A New Phase for Pop Price Guide and hobbyDB Begins Monday

A Letter to Our Community – 

Ten years ago, we founded hobbyDB with a mission to document every collectible ever made. Next, we added the price guide, collection management, and the marketplace, all tools to help foster your love of collecting. And, best of all, then came you – our community, without whom we would never have come this far. Together we have built a resource that now catalogs almost 1,000,000 collectibles, 6,059,595 price points and is a digital home for 700,000 collectors! 

Over the last 10 years, we have been grateful to be able to offer these services on hobbyDB and PPG for free to the entire community. But, as with any business, our goal is to have the resources to continue making the site better over time. As many of you know, hobbyDB earns its income from ads. Some are great, like the ones that show you things like spare parts or protectors. Others can be more annoying (like those video ads). While we could add more ads to increase our resources, when it comes down to the overall site experience, we think that would just take all of the fun out of using both hobbyDB and PPG. And would be a huge disservice to the community.

As you may have seen, last month we launched hobbyDB Premium – a subscription service that is built to make your hobbyDB experience better than ever. And, as you’ll see if you’re already a Premium member, we started by removing ads entirely to give you a faster, uninterrupted site experience, removing marketplace fees so when you make a sale you have more cash in your pocket, and adding the ability to export your collection so you can always have a physical record of your collection on hand.

So Here’s Our Next Biggest Change

On Monday, we will be transitioning the Showcase to be a Premium feature. This will include your collection value, your top ten, and the ability to share your collection or wish list publicly.

We understand that this may come as a shock initially. If we had the choice, we would obviously love to be able to offer all of our services for free, forever. But if we want to be able to grow into the site that we know we can be, we can’t just depend on ad revenue alone.

Let us be clear, access to the database and the price guide will remain free. And, you will still be able to manage your collection or wish list in your Collection Management dashboard. If you do not decide to become a Premium member before Monday, your Showcase will still be available when/if you decide to sign up in the future. Nothing will be edited or deleted by us.

As the database would not survive without our amazing Squad, all Active Squad members will continue to be able to use their Showcase and all related features without a Premium Membership.

When it comes to the monthly subscription price, we went as low as possible, beginning at $4.99 per month. To save more, you can also sign up for three months of Premium for $9.99 (which works out to only $3.33 a month), or a year of Premium for $29.99 (which is only $2.50 per month)! If you’re ready to super charge your experience – sign up here.

We did not take this decision lightly. But we know this decision will help us get more resources to be able to build more features to make the site better over time. As you may know, we have always had SUCH a small team. This will allow us to be able to hire more developers so that your requested features can happen faster and get some user experience help so that the site is easier to use and always improving.

Here are some Premium features to come over the next 12 months:

1. Active Trading – The ability to offer an item in your collection for trade.
2. Passive Trading 1 – See who has an item and be able to reach out to them
3. Passive Trading 2 – See who has an item on their Wish List and be able to reach out to them
4. Collection PDF printout (80 items per page). Collection CSV download is already available
5. Wish List Export & PDF printout (80 items per page)
6. List Estimated Values – See how much a segment of your items is worth
7. Combine Estimated Values Charts – Select any number of items and compare their values over time
8. Collectible Storage Management – Define your own locations and then choose from them
9. Advanced Search – Search over descriptions
10. “The Completeness Test” – See which items in a Series are on your Wish List and are available for trade or purchase. You will also be able to mark items you do not care about as “I do not want” and then not see them again (unless you change)

And for all hobbyDB members –

1. Estimated values for graded and loose items
2. Better app usability and integration
3. More Price Sources, more automatic Price Point Assignment (where safely possible), better tools for our volunteers
4. Creation of a new field called “Exclusive to”. This will allow you to easily find all your Target or Hard Rock Cafe Boston items

Ready to be a Premium member? Sign up here.

We want to say thank you again for all of your support. We know this is a big change, and we hope that this will ensure that we can continue to grow and provide the best service possible for our loyal community. We’re always open to feedback, please leave your thoughts in the comments below.