To streamline the PPG experience, we have introduced PPG Premium membership, with a number of great features, many of which have been requested by PPG collectors. Today we’re thrilled to introduce one of the most requested.

Custom Estimated Value Lists

Our latest Pop Price Guide / hobbyDB Premium feature now allows you to create custom lists including Top-10s tailored to your collection and fandom.

Want to see the value of all your Batman Funko Pop!s? How about a list of your Disney Pop!s or Mystery Minis? The best part is that the choice is up to you!

List values and other stats get recalculated once a day  –   plus you can recalculate the list value if, for example, you added a few new items list and would like to know its value right away.

Create Your Lists!

Here are two great examples –

• See the value of your Funko Pop!s vs. your FiGPiNs vs. your Hot Wheels
• See the value for specific segments of your Pop! collection, such as your Disney or Star Wars Pop!s

You’ll also be able to add items to more than one list!

Other List possibilities include –

So, for instance, your Hot Wheels and Matchbox can be found on your list of Ford models. Or your Youtooz Stormtrooper listed alongside your Lego Death Star via your Star Wars list. The choices are limitless and entirely up to you.  Ready to start listing your faves? Check out our handy how-to for creating lists on PPG / hobbyDB by following this link!

And Each List Comes With a Top-10

We will automatically create Top Tens for each List.  Here an example  –

See Your Lists!

Once you’ve created your list, you can view it and its stats/values on your PPG / hobbyDB Showcase in place of where your “My Collection” is located in the top left. Simply click “See All” to return to your traditional stats for your entire collection.

You can further customize your Lists with banner images  –

Upgrade to Pop Price Guide / hobbyDB Premium

Ready to upgrade to Pop Price Guide / hobbyDB Premium and supercharge your collecting experience with an amazing Showcase (and at the same time help us to make the database and collection management ever better)?

With Premium, in addition to a Showcase along with this great new list feature, you’ll also enjoy an ad-free experience, zero selling  trading fees via the PPG Marketplace, and lots more, such as downloadable collections and gains/losses charts.

Plans begin as low as $2.50 a month. Complete details and checkout are available here.

The post New Pop Price Guide Feature: Customizable Estimated Value Top-10 Lists appeared first on Pop Price Guide.

As of last Thursday, subscribers enjoy –

1. No Ads, which means a more fun, less annoying experience
2. No PPG marketplace fees, which means more money in your pocket
3. No more waiting to download your collection, export it now via CSV

Well, it’s been a week, and with your feedback and support, we’re excited to unlock even more new, sought-after features for subscribers.

Think of a Premium membership as your own personal investment portfolio, where you can unlock tools to track the value of your collection the same way you’d follow and analyze your Wall Street stocks.

Check out what’s new – 

4. Track Your Gains & Losses

Nothing offers quite the thrill as watching the value of your collection skyrocket or knowing that it’s the perfect time to sell that hot item.

Now you can track the percentage change in the value of your items in your collection based on what you originally paid.

You’ll find your Gains/Looses on items in your Collection Management Dashboard. These lists are customizable via the filters located on the right side with options such as Gains/Loses %, Location and more.

You can also download a list of all items that have increased or decreased in value here as a CSV (the same way the existing Premium feature of exporting your complete collection works).

5. Recalculate Your Collection Value at Any Time

Did you just add a Pop! that you’re super excited about seeing in your collection’s estimated value? Now, not only will you be able to recalculate the value of your personal collection at any time (usually it’s once per day), the price guide itself will also update every hour, rather than once every 24 hours.

6. Member Estimates

Notice an item that is missing an estimated value? Now you’ll have the ability to add a Member Estimate. These price points only are included in the price guide if there is no other information, but they are especially helpful when it comes to collectibles that may not have a ton of historical data yet, such as Autographs, Prototypes and Special Stickers (European Editions, for example). 

Find out more about how Member Estimates work and how they are clearly marked as not transactions-based here.

Sign Up Now!

Are you ready to join fellow collectors who have upgraded to hobbyDB Premium?

Remember, in addition to the new features mentioned above, subscribers already enjoy improved performance, the ability to download their collections to a CSV, and a completely Ad-Free PPG/hobbyDB experience!

Plans begin at $9.99 quarterly (every three months) or $29.99 annually. hobbyDB Shareholders and Volunteers are eligible for a 25% discount at $7.50 quarterly and $22.50 per year. Again, we tried to make this as affordable as possible, while also being able to support the business. Heck, three months’ worth is less than a cup of coffee these days!

Click the button below for complete details and to power up your Funko collection with a Premium Membership!

The post Pop Price Guide / hobbyDB Premium Unveils 3 New Features to Track Your Collection’s Value appeared first on Pop Price Guide.

PPG and its partner hobbyDB rolled out changes to its Ratings system last autumn and, since then, our members have already performed 692,455 Ratings!

If you haven’t begun rating your favorite (and not so favorite) items on PPG, here’s the perfect time to start. We’re offering a challenge to help us reach 700,000 rated items by the end of the weekend (March 24).

How to Rate an Item

Once you’re in the Pop Price Guide database via the PPG / hobbyDB App or other devices, you can easily filter and search for your favorite collectibles. From there, rating your faves is simply a matter of locating the Rating box located on every PPG item page and selecting accordingly.

It’s easy to do and only takes seconds! Did we also mention that it’s fun to do? See if you can knock out 10 right now.

Even More Features

You’ll now also notice that you can track the number of items that you’ve rated directly from your PPG Showcase.

Rate more than 1,000 items and you’ll earn an exclusive (and possibly your first)Badge for your PPG Showcase!

More about Badges here.

The idea behind PPG Ratings is, that the more collectibles you rate, the better we can be in the future at showing you the items that interest you and your collection’s needs.

How We Calculate Ratings

Ratings allow you to find the most, or even the least, popular collectibles based on your preferences. Plus lots more, like creating cool lists such as the Most-Liked VWs. Or how about the Least-Liked Batman items?

With the new system, every collectible begins with a 2.75 out of 5 rating (that is the middle of the lowest Rating of 0.5 and the highest Rating of 5.0).

And rating items differently between 0.5 (“I absolutely hate this”) and 5.0 (“the very best ever made!”) really helps. See, for example, these two items with 20 Ratings  –

On the left you have twenty 5.0 Ratings and on the right nineteen 5.0 Ratings and a single 4.0 Rating and you can clearly see the difference that makes!

So it’s important to not only rate items using 1’s and 5’s. Don’t be afraid to use the decimals between digits to help us create a true lists as only the very best items should have a combination of the most and highest votes and thus show up on top.

See a comprehensive guide to how Ratings work on PPG and hobbyDB by following this link.

Let’s Get Started

Ready for a challenge? We currently have 692,455 items rated on PPG/ hobbyDB. Can you help us reach 700,000 by the end of the weekend (March 24)?

What’s your favorite subject to sort by ratings? Hot Wheels Mustangs? Pop! Marvel? Share with us in the comments below!

The post Pop Price Guide Ratings Challenge! Rate Your Favorite (and Least Favorite) Collectibles! appeared first on Pop Price Guide.

We’re thrilled to see the App recently surpass more than 400,000 downloads, but we’re even more excited about what’s to come from the perfect tool for building your collection.

Get to Know the PPG / hobbyDB App

The PPG / hobbyDB App provides direct access to your Showcase, Collection and Wish List. All with the simple click of a button. But there’s so much more the App is capable of.

Barcode Tech

More and more companies are applying barcoding capabilities to track each separate product. The PPG / hobbyDB App brings these collectibles directly to you with a simple point-and-click.

So what can we scan?

We know the thought of adding all of those collectibles manually to your Pop Price Guide collection can look like a daunting task. Here’s where you can call upon the hobbyDB App.

The App’s tech allows you to easily scan a UPC code or other specialized barcode to easily find that item in the PPG database.  We have also started adding Retailer specific barcodes like Gamestop or Hot Topic (this is important as they often apply their UPC barcode over the brand’s own barcode).

This can be particularly handy while out shopping. With a quick scan, you can check an item’s estimated value, whether or not you already own it, and lots more.

hobbyDB Retail Network

With the PPG / hobbyDB App, we’re looking to change the way you shop for your favorite collectibles.

You’ll find direct access to the first nine shops via the App to the hobbyDB Retail Network. It’s here where you can personalize where and what you’re shopping for. On the left for example you find North Carolina’s Dragon’s Hoard.

And to come!

The PPG / hobbyDB App isn’t done there. We have lots of great new features on the horizon.

Soon you’ll find better integration, which will remove the need to log-in to the hobbyDB website separately (using a technology that is called OAuth).

Once in the App, you’ll find ways to personalize your activity stream to your own collectible interests by following your favorite brands, subjects and series, as well as designers, sellers, other members and lots more.

Plus, we plan to be introducing an image recognition feature so that you can take a photo of a collectible that does not have a Barcode and the app will show you the closest matches in the database.

Have you downloaded it yet?

Are you ready to start scanning and beyond with the Pop Price Guide / hobbyDB App?  Download here  –

The post Pop Price Guide / hobbyDB App: 400,000 Downloads and Growing! See What’s to Come! appeared first on Pop Price Guide.

Today we have a fun update for those Pop Price Guide members with any pesky duplicate items in their collections. Now you can merge duplicate items in your collection into one single entry.

The new tool finds exact duplicates in your collection – same item, same condition, same notes, etc. – and then combines them into a single Collectible entry.

The quantity on the combined item will be equal to the number of duplicates. For example, if you have three of the same items in your collection, they will be combined into a single entry with a quantity of three.

To get started, select the “Dashboard” option under the “My Stuff” dropdown tab. You’ll find the “Merge Duplicates” button located on the left side under “Collection Tools.”

Click here for a shortcut!

Give it a try and let us know what you think! As always, we’re here to answer any questions. Message us in the comments below or at support@hobbydb.com.

The post New Feature! Merge Duplicate Items in Your Pop Price Guide Collection appeared first on Pop Price Guide.

The team here knows this all too well and with our improved ratings system, now we can better see which collectibles we collectively love…or don’t.

Under the old system, Pop Price Guide and hobbyDB members could weigh in on their favorite items on the site by rating them between 0.5 and 5.0 stars, with the latter being the best. But the problem is that we now have more than 1,000 Funko products that are rated 5.0 – which just does not make for a really cool “Top-10 Ever Made” Funko list.

The improved Rating System will get even more specific.

With the expanded new system, all items start their PPG life off with a Rating of 2.75 (halfway between 0.5 and 5.0).

A look at the Old System versus the New System

So now an item that has a hundred 5.0 Ratings ranks supreme over one that has received, say only one or even ten 5.0 Ratings. This allows for much more useful Top-10 lists.

Some great examples of lists of Rated Items can be found in Top-10 rankings such as –

Most highly rated Funko Pop!s of 2023

Most highly rated Hot Wheels ever

Most highly rated Hard Rock Cafe pins

Least liked Funko products ever (excl Autographed Items)

Make your own!

To see the highest or lowest rated items — once logged-in — simply search for something, say Ford Mustang filtered by 1/64 Scale and then click the “Rated: Highest” or “Rated: Lowest” options on the menu dropdown located towards the upper right of every Pop Price Guide page.

When ranking items, we suggest that you use 3.5 as your base for a good item, so that you have room for extraordinary items (i.e. not rate all items from your favorite brand as a 5.0).

You can now also find out how many items someone rated by looking at their PPG Showcase  –

Every Member can rate (and Badges to come for this soon!)

Ready to get ranking? Give it a shot and let us know what you think in the comments below! The more Database Items we all rank, the better idea we get about their popularity…or lack thereof!

Have any questions, thoughts or concerns? We’re happy to address them. Message us at support@hobbydb.com and we’ll do our best to answer.

The post Pop Price Guide’s New and Improved Items and Collectibles Rating System appeared first on Pop Price Guide.

Think of your Showcase as your own personal museum. It’s a place where your collection resides, tucked into categories, which we call Lists, and more of your choosing.

Coupled with the ability to customize the look and feel, sell items and more, your Showcase can, in effect, function as your own personal website. For example, some users have purchased their own URL and redirect it to their Showcase to create, essentially, a free website. Here, for example, is Isaac of hobbyDB’s Showcase at www.canalnoises.com!

Photos

Currently, you can add as many images of your collectible as you’d like.  That is great if you like to take photos but if that is not your thing or you do not have the time we always had a Standard Image. It was using what we call the Main Photo (here is more on the different photo types) and was generally the best image we had of the item in its packaging.

NEW!  A Choice of Standard Image

We’re thrilled to announce that you can choose from two different Standard Photos for each of your items in your Showcase.  Perhaps you prefer the out-of-box image of an item (say you have the loose item or just like to show more of the actual item than the package). The best part is that it’s totally up to you now.

So how do you go about setting up a new Standard Image? It’s really easy.  You can do so when adding an item to your Collection or for existing items you go to “Collection Management” under the “My Stuff” dropdown menu. From there you can find specific items in your collection by using our search filters. Once you find an item, click the “Action” tab and then “Edit Photos.” Now comes the fun part. Select your desired image and click Save.

You can do the same in the Showcase itself, just click on the Item and then follow the above instructions.

In preparation for this, we started a year ago to add loose photos as another Default Photo which you see when you search (we call those “Show on Search” photos). Take a peek at a few more of the them –

We do ask for your patience as the Squad and our team add more of these new Default images.

You can help out as a member of said Pop Price Guide Squad. Our team of volunteers helps with projects such as this and lots more, in exchange for first-look feature reveals, access to our private Squad forums and exclusive Showcase Badges.

Give it a try and let us know what you think!

The post Customizing Your Pop Price Guide Showcase Further with New Standard Images appeared first on Pop Price Guide.

That includes more than 7,000 Funko collectibles added to PPG within the last year!

We have tons of new and fun features planned for the coming year, all designed to maximize your Funko collecting experience.

And you can play a part in the excitement as a member of the PPG Squad and / or as an investor in our latest round of PPG Crowdfunding.

Even More Comprehensive Funko Coverage

Our mission since Day One has always been to provide the most complete Funko database and price guide possible.

In addition to newly released and announced items arriving earlier in the guide, we’ll be expanding our database even further with more Sticker Variants, Autographed items, and lots more Prototypes. And Customs! And you can not look at any of these if you do not want to…

P.S. – there are some pretty neat Custom Pop!s out there from some extremely talented artists. We recommend giving them a look. Stay tuned for more!

You will find us also adding more background info, for example data-driven articles such as the Top-10 Most Valuable SDCC Pop!s and others from some of the best collectors out there, such as Javier Serrano’s the History of the Willy Wonka Golden Ticket. More about this here and contact us if you are a writer and have a story to tell!

All the Price Points!

An expanded price guide doesn’t end when we simply add new items to the database.

Last year we were able to provide some diversity in the guide by incorporating price points from the likes of Mercari, many new auction houses, and our first very select Whatnot vendor. In 2023, we’ll be adding new Funko Specialist Auction House prices (PPG has some plans here as do some of the bigger Collectible Auction Houses) and more properly vetted Whatnot sources.

Also, keep an eye out for –

• How do values for Loose items in near mint/ mint condition sound?
• We’re also planning to create a new button that will allow you to update your collection value in real-time (would you want that?).

Find more about PPG’s role in reporting what currently feels like ever-increasing Estimated Values here.

Price Patrol and PPG Squad

Our PPG Squad are also getting some spiffy new tools to keep prices even more up-to-date.

Our team has developed new features to allow our hobbyDB Squad Curators to amend Subject Pages (where you’ll find your favorite franchises, characters, designer, series, etc.) and items much easier.

Have you flagged an item that we need to tend to? Our expanded team and features have us aiming for close to a 1-2 day turn-around when it comes to resolving Flags. And thus ensuring an ever more accurate guide (thanks to everybody that cares and flags – there are a lot of you!).

The Price Patrol is our newest tool that allocates certain Funko POPs to our most experienced Squad Members. They then “patrol” a specific area of the Price Guide that matches their expertise. They check Price Points for quality, flagging and removing any that don’t meet our quality standards, and adding new Price Points to each item so the Estimated Values in their section of the Price Guide stay up to date.

Stop Fakes!

We’re always looking for the best ways to combat fake items and prices from finding their way into the guide. In the coming year, you’ll find hundreds of new images (such as the one of Captain Rex below) depicting fake items on PPG to help you delineate between fake and authentic Funko items.

Top Grades?

We believe Graded items will play a major role in the future of collecting Funko Pop! figures (here is more on that). In addition to lots more Graded items in the guide, we’ll also be adding Estimated Values for Graded items and the ability to add Population reports.

Check out our recent partnership with the grading service PSA by clicking here.

Lots More to Come!

You can also factor in faster site speed, more PPG Marketplace tools, allowing you to add barcodes to your POPs and have the App find them (maybe put the barcode on the protector if you want to have it graded, LOL), and more improvements for the PPG mobile experience.

Plus, if time allows us, more currencies for collectors around the world (you can find our complete Roadmap here).

Hey, maybe we finally get to do PPGcon!  You can see why we’re truly excited about what lies ahead in 2023.

Get Involved

We could not do any of this besides our valiant Squad Members.  Thanks, Gals and Guys!

And we want you to be a part of it!  Follow this link to see how you can become an owner (and investor) today via our latest round of PPG Crowdfunding. Want to bring your expertise to the guide? Give our PPG Squad a look here!

As always, we’re open to questions, concerns, and kudos by messaging us at support@hobbydb.com!

The post Pop Price Guide Road Map to Success in 2023 appeared first on Pop Price Guide.

But sometimes the bugs have other plans.

If you manage your collection or wish list on PPG or are one of our sellers we thank you for your patience as we work to improve the site’s technical infrastructure. In the coming weeks, we’ll be focusing all of our development capacity on infrastructure work.

The remaining time will go towards resolving check-out bugs with the Request Shipping process and finishing our Variant Group project, which aims to reduce and clean up Subvariants, Autograph and Customs. Read more about the project here.

Among other issues diligently being worked on by our team is making sure your collection value updates every day. That’s in addition to making sure items appear sooner when added to your Collection as well as the Pop Price Guide Marketplace.

What’s the Plan?

If you’re interested in some details on what’s happening under the hood (totally okay if you’re not, just skip this section), here’s what we know and what we’re planning to do.

hobbyDB and Pop Price Guide have “write” servers that write to the database whenever a change is made, like adding Price Points or editing a Database Item, and “read” servers that deliver the content whenever visitors load a page on the site. The read servers are what handle most of the traffic.

On Tuesday morning (21 November at about 6 a.m. MST) our read server started to hit 100 percent load capacity (called CPU usage %), and has stayed maxed out almost continually. For context, the normal load on these servers usually hovers around 30-40 percent.

That’s the reason for the slowness and we are still trying to work out exactly why the servers are maxing out. A few possibilities are DNS issues, some change at Microsoft Azure, bots, or someone trying to scrape data from PPG, but we don’t know the root cause yet and work through all of these issues in turn.

As we investigate and troubleshoot we are also making headway with infrastructure optimizations so we don’t get hit so hard like this if problems come up in the future. One of those optimizations was removing 15 gigabytes of unneeded information from database tables yesterday (that process, funnily, is called “vacuuming” tables).

Here’s what we plan to do in the next few weeks –

• Vacuum all other tables
• Remove some tables and other old code that are not needed anymore
• Upgrade Rails (our web application framework) to a higher version
• Deploy Pgbouncer (a tool that allows better usage of our servers) which needs that higher Rails version
• Refactor encoding of our database
• Improvements to a number of other frequently used queries
• Follow other suggestions that we are receiving from the technical support team at MS Azure team (we host with Microsoft)

Thank you again for your patience as we work to restore and improve PPG. As always, we want to know your thoughts. Message us at support@hobbydb.com and we’ll do our best to address any questions or concerns.

The post Pop Price Guide Home Cleaning: Ironing Out Bugs and Site Speed Issues appeared first on Pop Price Guide.

That means making it easier to find items such as Autographs and Customs, while in turn decluttering variants and subvariants.

We have added a large number of Customs, Errors and Prototypes to Pop Price Guide and our partner site hobbyDB, in addition to our recent venture into Autographed items. Plus lots more for fans of Funko and beyond.

Squad Member Maelstrom, for example, has 10,000 Hot Wheels Errors to add to the database. We are also in discussion with a number of parties regarding thousands of Autographed items. And dozens of Customizers have asked for their work to be added to the site.

While that is great for fans of these items, it can sometimes make finding production models difficult. We knew that we needed to make some changes to accommodate all of this new data.

So instead of showing say 15 Variants on an item, we plan to show you the two models made by the Brand (say Hasbro or Funko) and then items that have either been autographed, are a prototype, an error or have been customized.

And if you prefer Autographs or Customs you will be able to set those as your Default.

You can find the first version of that already on the Site, here for example a Funko Pop! that now has its 10 Customs separated –

So far, we have done this for Customs, Errors and Prototypes.

Arriving Soon…

• Autographed Items will be their own group
• We will deduct the numbers that are not Variants so that the Charizard above will show only two Variants
  

And this is all part of a new View coming to the Database

For example, we have 5,666 Ford Hot Wheels in the database. But only 276 of them are separate products, the others are all Variants and the above (Autographed Items, Customs, Errors and Prototypes).

You will be able to toggle from the current view with those 5,666 Database Items to one that shows you only 276 Variant Groups. Here is an early Mockup of what that might look like while searching for the words “Dairy Delivery”  –

Let us know what you think! Leave a comment below or message us at support@hobbydb.com with any questions, concerns or kudos!

The post New Look Pop Price Guide: Separating Autographs, Customs and More! appeared first on Pop Price Guide.