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Collector Bgh private msg quote post Address this user
Is there a way of looking up a Cbcs slabed book to see how many of that book are graded at that grade? Or how many have been graded period?
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Collector Scorpion private msg quote post Address this user
Census, what's that, lol #SOON
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Collector Bgh private msg quote post Address this user
Lol I can't spell. That's cool and thanks for the fast reply!
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Collector ThorneArt private msg quote post Address this user
Here is a thought...
If they lost the graders notes, I would assume they lost the serial numbers connected to those notes also? And if they lost the serial numbers, would they even be able to create an accurate census?

I hope they are able to recover that data somehow.
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past performance is no guarantee of future actions. KatKomics private msg quote post Address this user
Quote:
Originally Posted by Scorpion
Census, what's that, lol #SOON


census or magazine slabs...which will come first??? #soon
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Beaten by boat oars Studley_Dudley private msg quote post Address this user
I'd put money on the census ahead of the magazine slabs.
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past performance is no guarantee of future actions. KatKomics private msg quote post Address this user
@Studley_Dudley got it...census = snowballs chance in heck....magazine slabs = when heck freezes over!!
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Beaten by boat oars Studley_Dudley private msg quote post Address this user
Most likely. CBCS has issues at the moment. Literally and figuratively. I thought the magazine slabs were addressed as cost prohibitive at this point. I don't know the reasoning behind the lack of census yet. To me, the census isn't as important but I know others feel differently.
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COLLECTOR dielinfinite private msg quote post Address this user
Honestly, since all the grader’s notes are freely available as long as you know, or can find, the invoice numbers, if there is a savvy web developer among us, it might be possible to create an application that crawls, extracts and compiles the relevant data from the https://www.cbcscomics.com/grading-notes/ domain and create an unofficial census.
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Collector bythegram private msg quote post Address this user
@dielinfinite You got me thinking, assuming that they likely use some sort of API to fetch comic details I did some digging and found two endpoints that could be a start:

https://api.cbcscomics.com/api/comics/featured/201810/3
https://api.cbcscomics.com/api/comics/search/18-3E5A3E4-011

I've discovered that the featured endpoint accepts any count which we could then use to get a larger set of data (and of course we could change the date)
https://api.cbcscomics.com/api/comics/featured/201710/999

It would be a lot of work but not impossible to write a script to just go month by month to collect all of the "Featured" comics. As far as the comic IDs I noticed that the last three digits are relative to the invoice:

https://api.cbcscomics.com/api/comics/search/18-3E5A3E4-001

So again one could get all comics that are from the same invoice to any "Featured" comic.

Could be a fun little side project, maybe I'll give it a try over the holidays. If anyone at CBCS wants to make my life easier by providing actual API documentation or even better a Swagger url that would be fantastic.
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Collector RyanHicks private msg quote post Address this user
@dielinfinite @bythegram The main problem is that the CBCS invoice ID's are for the most part, random; they aren't synchronous numbers so it would be impossible (well, impossible in an efficient enough way) to write a app to collect the data without manually inputting invoice ID's.

18 - 3E5A3E4 - 001
(year - random ID - comic on the invoice)

If the invoice ID's weren't random then it would not only be possible, but would be super easy to do via the API urls that @bythegram mentioned

Also, @bythegram, the "featured" API is only for the featured comics that CBCS puts in their gallery so that would likely be of no help in attempting to generate a 3rd party census
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Collector bythegram private msg quote post Address this user
I’ll have a proof of concept by Monday. Obviously it would be easier with the support of CBCS and proper access to their full API but I’ll build something with what I can find.

Any suggestions for what a census should include would be appreciated. Also feel free to PM me if you have any ideas/suggestions.
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Collector Wraith private msg quote post Address this user
Quote:
Originally Posted by ThorneArt
Here is a thought...
If they lost the graders notes, I would assume they lost the serial numbers connected to those notes also? And if they lost the serial numbers, would they even be able to create an accurate census?

I hope they are able to recover that data somehow.
exactly my thoughts. That ship may have sailed
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Collector RyanHicks private msg quote post Address this user
Quote:
Originally Posted by Wraith
Quote:
Originally Posted by ThorneArt
Here is a thought...
If they lost the graders notes, I would assume they lost the serial numbers connected to those notes also? And if they lost the serial numbers, would they even be able to create an accurate census?

I hope they are able to recover that data somehow.
exactly my thoughts. That ship may have sailed


My understanding is the amount of data they lost was very minimal and was from a long time ago (not that age makes a difference here). The amount loss would be no different in accuracy than CGC's census with all the slabs that have been cracked and resubmitted. Census's aren't accurate to the number, they just give a good idea of whats out there
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COLLECTOR dielinfinite private msg quote post Address this user
Quote:
Originally Posted by bythegram
I’ll have a proof of concept by Monday. Obviously it would be easier with the support of CBCS and proper access to their full API but I’ll build something with what I can find.

Any suggestions for what a census should include would be appreciated. Also feel free to PM me if you have any ideas/suggestions.


Awesome! I think you should target the basic data to start: Series, Issue #, Date, Variant Name, Label Type, Grade, and Restoration (Y/N)

One minor pitfall I foresee is that I don’t think CBCS uses unique series names so all the ASM #1s are differentiated by their date. It’s not really an issue until it comes to reprints which wouldn’t be released at the same time as the book they’re associated with.

As a signature collector, a wishlist/next iteration item I’d love would be to see who has signed ASP/VSP books
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Collector bythegram private msg quote post Address this user
@RyanHicks you are correct about the invoices being random, I don’t intend to try to brute force those. My plan is simply to start with all the featured comics (which ended up being close to 1300) and then use their invoice numbers to find any siblings. If I can get closer to 5k worth of data I think it will be a nice sample at least. Again just as a proof of concept.

I did have something ready to share yesterday but there was one feature holding me up. I hope to finish it next weekend (stupid job getting in the way of comics again! Lol)

Any way, I’d still love to hear more feature requests and of course I’d love to hear from anyone at CBCS regarding a proper API.

Cheers!
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COLLECTOR dielinfinite private msg quote post Address this user
@bythegram Awesome!

I don’t know if it helps at all but a Google Advance Search on the Grading Notes domain does return a few random books that you can add to your index
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Collector RyanHicks private msg quote post Address this user
Quote:
Originally Posted by bythegram
@RyanHicks you are correct about the invoices being random, I don’t intend to try to brute force those. My plan is simply to start with all the featured comics (which ended up being close to 1300) and then use their invoice numbers to find any siblings. If I can get closer to 5k worth of data I think it will be a nice sample at least. Again just as a proof of concept.


@bythegram I totally appreciate what you are trying to do and maybe as a "proof of concept" in terms of a user interface it will be helpful, however the amount of data you could obtain from the featured comics or one-off invoice numbers would be such an extremely tiny fraction of the CBCS graded books out there in the wild. You referenced possibly having 5k worth of data...Collectors Choice Comics has submitted more than 5k books on our accounts alone. CBCS has probably graded multiple hundreds of thousands of books over the past 4+ years so in terms of what people would actually want/need a Census for, that amount of data would be pretty much useless.

I want to clarify that i'm just trying to be honest about the situation, not trying to be a jerk (I know my paragraph above sounds jerky) cause I think its awesome that people like you are trying to figure out a way to get the census out when CBCS isn't really showing any movement on it. But as a developer myself and someone who has been pushing hard for the Census and/or registry for many years (See the threads "Census and/or Registry Updates Part 1, 2 & 3" lol), I know that what we need cannot be done without the full data set directly from CBCS.
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Collector bythegram private msg quote post Address this user
@RyanHicks I totally get it, and yes I was really just aiming for a UI POC so that maybe we can show CBCS the potential (ideally so that someone who is getting paid can work on it).

My goal was just to get a sample size of data, save it somewhere so that I can query by: title, issue, variant etc

Maybe it is one of those "if you build it, they will come" situations with CBCS and getting access to their data. But I won't bet on it.

Worst case I spent a few hours building something new for me and growing my tool belt (I am more of a front end guy so this has been a good learning experience for nodejs and firebase)
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