Tuesday, February 5, 2013

Collection valuation

Hello folks!

Long time no see.
For the new readers that don't know who I am. Long story short, I run 8 bots on MTGO and I started my botting business about 4 years ago.

Anyway!
I recently introduced a friend of mine to start up his own bots using ML bot. And he asked me how to get started, so I told him that the best way would be to possibly buy some collections from ebay or the classifieds board inside the client.
He answered me that it seemed as a good idea. Some seconds later he told me that he doesn't know what a collection would be worth and that he don't have the time to manually price every card. So I told him that I could make a program that would calculate the values for him.

We started discussing features that the program could have and started writing it down. So I've got a small list of features that this MTGO/ML Bot tool will have.
The first thing will ofcourse be some collection valuation thing. Based on the ML bot pricelist and the .CSV files exported from MTGO. At first there will be a quick overview of the collection, card count and values.
Later on I will implement some more details and also maybe some way to easily manipulate the personalprices.txt and personalpercentages.txt files.

So, the first rough draft looks like this: (So far only including a valuation tool, also no design has been done at all.)
All prices are currently counted from 0% CardsMTGO3.txt. I will add in a feature where you can set your own -+ corrections corresponding to your ML bot settings.

So, what do I want with this post?
I wonder if this kind of program is something that YOU want. If so, what kind of features would you like to have? I will hopefully in a short time have a beta version ready to release with the most basic features.

Don't hesitate to post a comment to this post or send me an email at mtgoswebot@gmail.com

Regards,
Sebastian

26 comments:

  1. Hi Sebastian,
    I have been thinking that such a tool would be really useful for quite a while, but I have no programming knowledge. I have lots of ideas but never write them down so i forget most of them..

    For evaluating collections for purchase it would definitely need some sort of personal prices file since a lot of cards are essentially worthless.

    As a more multipurpose collection managment tool it would be super handy to have a list view kind of like in the client, that can be sorted by set/format/rarity ect, with the CardsMTGO3.txt prices in one column and a seperate column for personal prices. It would also be handy if the personal prices column could be edited in the UI and automatically saved the prices in a personalprices.txt file in the correct format. If it also had a setting to show cards that you don't own, it would be handy as a way of quickly checking your inventory, seeing what you need, setting prices for those cards, etc. It also makes it easier to keep an overview of what cards you have and making sure that they are set at the right price since you could quickly see what you have, what the ML pricelist has the cards at and then check what the cards go for on wikiprice/classifieds. That's all I could think of at off the top of my head.

    Were you thinking of an app strictly for evaluating collections for purchase or more of a valuation/inventory tool?

    A little unrelated but do your bots still have a website? I can' seem to find it.

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  2. It could be an anything-tool. Whatever the community wants in it! :) You definately have some good ideas there. I will write it down for sure.

    My website has been down a while since my server crashed.. Didn't really put any effort in to put it up again.. Also my programming computer got stolen the other day so I've lost all source code for the site. So it wont be back.

    I will make sure to have a somewhat beta ready for release this month as I need feedback on what I'm doing!

    Regards,
    Sebasitan

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  3. Hi Sebastian,

    I would suggest a filter to cap the price of cheap cards (like < 0.01) and to cap the price of expensive ones (>20 tixs) as well. The reason is that a collection could be full of crap cards, and the price evaluator should not sum them up.... A collection of 400k commons at 0.01 tixs is not 4k usd worthy.

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  4. yeah like everything under X rate as Y.

    like every common worth less than 0.05 set as 0.003
    Every uncommon worth less than 0.1 set as 0.01
    every rare worth less than 0.15 set as 0.04
    and so on..
    (if u could set those 2 values manually would be great)

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  5. Sebastian, another idea (feel free to implement whatever you want, according to your schedule):
    - a % indicator that tells you how far the collection is from the "full set". Something like: the collection is 95% RTR, 83% RAV and 100% M13

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    Replies
    1. That was quite interesting, great idea! I think I will get started on that today.

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  6. and a comparison with your bot's Current CSV as we've emailed.


    1. Load CTB.csv
    2. Load BC.csv
    3. Foreach card in CTB count BC amount
    4. If quantity on BC is less then X. Card Y value = Y value * Z
    5. If qty on BC is over C, card Y value = Y * V

    V, X and Z are manually set parameters.
    Where V and Z is decimal used to multiply with Cardsmtgo3.txt price.
    X is maxquantity.

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    Replies
    1. This comment has been removed by the author.

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    2. see this. will give you an idea.

      http://img210.imageshack.us/img210/452/123ho.png

      The correction (under max at the top) could also be with all the listed tyoes (like correction for common, common foil, etc just like the over optional is)

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    3. Great, thanks! I will put this on my to-do list. Though this is a kind of big thing to do, so it wont come with the first beta release.

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  7. Ok! So, for those reading the comments.
    Here comes the first version of the software:
    http://78.69.78.47/MTGO Tool.msi

    NOTE: The program needs an internet connection to run properly.
    - Why?
    On startup the program will make a quick validation that the beta version is still active. This is because I want to be able to disable the early versions in the future.

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  8. Lol Sebastian, you made a great job, and all so quickly

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  9. I just got aware that we might have some cultural issues though, so the valuation thing might not work if your computer aint swedish... I didn't have time to look at this yet. But I will tomorrow :-) Now off to bed!

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  10. A potential fix for the culture problems has been release! If anyone would be so kind to try it I would be happy :) Same download link. -Release 0.03.

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  11. Great work! This is really cool.
    I didn't get a chance to try out the first beta, but I just checked out the current release and I have some feedback.
    I can't comment on any cultural problems in the program because I'm Swedish too. So someone else will have to get back to you on that.

    First, a few things that causes the program to crash. Having the planeswalker deck pack or new player tix in your collection causes it not to be able to load the csv file. The untradable avatars seemed to not cause a problem.

    What kind of filtering features are you planning for the overview tab to be able to better evaluate the value of large quantities of low value cards and such? I like both alberts suggestion of a price cap to not count cards worth under a certain amount and x4dow's suggestion of being able to modify the buy price based on your current inventory.

    The list view is pretty sweet. A few minor things here. When sorting by rarity, Rare cards end up inbetween commons and uncommons. Haven't loaded a file with mythics so I don't know where they end up. Also when sorting by collector number, it should group the cars in into their sets, then sort each set by collector number. It might also be useful to have a blank column where one can add their own comments or price information to the cards. Also if it isn't a lot of work to program it would be nice to be able to choose what to display in the list, like only a certain set or format or rairity, ect. Basically like the display options for the collection in the client. If that is difficult to implement though it can always be done manually by the user when creating the CSV in the client.

    Last but not least the sets column. Some things that might be cool is to break it down so that you can see the %commons %uncommons %rare %mythic %total. And additional columns could also show the buy cost to complete the sets.
    Thanks for developing such a useful tool! Definitely looking forward to seeing what happens in the future releases.

    -David

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    Replies
    1. With all the excitement trying the mtgo tool I almost forgot, really sorry to hear about your server crashing and even more so that your laptop got stolen. That's a real bummer.

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    2. Thanks for the feedback.
      I haven't decided what filters to add yet really. If you have any suggestions just tell me :) The more filtering options available the better. Can't be to many really.

      I will look on the sorting regarding C/UC/R/M and make them list properly.

      The current sort that is is currently based on the name, so it would sort C -> M -> R -> UC.

      Could you please email me the csv that made the program crash? Can't relly fix it until I know how the line looks that makes it crash. mtgoswebot@gmail.com. Thanks!

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  12. Hej igen Sebastian,

    I just found another bug. The quantity column in the list tab shows the quantity set for trade rather than the quantity on the bot.
    -David

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    Replies
    1. Hello1
      Yes I know, this is because I currently only count the cards marked as tradeable... I will make sure to implement an option for choosing to count all cards or only the ones marked as tradeable. Although I wont be doing anything until tomorrow, got a sick hangover.

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  13. I will use this posts comments until most of the bugs noticed here has been fixed as I don't want to spam the main blog with crappy updates. Later on when I feel that the program is working a bit better I will probably make a blog post with every release instead. So please add this post to bookmarks so you will find back if you want to pitch in.

    Anyways, I had some energy left today. And I figured that before adding a lot of different settings to the program there should be a way to save them.

    So new release out, 0.09. Also added a Changelog.txt in the installation folder to keep track of everything.

    Same url; http://78.69.78.47/MTGO Tool.msi

    @David, please don't forget to send me that .csv that made the program crash, it would be really nice if I could have it for tomorrow.

    Regards,
    Sebastian

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  14. V0.10 released - http://78.69.78.47/MTGO Tool.msi
    Releasenotes in changelog.txt.

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    Replies
    1. Changelog also available on http://78.69.78.47/changelog.txt

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  15. V0.11 released, available at URL: http://78.69.78.47/MTGO Tool.msi
    To see the changelog please visit http://78.69.78.47/changelog.txt
    Also avaiable within the installer.

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    Replies
    1. I noticed that for some reason if installing a newer version over the old one it doesn't replace it, it rather leaves the old version there. If this happens, uninstall and reinstall. Your settings will be saved.

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  16. Hello,

    I am very interested in this but sadly the cvscalc will not open. Do I need a special program to open this?

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  17. Happened to me too. Try running as administrator. Right click, select run as administrator. I only did that once and since then it works when I just open it. Was messing with a bunch of other stuff so this might not be what fixed it, but you could give it a try.
    -David

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