t cover your shipping charges for the return.

If an old vhs doesn't work properly like static or a jumping picture for example. Rewind and fast forward the tape a few times from the end to the beginning. Often these tapes have been sitting in a basement for many years. The ribbon gets a tad bit tight but it may not always work sometimes your tape might be demagnetized.

Jeremie Landry from Canada

That's all folks,

Alwin Hoogerdijk
President, Collectorz.com

Any ideas for future newsletters or do you want to suggest a topic? Contact us, we love to hear your thoughts.