Announcing: The Tenyo Market

[Mike H]

Hi guys!

A few days ago in the member's section I posted a link to a website I've been working on called The Tenyo Market (shameless plug: I'm also still looking for English instructions for a few tricks...).

Most of you are full members but if you didn't see my previous post, The Tenyo Market is basically an online price guide for Tenyo that runs in real-time, meaning it's always evolving and showing CURRENT pricing data based-on sold eBay auctions (almost like the stock market). You can search for tricks and see the current average value of both new and used tricks, along with a graph of how the item has been selling over time to let you know if a particular trick is heating-up or cooling-down.

I'm starting this thread to open a dialog with other collectors to try and get feedback on what you'd like to see. As conversation starters, here's some topics I've been considering that I'd like to get your input on:

• Are there any other sources besides eBay can I leverage to get Tenyo pricing information?
• What ways would you like to be able to search the site? (ex:by year, inventor, "category", etc.)
• How would you like to see the data displayed or sorted?
• Would you be interested in being able to create an account and manage your personal collection?
• Do you think that an actual "marketplace" for buying and selling Tenyo items (without the hassles of eBay) would be a good idea?

The site can be found at http://www.tenyomarket.com/. Have a look and let me know your thoughts!

P.S. I will probably also post this on the cafe in the near future, just to get more exposure and additional input...

[SimonC]

Pure Swank mate, pure swank

[JohnM]

It is a good idea to post outside the Members Only section because non-members read the forum and they can't see the members only section.

• Are there any other sources besides eBay can I leverage to get Tenyo pricing information?
- There are other sources, but I don't don't think they would as easy to get info automatically from.
- There are forums with Buy Sell sections like the Magic Cafe
- There are private auctions sites like Martinka and Ron Alessi
- There is foreign auction sites like Yahoo Japan but it is in Japanese and the trick names are different and they do not use the T-numbers
- Maybe what you can do is enter some of the rare Tenyo that might sell on these sites manually because closing prices for rare items are few and far between.

• What ways would you like to be able to search the site? (ex:by year, inventor, "category", etc.)
Trick name should do it for my needs.

• How would you like to see the data displayed or sorted?
I think the spreadsheet and chart data that you are currently using is good.

• Would you be interested in being able to create an account and manage your personal collection?
Great idea, I keep my own spreadsheet but I think others would use it. What would be good for me is to be able to download the Average Price for all the T-Numbers so I could flow it into a column into my spreadsheet.

• Do you think that an actual "marketplace" for buying and selling Tenyo items (without the hassles of eBay) would be a good idea?
Yes I think the ability for people to list tricks they have for sale would be good. The seller would save the 10% ebay fee. Also the ability for people to list items they are looking for would be good as well.

It would be good if you could capture an image from each auction. I think graphic data like that would be important to go along with the price. Plus graphic imagery would make the site nicer and more interesting to look at.

[BobD]

Thanks, Mike H! Your website is very useful.

[David DeTenyo]

I agree with everything John said. A Market Place only for Tenyo would be great, but who is willing to do the 'maintenance' for free? It would require a bit of work, even when it is almost fully automatic.

i can't emphasize enough your website is awesome - the graphics showing how price goes up and down for example is a great litle addition. A fantastic resource for whoever starts to collect Tenyo. Thanks very much

One question: is it possible to make the item condition 'clickable'? As in when you click it you can get a seperation between new and used? [EDIT] Sorry I didn't see you state an average price used and an average price new, this is more then sufficient so forget my last remark!

[JohnM]

I think Mike's site will be useful but there will be inherent problems with the data.

I believe all of the information is gathered automatically from Tenyo auction closings on ebay. The Item Condition field will present a problem, because as we all know, many Tenyo sellers list their items as new when the are for sure not new. I don't know how to get around this without manual intervention. But even though there will be some issues like that I still think the information will be valuable.

I think the automated data will be useful but not as good as pricing information from Tenyo experts like David and myself. I plan to have pricing information for all tricks in Planet Tenyo and if that ever becomes too much work or not accurate enough, then I might link to Mike's site for pricing information if he allows that.

[Mike H]

You guys are totally right: there will be a degree of manual maintenance that will have to be done because the data that comes from eBay isn't always the best.

Some examples I've already seen include misspellings in the original data, Tenyo knock-offs being counted as real Tenyo items (check out Crystal Cleaver or balloon illusion), and open items being marked as "new". I plan to add a "report this item" button next to each listing. When that button is clicked it will be temporarily removed from the site and put into a "review" status. Myself (or other people who I give admin access to in the future) can go-in and review the items and either completely remove them (in the case of a knockoff trick) or fix the incorrect properties.

David you bring up another good point: after a while doing all of this stuff for free will get annoying. I was thinking of possibly adding banner ads to the site to help cover maintenance costs, or perhaps charging a VERY small fee when items are sold in the marketplace (something like 1%-2% of the selling price with maybe like a $5 maximum). After all, there are domain registration, hosting and bandwidth charges that I have to pay for, so somehow monetizing the site to at least HELP cover my costs will be unavoidable.

But I really, really REALLY want to stress that accessing the site and it's data will ALWAYS be free. I get the data from eBay for free so I'd never charge people for that. If I do come up with a way to monetize the site it would be either through ad revenue or by creating "premium" features (such as the marketplace) and charging a small fee to use those features.

[David DeTenyo]

Mike, first of all I hope you don't mind I posted your link on my website ... . I normally always ask people beforehand

I have a bunch of new items for sale and decided to use your site to shelp me figure out what they are more or less worth thesedays (which is, and that's good news for a lot of people, less then a year or two ago ). I searched for Wonder Window but didn't find it. It seems on The Market it is spelled Wander Winow. An error in the database perhaps?

[Mike H]

Thanks for pointing that out, David! When I was creating the database I used the spellings found on Tenyo's official site (http://www.tenyo.co.jp/magic_en/alllist/index.html). I could tell there were probably some mistakes there but without the actual trick in my possession I couldn't be sure.

But you're totally right, after seeing the completed auctions for Wonder Window and looking at how people actually spell it, I have fixed it in the database

Some other mistakes I noted was "Dyeing Paper" (should be dying paper) and "Funning Cards" (should be Fanning Cards, but Tenyo originally released this trick with the English misspelling so technically, Fanning OR Funning is correct!)

[Brett H]

The site is excellent -especially since it provides links to previous auctions of tricks you are trying to sell.

I've used it a few times now and boy is it useful. Thanks again!

[David DeTenyo]

Completely understandable what went wrong Mike I wonder why Tenyo doesn't fix these issues on their official English site. There are several spelling mistakes that could be easily fixed, but I suppose they have more important matters to occupy themselves with. Because never forget: we non-Japanese Tenyo collectors are only a very small niche in their business model/market!

You know what, I'll send them an e-mail with all the errors and let's see if they react

[justme-Rick]

I've given this some thought and it might be intentional on Tenyo's part or it could be the way it translates from Japanese. I didn't have Japanese in High School, we only had Latin as a second language choice back then. Mike that is a great site, I use it all the time, Tenyo should be paying you royalties or at least free magic.....

[Mike H]

LOL thanks for the feedback, guys

I really do have a large update to the site coming soon, I've just been busy balancing life and work. I'm glad that other people are getting use out of it, that motivates me to keep working on it and improving it for everyone.

[kellebotond]

Hi Mike,

I cannot seem to access your website. http://www.tenyomarket.com/

I get this error message: You have reached a domain that is pending ICANN verification.

Is it just me or it does not work for others as well?

Botond

[David DeTenyo]

It's offline for a few days now indeed. I hope it returns soon since this is one of the most usefull websites for new (and old) Tenyo collectors.

[RonP]

It is back online and very useful! Great site! And yes, it would be good to sell and trade our Tenyo stuff on our "own" webiste and not ebay...

[Richard Kaufman]

Prices seem to go up and down all the time. Does your site show an average price over time for an item like Ultra Tube?

[Brett H]

Prices seem to go up and down all the time. Does your site show an average price over time for an item like Ultra Tube?

At the moment, Ultra Tube prices are tumbling. If you're looking to get one, now would be the time to do so.

[JohnM]

Prices seem to go up and down all the time. Does your site show an average price over time for an item like Ultra Tube?

Mike H has not logged in to this forum for a quite a while but I can answer your question.

Yes.

http://www.tenyomarket.com/tricks/T-86

[Mike H]

Hey, I'm here!

Yeah something happened there for a few days. I started getting these e-mails saying I needed to verify some information to keep my site up. I assumed it was a phishing scam so I ignored them (after all, I do this for a living and have NEVER had to verify a site after it had been up for months on end before...).

A few days later I happened to hit the site and noticed it was down. I immediately responded to one of the e-mails, supplied the requested info, and the site was back up a few minutes later.

The good thing was that even though the site was down the database was still getting updates from eBay so no information was lost. Sorry about that!