Fwd: TCGplayer: Planned API Changes and Feedback Request

[Adam Feinstein]

Woo! Foils for individual cards will be easy. I guess we'll want some sort of checkbox in the dialog for trades? That's another field which will be saved too.

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From: <sa...@tcgplayer.com>
Date: Thu, Jan 17, 2013 at 12:15 PM
Subject: TCGplayer: Planned API Changes and Feedback Request
To:


Hello,

We have a few API changes planned that I want to explain and gather your feedback on!

The first announcement is something I am sure you will enjoy... we are finishing up foil Magic card prices for the API. Once it is ready in the next few weeks we will be making the updated API available to each of you. This will most likely be the Magic Foil Median Price only.

The second announcement is that we are changing the way we calculate Lo-Mid-Hi. As this is a major change I want to completely explain. As we have grown to include hundreds (and soon thousands!) of Sellers we experience occasional hiccups with our prices where a Seller miss-entered or intentionally enters a very extreme price point. The biggest culprit of this issue has been the Average and Hi prices we have used for years.

Within the next 1-2 weeks we will be removing Average entirely and replacing it with Median. This will be a much welcomed change that we have had lots of request for and this price guide point will provide a stable, reliable value to base a lot of trade/sales data on.

Concerning Hi and Lo prices, we encourage you to move more towards our Median price only, but will continue to provide Hi and Lo with the planned following changes:

Hi Price: We plan to provide you a modified Hi Price. This price will be limited within a range of 5x the Median price. So for example we have the following prices in the high range: $1.98, $2.21, $2.42, $104.99. If the Median price is $1.00 then we will be sending you a hi price value of $2.42, because the $104.99 price falls outside of 5x the Median price.

Lo Price: The same as the hi but in reverse.

The Median price change will likely have the largest impact on you because if you are providing historical data many of our prices will be dropping down some to a more expected and reliable price display. So at this time we invite your feedback and to let us know what you think of the planned changes to Hi-Mid-Lo and if this is better for your particular Site/App.

Thanks!

[Michael Shick]

A visual cue in the trades list is also pretty important.

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[April King]

Just turning them gold or silver should probably be fine.  :)

And can I just say... WOOOOOOOOOOO!

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[Daniel Lawrence]

Or we could do condition per card, and have lo med hi, flo fmed fhi? Default to regular and the selected condition from options?

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[Daniel Lawrence]

Scratch that, in my head I'm thinking nm, e, vg, g.... actual condition.

On Jan 17, 2013 11:54 AM, "Adam Feinstein" <mtg.fa...@gmail.com> wrote:

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[Adam Feinstein]

Well, there isn't going to be a flo/fmed/fhi, so that shouldn't be a problem. I'm thinking we could change the text color to a holo blue. That would be nice.

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[Jonathan Bettger]

First, about time.

Is there a way to add a gradient/image to the row background? It shouldn't be to hard to create something that represents foil like that. 

Weeks as in wait and push 2.0.2 with it, or just push a 2.0.3 after we get it in and tested? Will RoboSpice have any problems?  

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[Adam Feinstein]

Weeks as in likely 2.0.3. TCGPlayer has not been known to be too timely in the past. We can look into a more thorough styling for foils than just changing text color. I don't want it to be too obtrusive though.

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[Jonathan Bettger]

Ok, yea, the whole row changing is probably a bit too much. Just the text color though, what happens when both foil and custom price are set? Which one takes priority? (I assume that no price fetched always wins.) Maybe a small icon (thinking how deckbox does the foil icon would be better?

(Note the custom price should probably be changed from green to yellow, don't know why it took me 2 weeks to think of that.)

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[Adam Feinstein]

Custom price always takes priority. Someone who isn't as colorblind as I can comment on this whole yellow / green thing

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[Jonathan Bettger]

I was just thinking green means good to go. Yellow is more like warning, this isn't default.

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[Jonathan Bettger]

http://www.reddit.com/r/magicTCG/comments/18vxb7/tcgplayer_launches_median_and_foil_pricing/

Does this mean I have to find a place to drop in a foil checkbox on the trade window now?

[Adam Feinstein]

We knew this was coming for a while. Yeah, a checkbox would be a pretty good option. I'll have to modify the xml parser too, and the price dialog in the cardview. You might as well wait for me to set up the framework for it first.

It's still not in the API yet. You'll know it's in when this link has the foil info: http://partner.tcgplayer.com/x2/phl.asmx/p?pk=MTGFAMILIA&s=Dark%20Ascension&p=Huntmaster%20of%20the%20Fells

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[Jonathan Bettger]

Oh it should be fun. I would hope he's going to have a different page for the new API call. Otherwise I look forward to the day the Magic-nets break because the old page no longer has the same data.

[Adam Feinstein]

My guess is that it would just add a field below <hi> like <foil> or something like that. That wouldnt break things.

[April King]

Hopefully they'll continue low/medium/high in the API so that it fails gracefully.

[Jonathan Bettger]

Anything from TCGPlayer about the updated API coming?

[Adam Feinstein]

Nope. I'll let you know when I hear anything.