How to name these New Promos?

[mystical_tutor]

Exactly, that's correct. Therefore the Angel has nothing to do with the box promo program. This new program is available worldwide. Both things are different programs.

I respectfully disagree, Hans. I think this ilk of card is just a reiteration of a very old "promotion strategy" done by the company. These cards differ in no significant way from the Serra or the APAC/EURO lands or any other offering by the company that is based entirely on a quantity purchase from a dealer (yes, WotC was a dealer at one time).

When thinking of why a promo card exists the logic is:

Primary: Promote Magic: The Gathering [read: make money--bottom line]

How?

Encourage people to play: All the pro/casual event cards. Arena, FNM, Pro-tour, ad infinitum, ad nausiam
Encourage quantity sales: buy a box (Serra, APAC/EURO, these cards, buy old boosters (Wall-Mart), box-top cads (8th/9th ed 4x6).
Encourage people to help do the above: Judge gift, Holiday promos
Encourage purchase of other company products or just raise market awareness: media inserts, Convention cards.
Encourage collecting: all the above---LOL

We must remember that product promotion is just a marketing strategy and all promo cards are just a sub-set of promotion in general.

In looking at the overall history of company promos there is no difference between these cards and anything previously used to cause the same result--quantity buying.

I would like to see the entire indexing revamped along these lines (as I have organized my own collection) as I see no difference in the "token" Arena cards and the other Arena cards--same reason--same promotion. The new token cards are really promo cards--as we see by reading the backs and are part of their respective sets.

The reason for an index is to be able to find something and I am mature enough (ok no comments) to realize that considering the diverse cultural background of our collecting population that is no easy request.

But, I do think that having 4 or 5 inclusive divisions, organized along the above lines would be a real help to new users of the board. Most of the present sections would remain exactly the same and should simply be arranged chronologically within one of the above divisions.

Obviously a card name index would be a tremendous asset to the board.

In any case! NONE of this is a negative comment on the present board but rather an observation based on the preference of this collector. This board has been absolutely essential to my collection and I have nothing but the highest reguards for each of you that has worked so hard on it.

[dragsamou]

Obviously a card name index would be a tremendous asset to the board.

Hi Gary
I agree that an index will be great.For the moment, updating and adding sections and subsections, finding logos, text, scanning, correcting and fixing errors, etc...Represent thousand of hours of work.For your understanding, the old website was in HTML and has been changed to Dynamic, way more fast to update.What I'm doing right now with the help of Hans that takes care of scanning is to replaced old sections/subsections, and creating new ones with the program that I use, I know it's not perfect, but at least some serious updates took place.I know that probably some subsections will never be updated, which member owing all of them, is willing to scan in high quality the 306 Summer cards so that Hans is able to work on them, and then that I create a New subsection to add them, same problems with Test Prints and a lot of different Magic Rarities that are on the website, getting high quality scans require skills and it's not an easy task.So for the moment priority goes to adding scans, creating , adding, fixing, modifying sections and subsections, once this will be done, and we are talking about thousand of hours of work, next step will be to reorganize the website and adding an index is something that will took place in the future.

[ouallada]

I think you could perhaps make an announcement or sticky a thread calling out for scanned contributions. I'm sure that a set of summer scans can be scrounged up by members given a bit of time and clear requirements.

For test prints, some of which may not be in wide circulation, perhaps have 1 for each of the sets that are tough to get scanned in entirety (8th, 5D, UD, Jud etc) or maybe one of each colour (5 colours + artifact and land). Some, like Exodus and Saga, I expect will be a lot easier.

[dragsamou]

I think you could perhaps make an announcement or sticky a thread calling out for scanned contributions. I'm sure that a set of summer scans can be scrounged up by members given a bit of time and clear requirements.

For test prints, some of which may not be in wide circulation, perhaps have 1 for each of the sets that are tough to get scanned in entirety (8th, 5D, UD, Jud etc) or maybe one of each colour (5 colours + artifact and land). Some, like Exodus and Saga, I expect will be a lot easier.

Hi Favian
Point is that to replace a subsection, I need to replace it all at once, so I can delete the old one.For Test prints, the old link from Bob Flaminio where there was the only scans of those:
http://magic.flaminio.com/magic/rarities-old.html
Doesn't work anymore.
For the newest promos, this is quite easy, problem is with the very hard to find Magic Rarities.I know that in between Hans has around 1000 Scans for me to add to the website, so I will proceed with those in the next monthes.4013 new scans so far have been added with the new program to the website, not bad...

[Mister Foilcard]

Encourage people to play: All the pro/casual event cards. Arena, FNM, Pro-tour, ad infinitum, ad nausiam
Encourage quantity sales: buy a box (Serra, APAC/EURO, these cards, buy old boosters (Wall-Mart), box-top cads (8th/9th ed 4x6).
Encourage people to help do the above: Judge gift, Holiday promos
Encourage purchase of other company products or just raise market awareness: media inserts, Convention cards.

Very interesting idea, Gary.
I'm not fully satisfied with the current structure of the Librarities. Remember, Ralph Herold has reworked his old site, unfortunately he quit with magic, but his thoughts about new structure were not bad.
I will keep your ideas in mind, it seems, they will lead to a new system of sections (and subsections) in the future. But for the moment I agree with Alexis, it is important to update the site with all the new scans.

[Mister Foilcard]

Sorry for the double post, I forgot to say something about scanning.
It would be great if there are some guys that able to scan such beautiful things like Summer Magic or all the test prints or misprints. I see no chance for me to get complete sets of these cards for my collection (I'm looking for a complete mint set of Alternate 4th Edition too).

If someone wishes to help scanning such Beauties, mail me, I will provide the neccessary 'know how'.

[mystical_tutor]

Encourage people to play: All the pro/casual event cards. Arena, FNM, Pro-tour, ad infinitum, ad nausiam
Encourage quantity sales: buy a box (Serra, APAC/EURO, these cards, buy old boosters (Wall-Mart), box-top cads (8th/9th ed 4x6).
Encourage people to help do the above: Judge gift, Holiday promos
Encourage purchase of other company products or just raise market awareness: media inserts, Convention cards.

Very interesting idea, Gary.
I'm not fully satisfied with the current structure of the Librarities. Remember, Ralph Herold has reworked his old site, unfortunately he quit with magic, but his thoughts about new structure were not bad.
I will keep your ideas in mind, it seems, they will lead to a new system of sections (and subsections) in the future. But for the moment I agree with Alexis, it is important to update the site with all the new scans.

And I, most certainly, agree with your order of priorities. Having the cards up for people to use for identification is #1. Also, I have no issue with those that would see a different organizaton sometime in the future. I just wanted to supply some food for thought.

Keep up the good work.

Gary

[mystical_tutor]

As an addendum, my biggest frustration is that I don't know what I can do to help. I have a lot of time on my hands that I would more than gladly contribute to the board but little in the way of technical skills. The last languages I learned were dBase III and ASCII C. I am somewhat skilled in Access and would gladly embark on a project to make a detailed name index of cards. I'd even try to learn a new programing language to do it in if that would be of any help.

Gary

[dragsamou]

Sorry for the double post, I forgot to say something about scanning.
It would be great if there are some guys that able to scan such beautiful things like Summer Magic or all the test prints or misprints. I see no chance for me to get complete sets of these cards for my collection (I'm looking for a complete mint set of Alternate 4th Edition too).

If someone wishes to help scanning such Beauties, mail me, I will provide the neccessary 'know how'.

Hi Hans
I can create a "know how" sticky topic for scanning, so in this way you don't have to answer all the time to E-Mails .Just provide me all the info

[dragsamou]

As an addendum, my biggest frustration is that I don't know what I can do to help. I have a lot of time on my hands that I would more than gladly contribute to the board but little in the way of technical skills. The last languages I learned were dBase III and ASCII C. I am somewhat skilled in Access and would gladly embark on a project to make a detailed name index of cards. I'd even try to learn a new programing language to do it in if that would be of any help.

Gary

Hi Gary
To help, there's different tasks that I do, that prevent me, to proceed more quickly onto others.One of those is to verify index of subsections, if the artist name is correct, if the card is Uncommon or rare, of the right color, if the scans are correct, etc...I do this twice, after adding an update, but sometimes some goes through, I just find out last week that one of the Artist for the Forest from the Red Booster Eurolands was the wrong one, Mike ploog instead of Kev Walker.This doesn't require Technical skills, just concentration and time.

[ouallada]

I think you could perhaps make an announcement or sticky a thread calling out for scanned contributions. I'm sure that a set of summer scans can be scrounged up by members given a bit of time and clear requirements.

For test prints, some of which may not be in wide circulation, perhaps have 1 for each of the sets that are tough to get scanned in entirety (8th, 5D, UD, Jud etc) or maybe one of each colour (5 colours + artifact and land). Some, like Exodus and Saga, I expect will be a lot easier.

Hi Favian
Point is that to replace a subsection, I need to replace it all at once, so I can delete the old one.For Test prints, the old link from Bob Flaminio where there was the only scans of those:
http://magic.flaminio.com/magic/rarities-old.html
Doesn't work anymore.
For the newest promos, this is quite easy, problem is with the very hard to find Magic Rarities.I know that in between Hans has around 1000 Scans for me to add to the website, so I will proceed with those in the next monthes.4013 new scans so far have been added with the new program to the website, not bad...

I think that Hans and you have done a fantastic job thus far, and appreciate all the time that you have given to the revamping of the site. I'm not sure how you guys want to work out the logistics of the rarities scans, but I agree that it will be very difficult to get scans of all the test prints. case in point being Josef's threads on the Exodus test prints. There are so many variations, and it might be difficult to collate scans of every single variation. Same thing with 8th. You have foil, non-foil, light, dark. Jud has light,dark, left, right. I guess starting a separate thread asking for representative scans for the rarities could be best. Getting them all may be difficult, but a representative subset shouldn't be.