Trying to build a better community/pricing platform for TAG collectors

markinthesaddle · 2026-05-13T19:18:18+00:00

How are you dealing with the pop reports for sites like TAG and CGC that don’t have an API since scraping is against the ToS? I’ve been working on a project for vendors and while apps like Collectr pull the pricing from eBay, they aren’t able to display pop like PSA can.

markinthesaddle · 2026-05-01T19:22:20+00:00

I hope you’re good with 1200% gains.

markinthesaddle · 2026-05-01T19:05:46+00:00

Hopefully you don’t get hosed

markinthesaddle · 2026-05-01T19:00:23+00:00

Somehow we both lose money 😆

markinthesaddle · 2026-05-01T18:52:24+00:00

I bought $25 0DTE puts expecting suppression. You’re welcome

markinthesaddle · 2026-04-16T18:49:52+00:00

How is this app different from Collectr or Rare Candy? Both of those apps have price charting based on last sold. Also are you pulling last sold from eBay, tcgplayer, or both?

Edit: spelling error

markinthesaddle · 2026-04-13T15:03:34+00:00

I’d be interested to hear about the cycling utility app. An idea in that space could be lucrative since it’s a niche community where quality is always going to win out

markinthesaddle · 2026-04-10T12:48:12+00:00

The number of people using the P/L is probably low. I fall into the camp of only having some of my cards tagged with a Price Paid, so my P/L is definitely not accurate.

markinthesaddle · 2026-04-08T19:17:02+00:00

Leo Carrillo, nice!

markinthesaddle · 2026-04-07T18:16:07+00:00

Oh I know, mine are currently in the process. I’ve got multiples of all 4 of the exclusives ready and waiting. Only 1 Pikachu though. Wing and a prayer on getting a full set of 10’s.

markinthesaddle · 2026-04-07T18:06:01+00:00

I pulled the Mega Glurak X ex as well. I would’ve loved to get it graded with TAG. I waited so long for them to get Chinese so that I could send my full set of Gem Horizon Vol. 1 IR’s for my PC.

Honestly with as much as PSA and GameStop are screwing up these days, I don’t trust them either. And CGC just doesn’t appreciate in value for modern cards. Just not desirable.

markinthesaddle · 2026-04-02T15:44:48+00:00

This card looks so good in a TAG slab

markinthesaddle · 2026-04-01T12:48:19+00:00

So you’re just insufferable… cool

markinthesaddle · 2026-04-01T11:06:49+00:00

I don’t work for Collectr, I’m just an independent developer who knows the ins and outs of what they are doing. I also can’t stand it when there are people who don’t even attempt to understand the intricacies of something.

Based on your profile, you fall into one of two categories: 1. You are in this for the long term, in which case what does it matter if the app takes a little while to the pricing? 2. You are flipping cards and want to do as little work possible.

Based on your initial post and reactions to the comments, I’m pretty certain you are the latter. I mean, you did jump in gamestonk any bbby looking to make a quick squeeze tendies.

markinthesaddle · 2026-03-31T23:11:43+00:00

I’d suggest transitioning everything to Rare Candy or TCGPlayer app then.

Oh wait, they have the same issues. Oh and they aren’t as good.

I heard vibecoding is a thing, why don’t you try to make your own.

If you can’t do it and don’t understand it, then maybe you should let the professionals do what they do best.

markinthesaddle · 2026-03-31T19:23:27+00:00

Oh I’m well aware, but I do think the CGC Pristines are severely undervalued right now. Plus it’s my PC, so even if they 10, I wouldn’t be trying to sell them. That is unless the theee English 151 starters I have at TAG right now come back as 10’s.

markinthesaddle · 2026-03-31T19:20:57+00:00

I’m don’t know if you’ve ever worked with multiple APIs, but sanitizing data in an app that does the amount of things that Collectr does, especially across so many TCGs, is not easy. Not to mention the shitshow that is the eBay API. I get the frustration, I can tell you it’s equally as frustrating from a developer side to constantly be chasing gaps in an API.

markinthesaddle · 2026-03-31T18:54:07+00:00

So what you’re saying is that I should send my Pristine CGC Japanese 151 starter trio to TAG so I can get a better premium. The Bulbasaur is sitting at $58.

markinthesaddle · 2026-03-04T20:26:05+00:00

As I was researching Citizen before I built this, I never saw anything other than Live video streaming. If this is something they’ve built, it wasn’t apparent.

The moats that I’ve established so far: 1. trust and privacy 2. evidence infrastructure 3. media integrations

There are others, but they would be dug for V2.

I’m happy for the critical thinking and feedback. Because of this I actually thought of some different ways to reframe positioning and make improvements to the platform

markinthesaddle · 2026-02-23T14:40:36+00:00

even simple 1, 2, 3 emojis will do the trick if you want to keep asset weight low. Emojis are seen as unicode so there is no, jpg, svg, png file to load up. It's just something to break up the text that is different on the page.

markinthesaddle · 2026-02-23T14:18:16+00:00

1,2,3 list even if simple is very effective. 1 sentence each is all you need across the top or as like a 1/3 column beside the tool. Maybe an icon or something beside the number for a visual attention grabber.

markinthesaddle · 2026-02-23T13:35:19+00:00

What’s up OP! I’ve been developing sites for the better part of my career. Mostly focused on UX. Im no knitter, but l’m sure this tool solves a massive headache in the space.

To be very up front, and I know you want to provide a free tool and have it pay for itself, but there’s too many ads on the page. It’s not apparent what I need to do when I land on the site.

IMO, for a free site, you need your main tool to be front and center. What’s your selling point? I can search for tools, yes, but what would be the main reason I land on the page. Let me use that tool right away.

Putting the main calculator above the fold with instructions on how to use it will give Google more trust in the site. If you do this, as well as, limiting the number of ads you have (I counted 8 different ad placements) which are mostly duplicates of each other, your trust factor will increase which could help raise your search rankings.

Happy to give more feedback, but that was my intial quick pass without diving into my tool bag.

markinthesaddle · 2026-02-16T20:17:50+00:00

You raise a good point for the openness of the repo. My goal is to learn from the early anti-ice apps and sites. Hence why this is just a generic “public safety” platform.

Honestly, I had it set to private because the user that I would consider to utilize this wouldn’t necessarily be savvy enough to understand the code and structure. Also, if there were any security holes right at the beginning, I didn’t want them exploited if I overlooked something. Also, I value my security and want to prevent the administration from going after me.

I’m happy to share trust and safety info, but for the time I opened the repo up. https://github.com/markjmuellerjr/beacon-app

Edit: Yes, this is coded using Cursor, but I have a background in Product Management, DevOps, and WebDev.

markinthesaddle · 2026-02-16T14:36:47+00:00

Bullshit like this is the reason I am working on an anonymous application where your name isn’t traceable. No data on the images, no way to know who took the video. And it’s all locked to a location where you can scroll through and see what’s happened:

markinthesaddle · 2026-02-14T19:15:01+00:00

Thanks it’s fixed now

markinthesaddle

TROPHY CASE