Nat Arem's Blog

So I’m in Costa Rica today for a one day trip down here. I’m closing on the sale of the condo that I used to live in and I would normally stay longer but I need to go to the east coast this weekend and next week for the Thanksgiving holiday. So, one day trip it is.

Yesterday I took my normal path to Costa Rica: Las Vegas to Houston, Houston to San Jose CR. The first flight was perfectly normal, the layover was fine, etc. The second flight was delayed a bit because our plane was late arriving to Houston but that wasn’t a big deal either. As they made the announcement of our final approach into San Jose, I noticed that I couldn’t see anything on the ground. We even got to the point where they put down the landing gear and I still couldn’t see lights at the point where you’d normally see them. It’s typical for it to be cloudy in Costa Rica but not THAT cloudy. So we get down low enough to see some lights through the fog and we’re very very low (under 200 feet for sure, maybe lower) and really only 10-20 seconds from landing when the pilot just guns the engines and we start climbing again. We were doing what is known as a “go around” because of the heavy fog. At that point, I wasn’t really nervous so much as annoyed. We were already late, I was tired, we were seconds from landing and now we have to do it all over again. That nervousness level changed soon.

The pilot eventually got on the loudspeaker and stated the obvious “It was too foggy to land”. Then he continued by saying “We’re going to make one more try but if it’s still too foggy then we’re going to Managua”. The whole plane just kind of let out a collective “shit” (or the spanish equivalent… mierda?) when he said that. Of course most people had various tourist stuff booked. Since no one actually goes to Costa Rica to visit San Jose, most people had flights or other transportation booked to immediately get them out of San Jose. And I have my closing at 9 AM this morning so I needed to be in CR as well. Telling me at 11 PM the night before that I might end up in Nicaragua was not what I wanted to hear.

I was really nervous as we approached the airport the second time. It still seemed pretty goddamn foggy to me. Not like much changes with fog in like 15 minutes. As my heart was pounding the whole time I was saying to myself “please don’t pull up, please don’t pull up” etc. I knew if they gunned the engines we were screwed. It was an awesome feeling when we were like 10 feet above the runway and I knew we were going to land. People actually started clapping before we even touched down which was kind of funny. It reminded me of a sporting event where one team starts celebrating when the clock is still winding down but they know they’ve won. The whole plane was just thrilled to be in Costa Rica and not Nicaragua.

I was so happy I decided to tip the pilot. They announced that it was the First Officer (the person in the right seat in the cockpit) who actually did the landing so I gave her $20 because I was so relieved at not having to deal with possibly moving the closing time, spending the night in Managua, etc. Whew, close call.

Like most males in their late 20s, I was an avid sports card collector in the late 80s and early 90s.  The early-mid 90s were the heyday of overproduction for cards and the world exploded from just a few cards per player each year to a ton of cards per player each year.  And then it got into all sorts of stuff that didn’t appeal to me like game-worn jerseys, autographs, “refractors” (whatever those are), chrome, platinum edition, etc.  I generally stopped caring about cards around 1994 or 1995.  It didn’t help that as a 12 year old I didn’t have much money and even the mediocre cards were out of my budget.  So collecting became too expensive and just generally too hard to keep track of.

Fast forward to 2009 when I was living on Grand Cayman.  I can’t remember the specific moment that made me interested again but at some point while chatting online with yellowsub we got to talking about cards.  I got on eBay and I was instantly hooked again.  There’s something really cool about being able to afford all these cards that I could only dream about as a kid.  I remember almost all of the cards that I am collecting because I’m focusing exclusively on pre-1990 rookie cards (a few non-rookies but only things like 2nd year Jordan cards and such).  I couldn’t possibly care less about an A-Rod or Pujols rookie card or something like that.

So ever since then I’ve been keeping tabs on cards on eBay.  I’m trying to restrain myself from investing too much into cards but I guess my general goal is to have fun collecting and generally amassing a collection that I could get my initial investment out of if I ever decide to bail.  If I take a small loss it isn’t a big deal but I’m generally only buying stuff for market or under market.  I made a few mistakes in the beginning with being impatient but after a year+ I’ve definitely improved.

Anyway, these are my four favorite cards I’ve picked up so far:

Although the cards have other people on them, those are (clockwise from top left): Jordan rookie, Nolan Ryan rookie, Cal Ripken rookie, Larry Bird and Magic Johnson rookie. Sometimes rookie cards are debated because, obviously, 1986 was not Jordan’s rookie year. But it is the first widely produced and distributed Jordan card so it’s generally considered his rookie card. As you can see in the upper right, each card has a grade out of 10. The difference between an 8 and a 9 is big but the difference between a 9 and 10 can be HUGE. Like the Nolan Ryan rookie in a 9 is very rare – there are only 59 graded as a 9 in the world. And there are zero graded as a 10. Even the 8 (which is what I have) only has around 500 in the world and it’s worth, roughly, $1000. If someone found a Gem Mint Ryan rookie and it received a 10, it would EASILY sell for over $100,000. It’s hard to say how much a highly desirable one-of-a-kind card would go for but if two people really wanted it the price could easily fly up into the mid six figures. But a Ryan Rookie PSA 9 can be had for roughly $5000-$7000 or so when it does come up for sale (which is kinda rare).

Anyway, my most valuable card is the Jordan mint rookie card. But I think my favorite card is the 1980 Bird/Johnson mint rookie. That card is a pain in the ass to get for a good price. It took me the better part of six months to finally win an auction for it (for like $715). Every other one was going for a ridiculous price and part of the fun of collecting is getting things for a good price. I also really like the 1982 Ripken gem mint rookie. There’s something really cool about the 10/10 grade so even though this isn’t a really special card in an 8 or a 9, it’s pretty sweet in a 10. It is generally available but I snagged it from a guy who seemed like a pretty motivated seller because he let it go for a decent amount less than he could have gotten with some more time on eBay.

Here are four more cards I’ve picked up that are more mediocre in my opinion (obviously even my top 4 are very mediocre compared to really high end collections):

Those are, once again, all rookie cards. I remember admiring the Gretzky and Montana rookies as a kid so I really wanted them. The Yaz card is just really cool looking imo. And while the Mike Schmidt rookie isn’t that good looking, being from Philly, I really wanted a Schmidt rookie. At some point I’d like to get all of these in a grade one point higher as all of these are valued in the $200-$450 range and could definitely be more elite.

I’ve also gotten about 5-10 other cards most of which are on par with the second image above (ie, worth a few hundred dollars, nice rookies but not elite). I look forward to many years of collecting going forward, it’s going to be a lot of fun to see what I can amass over time.

I know a fair number of website people read my blog and I’m sure a lot of you know about the concepts I’m going to write about. But, for whatever reason, this advice doesn’t get followed in many circumstances. Therefore I’m going to write it out anyway and hope it helps someone at some point.

One of the biggest challenges webmasters face is making a major change. Particularly to a site that has regular users used to a certain interface. Inevitably it leads to a ton of comments saying this sucks, bring back the old one, threats to leave, etc. It’s a proven fact (sorry no citation, don’t care about looking for evidence) that people hate change. We all know that. But the key is that people don’t actually hate the new product, they just hate the transitionary learning period because it hurts their brain. So what’s the obvious solution? Well, there are actually two.

1. You can do a beta site.

This is somewhat like what twitter is doing now. Obviously they’re doing it for technical and interface testing reasons but, if they’re smart, a major reason to do an overhaul with the option to use either (for a bit) is to get a lot of people on your side. What happens with a site like twitter is they get say, 30% of users to switch over and use the new one as their primary interface. Those people will get used to the interface, learn to like it and they’ll help to sway public opinion. Meanwhile the other 70% who hate change will stay on the old one clinging to the old site for as long as possible. Over time, as they see more and more people tweeting about how they like the new interface, they’ll gradually move over and grudgingly adapt. But there will be way less complaining out of them if they do it of their own accord as opposed to waking up one day and being forced. People absolutely hate being told what to do so doing the split site gets rid of that issue. Plus, even though twitter corporate knows the site better than anyone, random users can be influenced to a much greater degree by their peers than by the company itself. Peer evangelization is the most powerful form of influence, particularly on a web community. At some point, twitter will be able to look and see that they have a critical number of people using the new twitter as their primary interface and, at that point, they will pull the plug on the old version.

What does this process accomplish? Well, a few things. First, it helps soften the likely traffic blow that inevitably happens when people have to adapt to a new interface. With a large number of people converted over and evangelizing for the new version, it will be less likely to have a large number of users abandon the site for a period of time. Second, like I mentioned above, the court of public opinion is VERY critical when getting users to adapt to a new piece of software. The more users on your side, the better. The momentum of public opinion is a huge factor in everything from politics to web communities and keeping that momentum on your side is paramount. For an example of a site that has lost that momentum, look at a site like Digg.com. Third, twitter gets an enormous amount of media coverage. Media coverage will generally write about whatever it is they feel like writing about but, it helps a lot to have a large core of users on your side. It looks way better to have a NYT article say “Twitter users with mixed feelings about new interface” than “Twitter users rebel en masse against surprise new interface”. Obviously it’s better to have “Twitter users embrace new interface” but realistically it’s hard to ever get that sort of headline since the media much prefers to cover events of a different type.

I could go on for awhile about the benefits of a beta but I’ve probably said my piece. For what it’s worth, we used this strategy when we relaunched PocketFives in the May/June timeframe.

2. You can do small incremental changes.

We saw an example of this sort of thing with Facebook yesterday. They made the news feed font smaller and they didn’t provide an easy and intuitive way to switch it back. There was a small outcry but it was minimal. Most people don’t even notice it. You can make incremental changes every week or two over the course of a few months and no one will be able to get up in arms about it. You won’t see any multimillion person groups on facebook about the font change in the news feed. Sure some people will get upset (probably the older crowd) but in the end it won’t hurt that much. But, do you remember when facebook made a major change and they actually set up the URL new.www.facebook.com? And you could switch back and forth? That was a classic example of the first strategy.

Now, of course, a major factor in choosing between the two strategies actually arises from technical needs. For instance, with P5s, it would have been really difficult for us to make an incremental change when we were actually relaunching the site in a different forum engine (CommunityServer to vBulletin4). But with some other things, we actually have a choice. Like, for instance, on P5s, we have a lot of changes we’re making to the site. Some layouts are changing and it’s the type of thing that, if we did it all at once, would generate a lot of flak. But done one at a time, it goes either unnoticed or barely commented on. And, if anything, the comments are positive because we didn’t interrupt the user interface in a major way. In other words, a beta is not necessary for us to keep the court of public opinion on our side.

It’s important to keep in mind that this whole post only really applies when you’ve legitimately thought through your changes and they are actually better for the site — no amount of time or strategy can make users like something that actually does suck. This is not about talking users into something that is not good. It’s about finding ways to smooth the transition process when you’re making changes to a community-based site. The one thing to NOT do is to just roll out a major update without warning, live testing or anything. If you do, you’re setting yourself up to get blasted by users and probably lose a major chunk of traffic. I see this happen all too often and it’s really a totally unnecessary hit that webmasters take when they do a relaunch in this matter.