WA 2.0, coming in 2024...

[cridler]

Exciting news here at the WisdenAuction Camp....We are creating a brand new website! First of all rewinding back the clock, back to 2008 , we issued Catalogues full of http://www.wisdens.org members books for sale in fact we were the first to have a colour catalogue that you could download from the internet, it was manic back in 2008 , as soon as the Catalogue was launched half the books would sell twice+ on day 1 and orders filled by members. An alternate source of purchase was an online auction site which put their prices up, started forcing sellers to take PayPal , charging them to put pictures on the site and shill bidding (allegedly) was off the chart. So we decided to move the catalogues onto our own website, we asked collectors from the buying and selling side what they wanted and and in September 2008 WisdenAuction.Com was born. 2008 doesn't seem that long ago in terms of a number but my youngest hadn't yet been born (and now he plays senior cricket). Then the Credit Crunch, Covid and Cost of living crisis hit (lots of C words) but we are still going strong and looking forward to the next chapter. Over the Christmas period I was told by our hosts that the database that the system sits upon will soon no longer be supported. It is like having an iPhone 6 , it still works very well but it is starting to creak and after the support period ends it is more susceptible to hackers (We are supported until we migrate over). We don't hold any financial details but even so we have to move forward with the technology. I have 20+ years in the IT game (more of a consultant than a coder) and have used that along with demo systems to pick out a new solution, the license has been purchased for the template and now the build begins.
I think my brain was sharper 15 years ago, the complexity that went into the original build was off the chart , each category triggers different criteria such as Hardbacks will ask you about hinges, paperbacks about spine paper coverage and rebinds about how many covers inside. The year groups on the website were carefully designed to help the questions, hence why it is 1864 to 1895 (and not 1864 to 1878 , the first 15), the reason being is that the HB starts in 1896 hence a new category, ditto 1938 for the linen and 1965 for the DJ , it will take us some time to replicate this but it is underway.
The new solution has more exciting features, there is in fact 2 sites being built, one for the PC and one for your phone, when we were created most listings were an an auction basis, these days there is more of a buy now situation and buy nows with an end time never really made sense to me on our site, so this has gone, buy nows will be listed until sold or cancelled , making an offer is a now automated rather than text in a message , the feedback system a bit more intrinsic. It is also super fast and bugs removed. It also gives us a chance to perfect the categories and the questioning for each listing. The facsimile section can be expanded (15 years ago we left facsimile selling to David but we have 1000 here these days) and none Wisden categories like playfairs that are never used can be combined. We do lose the store tab as stores are held as users and the 15 years of sold prices are not on the new site (try loading that!) however I have spent a few hours downloading all the data from 2008 to end 2023 for people to freely search upon and I have put it in a presentable format (with one image per book, the spreadsheet is 200 Meg!) 15150 items until the end of 2023 or £2.8M (£170 a lot) , this data isn't ready yet as over time users have listed facsimiles in the Wisden section and sets not in the set section etc so it needs cleansing. A draft without cleansing or images is on the wisden.club forum. An early sale...https://www.wisdenauction.com/detail.asp?id=163
It is exciting times.
Users, feedback and active items will be migrated but there will be a short freeze period for this to happen, there may be parallel running of both sites for a short period of time (to cover international deliveries etc) but the migration will cause minimum disruption. We do not have a date for this yet but it will not be too far in the future.

[cridler]

Cleaned up my file a bit, so many lots in the wrong category but a lot better now. Useful info if ever needed.

[strettonbull]

Looking forward to seeing this Chris!

[cridler]

Im an old price horder

[cridler]

sneak preview

new.wisdenauction.com