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Search Tips Our database is one of the best, perhaps the best on the internet for football cards. It allows you total flexibility in narrowing your search down to only what you are interested in whether it be a certain player or team, autographs, game-used cards, cards of players from a certain college, or cards from a certain brand in a certain year to complete a set. Along with this flexibility comes the possibility of missing the results you want because you don't have your search set up right. The following points are intended to help you understand how our database works so your searches will deliver exactly the right results every time.
v Quick Searches. The searches on the left side of the page are searches that are run with a single mouse click. These searches cannot be refined. If you click "autographed cards" you will get all autographed cards. If you click "hall of famers" you get all hall of famers in our database. You can't search for hall of famers from 1990 Topps for example. The criteria on the right side of the page have no influence on Quick Searches on the left side. v Resetting Search Criteria: If you run a search, for example, 1997 Pacific, then while viewing the search results you click the "back" button on your browser, then you run a search for "Emmitt Smith", you will actually be searching for 1997 Pacific Emmitt Smith cards only. Clicking "back" on your browser does not clear previously-used search criteria and can result in a lot of missed cards in your searching. Always click on "Home" to return to the main page. This will clear all search criteria and let you start over. v Year: The year truncates to the right. In other words, if you enter "2" you will get all cards from year 2000 on (e.g. 2000, 2001, 2002, etc.). If you enter "198" you will get all cards from the 1980s. v Player: You can enter player names by first name then last name without any punctuation. Or, you can enter last name then first name but there must be a comma after the last name. Either of these works: Emmitt Smith Smith, Emmitt This does not work: Smith Emmitt You need the comma to use last name, first name. You do not need to use upper case letters. The database does not distinguish. If a player has
a rather unique first name or last name, you can search with only one
name. For example, "Emmitt"
will retrieve mostly just Emmitt Smith. However, if we have any cards of Emmitt Thomas, who had a few cards in the 1970s, it would
also retrieve those. Just entering
"Smith" however would retrieve cards for anyone with the last name of Smith as
well as names such as Highsmith, v
Brand:
Not quite all brands are listed here but we're close. There are just a few brands that are not
listed the way Beckett lists them. For
example, if you need v
Team:
There is not much to say about this field except to remind you
that since only NFL teams are listed in this dropdown, there are a small number
of cards in our database that will not show up under any NFL team. Examples are USFL or XFL cards and
checklists. v
Colleges:
We have only listed colleges that we have a fairly good
selection of players from. If you don't
see your college listed that doesn't mean we don't have your college. Please ask if you don't see your favorite
college. We can send you a list of what
we had the last time we downloaded the database, and you can search for the
players on that list by player name. v Limiting Size of Query Reports: At the very bottom you will see Cards 25¢ and up New Cards - 30 days The reason for these selections is to give you the ability to limit the number of hits you get in a search. You probably won't want to change from the default setting, "All Cards - All $'s" when you are running a search for a certain player. However, if you are searching for a particular NFL team or cards of players from a certain college, you may get thousands of hits. This can take a lot of time with a dialup modem and it will give you a lot of cards to look through. If you are only interested in star cards from that team or college you should click on "Cards 25¢ and up". If you want to go back later and check out the commons and minor stars that you missed in your search, click on "Cards Under 25¢". Between the two you will get all of the hits that you would get on the default setting, "All Cards - All $'s". The last choice,
"Cards last 30 days" is especially useful for serious collectors who purchase
all of the cards we have that they need but want to check back periodically to
see what new material we have purchased.
We add new cards every month right around the first of the
month. As an example, if you collect all cards of players out of Virginia
Tech, then of course you can display all of what we have by clicking "Virg Tech" on the "Colleges" dropdown. If you check back each month right
around the first of the month and click on "Virg
Tech" and "Cards last 30 days" you will see only cards of Virginia Tech alumni
that we have purchased in the last 30 days.
Of course this will also work if you collect certain players, or a
certain team. Just set up your query then click on "Cards last 30 days". Please note that only one of the four choices at the bottom can be made at one time. For example you can't check "New Cards - 30 days" AND "Cards 25¢ and up". v Search Questions: If you are having problems please feel free to e-mail us with questions. Perhaps we can help you set up your search to get the results you are after. |