raveflyers.co.uk message board | FAQ
Posted by Weed (82.34.22.145) on 13:57:35 17/January/08
In Reply to: Re: if early flyers are not listed.... posted by noel
: i dont know who updates this site...
hi noel,
i take full responsibility for the site
your questions provide an opportunity to give a bit of background info re raveflyers.co.uk, so please bear with me :)
the origins of the price guide lie in the international rave flyer collectors page at hyperreal.org which goes back to 1996 -- people would occasionally email asking me for info re the value of their flyers and where they could buy and sell them -- eventually in 2002 i set up raveflyers.co.uk and its message board so buyers and sellers could talk to each other direct (rather than ask me)
however people continued to ask my advice about the value of their flyers, so i did a one page rough guide (based mainly on guesswork,) hoping it would give people the info they needed without having to ask me
however people continued to ask my advice about the value of their flyers, so i started giving examples of specific prices paid for flyers hoping this would give everyone the exact info they needed... and so the price guide came into being
however people continue to ask my advice about the value of their flyers, so in that respect the site's been a complete failure :(
most info in the price guide comes from eBay sales cos these are in the public domain and are relatively consistent and harder to manipulate, but info from other sales is included where it comes from sources which can be verified (eg message board sales between known collectors, or web pages of reputable dealers)
the eBay data in the price guide is for the periods July 03 to April 05, and April 06 to April 07 -- i have price data for the period May 05 to March 06, and May 07 to August 07, still waiting to be added to the price guide
i tried to include info from _every_ flyer sale on ebay.co.uk (*) -- maybe this was too ambitious, cos it's a lot easier just checking completed sales rather than bookmarking all current auctions and then rechecking after the auctions have ended to see which ones have resulted in a sale -- but the completed sales search facility is limited and doesn't catch sales which aren't in an obvious category (such as Music > Music Memorabilia > Dance) and don't have standard key words (eg rave flyer / rave flyers) in their titles
[* if you look at the source code of the price guide web pages, you'll see all the individual prices paid as non-displayed html comments, so you can check how the displayed price for any particular was decided on]
at one point i was using at least a dozen complex searches, but eventually settled on just a few simple searches, the main one being a search of titles and descriptions based on the query term -
(rave,oldskool,"old skool") +(flyer*,flier*)
...with various exclusion terms added to cut out some of the non flyer related auctions
the other time consuming activity was extracting info and images from the Ebay pages for flyers which weren't in my own collection -- (this was not just for the price guide, but also where the flyer was new to me to include info about it in my database which now has details of over 36,000 flyers... yeah, i like making lists... used to work with databases back in the 80s) -- also some of the flyer pics need tidying up and most need "straightening out" (cos they've been taken at an angle with hand-held digi-cams)
and then there's all the queries that need to be made, asking people to verify dates where they didn't make sense, or where the wrong pic was being displayed for the description, or where there was incomplete info to identify the flyer - (really appreciate all the help given by those who've replied to my questions over the years, and apologies to all those who feel i've been wasting their time asking questions about their sales when i'm not a potential bidder)
(the actual updating of the web pages is the simplest part of the operation)
so what's happening with the price guide now? well, of the approx 60 sections on my wussu.com home page only 2 sections are concerned with flyers -- in terms of number of visitors, raveflyers.co.uk accounts for only about 5% of the total traffic, and some of my other sites also generate a lot of incoming email and need regular updating -- so as u can imagine it's not been easy finding the time needed to keep the price guide up to date -- i managed to just about keep it together 'till last August, but then get swept up in organising a squatters reunion, followed by a series of minor health problems, after which i got seduced for a couple of months by Second Life (have been a William Gibson fan since "Neuromancer", and have been waiting patiently for years for fully fledged VR to come of age)
so i've had a bit of a holiday from the price guide, and am not really sure what to do about future updates -- one possibility is to try and have a complete listing of flyers for all the main events/clubs (Sterns, Amnesia etc) even if there's no price data available -- tho i'd much prefer to link to definitve sites specialising in particular events which provide a complete dated list of all their flyers with quality pics of both sides, but there's not any sites like that about, and some of the ones i've linked to in the last few years have now disappeared
another option is to focus on valuable flyers, eg those worth five pounds or more, and not bother with the rest
or maybe i should spend more time on the really rare and obscure flyers, such as those for the smaller illegal parties of the late 80s and early 90s? they might not be as collectable as the Fantazias and Dreamscapes, but in some ways they're far more important as a record of the times
another possibility is to turn the whole thing into a collaborative effort, and this has a lot going for it, and in theory is probably the best solution -- but initially it needs a lot of expertise and energy to make it work, and a continued commitment from a number of people to keep it going
: can any1 tell me if theres a way to get non listed flyers on to this site??? who do we contact...
well you could try emailing me -- it'd help to have 'evidence' of the sale (eg the address of the eBay sale page, or contact details of buyer and seller) + flyer details (event name, date & location -- if not on the flyer and not known, then best guesses) and date of sale -- (will get back to you if i need a pic of the flyer) -- but remember, i've got info on a couple of thousand flyer sales already waiting to be added -- however if you feel it's vital for the survival of the universe that a particular flyer be included, or a price be updated, then i'll try and do the right thing :)
Weed