NostoNews, November 1, 2010 by Tommy Jasmin Some key site features This month, I want to send a reminder to both new and longtime site users of what I feel are some of the nicer features Nostomania offers. And a hint as to what the future holds. Grading guides Who's got the best grading guides on the web? Google seems to think we do. Just Google "comic book grading guide", and see what comes up. Right there in the #1 slot, ours. A lot of sites spend a great deal of effort to get high Google rankings. We just provide a nice, concise grading guide, and that seems to do it. And we'll be making more improvements to the grading guides in the next few months. Should you get your coin, comic book, or magazine professionally graded? This is a tough question - not every item is a good candidate for professional grading. It is not cheap, and you want to make sure the value of your book or coin will benefit from having this done. We take the guesswork out of it for you. If you enter the item in My Lists, and assign a grade that is close, we will tell you if it should be slabbed. Just go to My Lists, click the "Print your lists" link, and then the "Display Slablist" button. We'll show you a nice printable list of the items that would benefit from professional grading, based on the world-class pricing data we compute from actual sales. Real Wantlist Matching Other sites claim to provide Wantlist matching, but it's always just a text match on some phrase you enter, like "Spider-Man 7 NM". With Nostomania, since our site is backed by true databases for all items, with all key details, the serious collector can fine-tune a Wantlist. For example, if you are looking for Spider-Man 7, not only can you provide a grade range you are looking for (for example, VF or better), you can specify CGC certification, and a price-range you are willing to pay. As soon as a seller lists an item for sale which meets all of your criteria, you will be notified by email of its availability, with an option to purchase, decline, or ask for more information. Research actual sales The best way to find out what something is worth is to see what people have been paying for it. Nostomania lets you research actual sales for any item. You see a list with details for each sale - when the item sold, where it sold (Heritage, eBay, etc.), the grade, and whether it was professionally graded. This is an extremely valuable tool for collectors. Down the road In general, we let the Premium Subscribers dictate what new features to add to the site. Our current thought is to add mobile-device apps (iPhone and Android-based). Most likely, once these are ready, they will be available free to Premium Subscribers, who pay $2.99 per month to access the special features of the site, above all the regular features available to the Basic, free accounts. If you have other ideas, as always we'd love to hear your thoughts. Thanks, we'll see you all next month. Visit our NostoNews Archive.