Guys there is one spot left which will go to ajjohnsonsoxfan.

-Nick

PM Sent.

-Nick

I will post later tonight. Probably at about 8:00PM how payments will work.


I have also started a reserve list just in case there are people who don't pay.

-Nick

If anyone doesn't pay, or pays slow, they won't be able to play again and they will get bonked over the head with a wet noodle. That'll do 'em.

Thanks again for doing this Nick. It looks like the set picked did ok.

BTW Nick, Thanks for putting this together and doing what seems like a massive amount of work. This is really cool.

Great, so people that expressed definite interest in the first thread are getting shut out of participating.

I must say this was handled rather poorly.

When the person handling the group break (Nick) says something is going to be done, people are taking them at their word (especially since he has supposedly done this sort of thing several times before), and depending on them following through on what they have said they would do. Not everybody can afford to keep the forum up all day.

Once the sign up thread was posted, Nick, it was your responsibility to make sure that the e-mail you told us would go out...goes out. Some of us work overnights and sleep during the day. Some of us have jobs where we cannot keep Net 54 up all day. And yet other people are unable to keep the forum up all day for different reasons. I made a point of clearly stating on the first discussion that I spend much of the day sleeping because of my disability. The prescription drugs I take every day knock me out, but if I knew when to be here, I would not miss the signup. I keep my phone right next to my bed, and whenever I receive a notification from the forum, I have a very loud ring tone that goes off. My phone was setup to receive this email that never came. Imagine my surprise when I came home from a doctor's appointment to see that the thread had not only gone up, but all the slots were filled.

We were also told there would be a thread explaining in detail how this was going to work. In every other group break I have ever participated in, including the few I have run myself, information was provided, including an exact time when the sign up sheet would be posted. People knew well in advance what was expected of them, and when they needed to be on the forum to sign up. It's like fantasy baseball or football. You want to participate? Fine. Here is how many people we need in our league. Here is the date when we must have the league filled. Here is the exact date and time of the draft. Never before have I seen a group break where it was said "well, when it happens depends on something else, in this case, when the set gets in. It might be tomorrow". Those cards weren't perishable items. You knew you'd have them in within the next few days. What should have happened is this. Once the cards were received, a post should have been made stating "the group break signup sheet will be posted at this time on this day". You should have given people a definitive time when the sign up was going to start. Randomly throwing it up at 9:30 in the morning rewarded those who happened to be online at the time, and completely excluded anybody else who wasn't looking for the thread.

Lastly, in a group break where there are only 250 slots to start with, why are you allowing people to sign up for more than one slot to begin with? The first thread about the possibility of a group break being done has 7,000 views. Did you really think you were going to have a hard time selling 250 slots at $13 or $14 each when there were going to be graded Hank Aaron, Ernie Banks, and Al Kaline rookies as part of the draw, not to mention two Ted Williams, and a plethora of other really nice cards? You have people here dropping thousands of dollars on rare 100 year old cards every day. If you didn't fill all 250 slots, then you could have opened it up to people buying more slots on a first come, first serve basis. You see, that's something that should have been included in the thread explaining how everything was going to be handled. But that never happened, either.

If there is a next time, please ...pretty please with sugar on top, don't tell people that something is going to happen if you can't guarantee it will. Don't tell people an email will be going out to tell them "hey, you have to sign up now", because when it doesn't happen, a whole lot of people who were really excited about participating (and who stated as such in the initial discussion) get left out. And make sure that the date and time of when the sign up sheet will be available is posted well in advance. Delaying the break an extra day or two to make sure your bases were covered wouldn't have harmed anything. nobody would have been mad if you'd taken more time. Because what we ended up with is something that feels very thrown together at the last minute, and a lot of people are being very disappointed.

I guess I could be proven wrong about some small detail, but in the "other" thread, he said he'd be posting a sign up list on Tuesday. I thought it was handled pretty well.

Can't please everyone.

Two slots. !!
 

Please put me on a reserve list for two slots jut in case.

Thanks , Lee

I'm not even participating since I already own all the key cards, yet I knew what was happening every step of the way (both threads).

I can understand your disappointment Bill, I would be disappointed if I missed out as you did as well don't get me wrong.

But a quick look at your board activity from yesterday shows you actually posted 3 replies on other threads yesterday at 1:55pm, 3:55pm and 10:03pm all before the final spots in the pool were all taken up at 12:31am this morning. Seems at a cursory glance that you were active on the board when slots were still available.

Thanks Nick and Leon, I think things were run very smoothly!!

Thank you so much Nick and Leon.
I hope you will do this again.

Yes indeed. Thank you Nick and Leon for fronting the $ and for dedicating your time. Much appreciated!

Good Lord, Bill

You just saved $25. Congrats.

From my perspective this whole thread and Group Break was handled 100% perfectly by Nick. Not 99% but 100%. I can't imagine it being done any better. For the few folks that didn't get in, my sincere apologies and if you so desire, there will be another group break in the not distant future you will be invited to. I would suggest that whomever wants in be on the board when Nick said he will post the thread. Great job Nick!!

+1

I want to add a bit more response for Bill (hi Bill). At the start we were going to allow 3 slots each, on first acquisition. Then the idea for 2 was mentioned and we went that route. I was the one that made that decision, with Nick too, but it was my ultimate decision so it is my bad. I had my doubts about even selling all of the slots, period, let alone how fast we did it. This was a learning experience and still is an ongoing one. We will fine tune as we go and my guess is the next Vintage Group Break will be even better. But I think Nick really put in some good effort and covered as many bases (pun intended) as possible, but maybe not :). I will take the hit on those issues, please don't blame Nick. I do see your points though, and as a small token of my appreciation for your participation on the board, want to offer you one of the new T shirts for free. I will post a thread later today, probably soon, about those and then you can PM me your color and size preference and address and I will get one right out for you. Once again, my apologies....I am blown away how fast we sold out. As I said at the start, these kind of things really don't do it for me....again, I am odd man out. :)

There are cheaper ways to procure 2 1954 topps commons :)

I'll give up one of my spots to Bill. I don't tend to be lucky anyway.

You pick, #10 or #132

This seemed pretty smooth and straight forward from my perspective.

I'll take 2
 

If there are any slots still available I will take 2. Sorry. didn't scroll down far enough to see that it was sold out. I will participate next time.


Thanks,

Joe

Paypal Payment Info:
ncepero@emory.edu

PLEASE PLEASE PAY VIA PAYPAL GOOD & ONLY INCLUDE YOUR NET54BASEBALL USERNAME ONLY

There is a 48 Hour Time Frame for the payment. Once that time frame is up your spots will be given to the waiting reserves.

I will be in next time. Sorry I missed this one. Sounds fun.

I get an error message when clicking on the Paypal link. Is there an email address I can use to send the money to?

Agreed wholeheartedly. Thanks to Nick & Leon for putting this together. Can't wait to watch the break, and the future breaks to come.

I got the same error message on paypal.

Actually, yes, you can please everyone by providing concise instructions where there is no ambiguity about how the break is going to be run, and when the sign up for that break is going to happen. I am absolutely shocked that somebody who has supposedly run group breaks several times before so poorly communicated when the sign up was going to happen.

Once he knew the set was coming in Tuesday, he should have immediately posted a time for the sign up sheet. If it had been Thursday, or Friday, or Saturday when more people would be off from work, and thereby able to participate in the sign up, nobody would have had a problem. If it were me, I'd have posted "the set is coming in today. Finalized instruction and/or rules will be posted for public consumption tomorrow at 5 pm. The signup sheet will be posted at 2pm Saturday, eastern time. 1 slot per person until either all the slots are filled, or until all the interested parties have had a chance to get their one slot. If there are remaining slots, we will hold until 3 pm to make sure that any stragglers have had their opportunity to get in, and then take offers for additional slots. One additional slot maximum in this second round."

Easy. No interpretation necessary. Instructions a child could understand.

But that didn't happen.

We were told that a thread with the finalized instructions would be posted Tuesday:

Additionally, we were told that we would receive notification of when the signup sheet had gone live:

But there was no instruction thread prior to the sign up sheet. There was no email alerting us that the sign up sheet had gone up. So even though on Saturday September 13th, a full three days before the signup sheet went up, I gave notification that I was definitely participating...

Even though I'd addressed my concerns that I would miss the sign up sheet, and had been told specifically that that would not happen because yes, the email I'd inquired about WILL in fact be going out, I am still out.

Yes, I did jump on the forum a few times yesterday. Once to post a requested statistical analysis of a player that I'd worked on all night, the other two times to ask for suggestions about handling a non paying buyer, as it was the first item I'd ever sold on EBay. Then I went to bed, and didn't wake up until almost 9 pm. I wasn't manically checking the forum every time I logged on to post something, looking for any sign up sheet. Why? Because I was told specifically I didn't have to.

Congratulations. You are in the minority. Because judging by the posts of the people who were not able to sign up, even though they, too, had expressed they were in, you are one of the lucky ones.

No, it wasn't handled perfectly, or anywhere near perfectly, because multiple people in this thread, people who had previously stated they were in, did not end up getting to participate.

The only area where I understand there being any confusion was the number of people signing up. As a group break had not been done on Net 54 before (to my knowledge), there is no way you could have ultimately known how many people would be buying spots. But in that circumstance, it would have been prudent to start with one slot maximum per person, making sure that everybody who wanted to participate had the opportunity to do so, up to 250 people. If there were slots left over, selling those additional slots wouldn't have taken long at all. The 250 slots didn't need to be filled on Tuesday. What harm would there have been if an additional day were required to fill the slots? None. But by allowing people to sign up for two slots, a whole lot of people now do not get to participate. And quite frankly, why the people who had stated definitely they were in had to sign a second shot is puzzling to me. You had early indications of not interest, but commitment. The sign up sheet should have been for 250 - the number of people who had already committed to buy. When the discussion was begun, you didn't know for sure if that kind of group break were possible, if there would be enough enthusiasm for it. Those people who signed on early made this possible, and many of them got nothing to show for it.

I know you are saying this was a learning experience, and a lot of these edges will be smoothed out in future breaks. But there didn't have to be any rough edges at all. The only variable should have been the number of slots that you could fill, and that was only a matter of letting the sheet stay up one day or two. Everything else should have been straight forward.

You missed the point. Congrats.

If you don't know why somebody is upset, Frank, it's best not to say anything at all. Because quite honestly, belittling me is uncalled for, and it is not appreciated.

I'm just amazed that someone would set up a ringtone next to his bed for a Net54 54 Topps set break. There is a whole beautiful world out there - you might want to explore it a little more.

I like 54 Topps too, but you have about 1 million to choose from at any given moment, and for a lot less than $13 for (likely) a VG common.

Or, maybe he could just simplify the whole process by giving us a time when we should be here to sign up?

So does that mean you do or don't want a T shirt? :)

and furthermore on one other issue; we were going to send an email out to generate interest. Again, this was a miscalculation on my part (and Nick didn't think it would sell out this fast either)..... We thought there would be a second round and then some. So when they sold like hot cakes in the south, we didn't need to send an email. I was figuring in 2-3 days we would send the email and go from there....

[QUOTE

You missed the point. Congrats.

If you don't know why somebody is upset, Frank, it's best not to say anything at all. Because quite honestly, belittling me is uncalled for, and it is not appreciated.[/QUOTE]







I don't think Frank was trying to belittle you. You can have my two slots if you want them. I just paid for #41 and #141, but if you want 'em, they are all yours. Just cheer up and stop with the theatrics.

In the grand scheme of things, getting shut out of one set break isn't a big deal and I think Nick put in a hell of a lot of work to pull this off (including updating slots for about 12 hours straight on the board yesterday).

Nick, I just sent payment, via paypal goods, without problem. Look forward to the drawing! Thanks again, this is fun! -David


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

Nick, i also just sent payment for my 2 slots #30 & #77

Nick
 

Just sent payment for #27 & #157

Thanks !

Nick
 

Just sent payment for spot #1 and #18

Thank you!

Nick
 

Paypal Goods payment sent for slots #42 and 197.

Thanks again

Ok this may be a stupid question, but I no longer can find how to send a payment as "goods" the top only shows "send money to a friend".

So how do I make sure the money is sent as a "goods and service" payment?

I think you can get there by clicking on "send and request" at the top.

I actually found this myself, since i rarely send payments, so i just clicked it as well..probably sendt as F/F .Afterwards i found by clicking the SEND & REQUEST

I have paid for my two. Thanks for doing this for us.

I would love nothing more than to be able to go out and see the beautiful world out there. Believe you me.

Yes, my phone is setup to provide a tone when I receive an email. I made one for the forum. I didn't want to miss the break. It offered me a rare chance to actually do something fun with the other members of the forum, since I can't go to the National, or local shows when they're done.

Thanks my head was processing that as "Send A Request" and kept skimming right over it (I did suffer a concussion playing softball last night so I will just blame that. haha).

10 and 132 paid

Payment sent.

Mea culpa
 

Nick, I'm sorry for the negativity on my part, and I apologize to my fellow forum members, too. Nick, you took on a heck of a task, and trying to make all these guys happy may not be hard, but when you throw me into the equation, well, I can be like 10 old hens all by myself sometimes. Thank you for doing this. Ultimately, I could have looked on the main forum. I just didn't think I needed to. Oh well. There will be other breaks, and I will make doubly sure not to miss that one.

Good luck to everybody.

Paid for spots via pp goods. Thanks again... Come on teddy ball game

payment sent

Payment sent. Nick & Leon, thank you for taking this on. Maybe this could lead to a live set break at the National dinner someday.

Thanks Nick & Leon! $$$ just sent - Dreaming of Aaron & Kaline:D

70 and 240 paid!
When is the break and just how does one get on this "reserve" list?
Thanks again!
Chris