Grand Slam Bids Beta

[Matt]

We are excited to announce that GrandSlamBids.com is (finally) ready for Beta use. Mostly based on your feedback, we have made over 100 functional changes since our "alpha" phase 4 months ago, and at this point, believe we have all major functionality that we need in the software. Once started, we expect our Beta phase to be fully functional and last at least 45 days, to be followed very closely by our full open.

We plan to make a more widespread announcement about being open for bidding on Wednesday, so, at this time, we invite sellers to come and list on the site (though, of course, you can list after Wednesday as well). The fee to advance schedule a listing has been removed until Wednesday so you can set your listings to start anytime on Wednesday or the weekdays that follow. Additionally, if you have listings in eBay's system, or an eBay "bulk listing" utility, and want to move them to GrandSlamBids, please let us know and we'll let you know what we need so that we can get them into our system for you.

We urge everyone to check out our faq section for answers to some common questions, as well as use the forum for any questions not yet addressed in the faq. The fees we have in place for this Beta phase are further discounted below our regular fee schedule with the goal to attract as many listings as possible. The fees are real and live and are expected to be paid per the site rules.

Anyone who earned a free listing upgrade by either winning or selling an item during our Alpha phase, should go ahead with the upgraded listing and then let us know and we'll adjust your balance appropriately. Sellers get a free "Front Page Featured" listing and winning buyers a free "Category Featured" listing.

As always, please send us any feedback you have, either directly to admin@grandslambids.com, or through the site contact us page. Our success is dependent on your help and we're hoping that together we can make this a success for all of us.

Please understand that this being Beta, we do anticipate some technical issues may occur, but rest assured we will work with you to resolve any issues in a satisfactory manner.

Leon & Matt
http://www.GrandSlamBids.com

[Wite3]

Very excited to have a new place to search and bid. Good luck to all, esp. Matt and Leon.

Joshua

[Leon]

Thanks Joshua...we shall see.

Also, we did have a few hundred folks register in the alpha testing phase and of course if you have registered on the site you won't need to do it again. Thanks again for the well wishes. We hope to be another venue not replace any....

[T206DK]

I hope to be able to kiss Ebay goodbye really soon......this is great news !!

[AndyG09]

I enjoyed the first go round, and landed a nice card. Thrilled that things are progressing! Hope everything goes smoothly and good luck Leon and Matt!

[yawie99]

Originally Posted by T206DK

I hope to be able to kiss Ebay goodbye really soon......this is great news !!

Absolutely! I think eBay's declining appeal has had a more negative impact on the hobby than has the general state of the economy. Best of luck Leon and Matt.

[Matt]

Thanks for all the support guys!

We have to charge something to validate that the fee collection system is working, but we are hoping that a .03 listing fee won't deter anyone

Keep the listings coming!

[Robextend]

I also thought the first go round was excellent. I picked up a couple E91Cs which launched my interest in the E91 series. Thanks guys!!

[Tim Fritz]

Great news. I've got a couple of T cards that I was going to list on the bay, but instead will list on grandslambids.

[jb217676]

Fantastic! I hope members don't mind selling internationally to a friendly Canadian!

[deadballera]

That is great news ! I was able to get a card from the first testing phase.

[Matt]

We wanted to clarify that currently, the site is 100% open for sellers to go & create listings. This is a time where you can go create listings and get them looking as you would like before there is much bidder traffic.

Additionally, we are excited to announce a promotion in conjunction with our launch of Beta. For any listing that start from now through Sunday, all insertion fees and most listing upgrades are free*!

As always, if you have any questions, please email us at admin@grandslambids.com

*Front page and category featured upgrades excluded. Discounted "end of auction" fees are still in place.

[rdixon1208]

Great news guys

[T206Collector]

If you decide to try to see if an "Additional Category" makes sense, and then decide it doesn't. How do you remove it? I tried making the Additional Category the same, and it wouldn't work.

[Matt]

Good catch Paul - we'll need to add a button there for those who change their mind. For now, you can complete your listing (just pick any 2nd category) and I'll remove it for you afterward.

[T206Collector]

Nevermind. Figured it out.

[T206Collector]

Originally Posted by Matt

Good catch Paul - we'll need to add a button there for those who change their mind. For now, you can complete your listing (just pick any 2nd category) and I'll remove it for you afterward.

Thanks. I just made it "Baseball - Other" ...no need to remove that.

[Matt]

Did you create is as a "Home Page Featured" item?

If you've got more questions, it's probably better to either post in the GSB forum, or email us.

[yawie99]

Just gave it a whirl - two thumbs up on the relative ease of listing items!

Great job guys. Glad to have another resource. Just concerned when the other people find it and start slapping up the 1000"s of 2-20x's BINs. Is there something in place to allow reasonability?

[Matt]

Originally Posted by Pup6913

Great job guys. Glad to have another resource. Just concerned when the other people find it and start slapping up the 1000"s of 2-20x's BINs. Is there something in place to allow reasonability?

Andrew - thanks for the kind words - we'll cross that bridge when we come to it - we have spoken about it and have some ideas.

Thanks Matt that is good to hear that it already has been addressed. Well I can't wait for the site to be full blown. Best of Luck.

[Leon]

Originally Posted by Pup6913

Thanks Matt that is good to hear that it already has been addressed. Well I can't wait for the site to be full blown. Best of Luck.

Pup- Thanks for the well wishes. There are some nice cards up right now with no reserves and $1.00 starting prices. Someone might get some great deals on several-hundred dollar cards..... It will be a good test of the system. Many more cards will be added soon too, so please do check back.....This forum is the best place to ask any questions. One thing we will make a little more known is the fact that ALL bidders will be seen when the auctions end. Matt and I really feel that will help with preventing shill bidding. regards

[RichR]

Been waiting for a better site to sell cards for ages. I'm going to test it to sell a card soon!

[Leon]

Originally Posted by RichR

Been waiting for a better site to sell cards for ages. I'm going to test it to sell a card soon!

Thanks again Rich...as a reminder to folks...if you fill out your "about me" page on the site, there is a place for your ebay id...and it is a direct link to your feedback there. It's a pretty nice feature to let folks know you have been around.

[GoldenAge50s]

Very good suggestion Leon!

Any other little tidbits of info like this would be appreciated! Most often those are the kind of things one would never know--or even discover maybe for months!!

[Leon]

Originally Posted by GoldenAge50s

Very good suggestion Leon!

Any other little tidbits of info like this would be appreciated! Most often those are the kind of things one would never know--or even discover maybe for months!!

A few other things would be to be sure to use the snipe function which is built into the software, if sniping is what you prefer? I won't be bidding on the site but if I were I would definitely use it. I almost always snipe on the bay....

Another one of the things I really like about the software is that you can search on the # of bids....and....

The little arrows above each column do a really good job of quick glances of what's new, highest price, # of bids etc......It is a fairly intuitive search system and I am still learning a little bit myself....

So far so good...Keep the feedback coming.

[Leon]

I want to point out one other really nice benefit to the site. When going through the things you have for sale you can see how many snipes are set. You can't see the snipes themselves....but I know one of my items has 0 bids but there is 1 snipe and another has multiple bids and 5 snipes set.....It's a really neat feature I thought I would mention. Thanks again to those that have given GSB a try. I will update this section as I see and think of stuff that is neat.. ...best regards

[BIN at VCP]

Hello,

I'm intrigued by this new auction site for sports cards; it's the first I've seen of it. However, I'm having trouble searching for professionally graded cards. Somehow, someway, I managed to return only five results for graded cards (basically consisting of the ones listed in on the first page of the baseball card auctions...T206s and a Pinkerton) but I can't even recreate that search. Am I missing something? What's the best way to restrict the search to professionally graded cards?

Anyway, I'll definitely be keeping an eye on the site. Would love an alternative to eBay.

[Leon]

Originally Posted by BIN at VCP

Hello,

I'm intrigued by this new auction site for sports cards; it's the first I've seen of it. However, I'm having trouble searching for professionally graded cards. Somehow, someway, I managed to return only five results for graded cards (basically consisting of the ones listed in on the first page of the baseball card auctions...T206s and a Pinkerton) but I can't even recreate that search. Am I missing something? What's the best way to restrict the search to professionally graded cards?

Anyway, I'll definitely be keeping an eye on the site. Would love an alternative to eBay.

Thanks for checking it out. Right now there is a bit of a lull with my technical partner away for another week. After that we should pick up some marketing activities and the site should become quite a bit more active. There have already been some nice sales and a few nice deals.

There seems to be a small glitch in that search function right now and a note has been made. We are in a last "beta" test right now, for the whole site. Even though some folks don't understand what developing a very robust software takes, we are moving along quite nicely, and will be in final production in a few weeks or so. The site is about 97% as it is....and we will knock the other 3% out very soon. Sorry for the inconvenience on this, for the moment, but it will be fixed in the near future. Please do keep checking back. We are cautiously optimistic. regards

[4815162342]

Hey guys, just thought I'd let you know that some SQL threw an exception on the site; it says that the "probid_custom_fields_data" table crashed. It happened after I searched "T206" and clicked on the only search result.

[Leon]

Thanks Daryl
We found that this evening also. We are working on it and thanks a ton for letting us know. If you or anyone else sees something like that please keep letting us know. In the next few weeks we have commitments for quite a few listings...so please keep checking back. We are also working some situations where, since it's so much cheaper to buy on GSB than ebay, the prices for some things will be less than on GSB AND the seller will still make more money. So, we hope you keep checking back. The auction that went off last night was pretty darned close to what the market value would have been, even if sold on the bay, I believe. Thanks again and regards...

[Matt]

Originally Posted by 4815162342

Hey guys, just thought I'd let you know that some SQL threw an exception on the site; it says that the "probid_custom_fields_data" table crashed.

Thanks - it has been resolved.