Swap.Minifiguresseries.com

ChanMcL

Hi there. Im wondering does anybody use this website to swap their mini fig series? It seems to be a legit site but not sure the overall use of it. I found this one on Google recently and it looks quite interesting, although, you need to register first.

http://swap.minifiguresseries.com/

samiam391

That looks pretty legit. I wonder if they would do it for Star Wars minifigures as I have a lot I want to trade/sell right now.

Neat idea. I almost want to join even though I only have a grand total of 2 series figures!

ChanMcL

^are you UK based? if so, mind sending me your list?

I was looking at trading for SW figs before on different websites too, but I cant get it to work!

Too bad that I only found 1 person to have 1 wanted from my list and she has 1 that I wanted.

LegobrandonCP

The site looks really professional and legit, but the people on the site might not be.

samiam391

^^No I'm not, but I'd be willing to ship to the UK. If that's ok with you, then let's go ahead and take this to PM to try and work out some deals.

^This is true. May be a bunch of young kids spamming the pages trying to find the 1 figure they need. Also sounds a lot like CL, with a high potential for deals to go sour.

ChanMcL

^Well, we can have a disscussion about trading, and see what happens next as the postage are very expensive by Royal Mail i UK

samiam391

^Sounds fine to me.

Back to the main topic, the best spot I've found for SW minifigure trading is, funnily enough, on eBay.

timinchicago

I cannot get the FAQ's to work, plus capitalization errors. Not super professional looking site.

LegobrandonCP

^ You make a good point. Here is the FAQ for you:

Q.What can i do on this site?
A.On this site you can exchange, swap Lego minifigures series with other Lego minifigures fans in your country.
Q.How does it work?
A.Select the minifigures you have to swap then select the minifigures you need, Select from the swap matches the persons with who you would like to swap with. Wait for the approval. Share your address details. Send the minfigure and wait for the mail to receive your minifigure.
Q.How can i trust someone?
A.Before you do a swap request you can check the persons swap statistics. Check for swap score and accepted swap requests, Also send the person a message before sending something. If the other person has 0 swap score then let him send out first.

ChanMcL

I can't see many people who are in UK are willing to trade on eBay. Any ideas? UK only.

@timinchicago I'm not sure, I will see how the first trade goes. I don't know. How well it will go.

samiam391

@chanboy- It's all about asking. I'm probably just a bit lucky in finding people to trade with, because I have a few friends on eBay that I consistently trade with. It's all about finding the right people and then building a trade partnership with them.

Yes, this doesn't look to good a site as far as professionalism.. "Before you do a swap request you can check the persons swap statistics. Check for swap score and accepted swap requests, Also send the person a message before sending something. If the other person has 0 swap score then let him send out first."
"Select the minifigures you have to swap then select the minifigures you need, Select from the swap matches the persons with who you would like to swap with. Wait for the approval. Share your address details. Send the minfigure and wait for the mail to receive your minifigure."
Sounds like an easy way to scam people in my opinion...

UKtsumi

You can only see the "swaps" that match yours, you dont get to see other peoples collections. You cant message them untill you accept a swap , and it doesnt send you emails so you have to keep checking the site. Its a great idea but is clumsy to use, I think its just relatively new and needs a bit of tweeking . I messaged them on the contact us page and someone got back to me quite quick. Haven't swapped anything just yet as its taking ages messaging backwards and forwards.

Chooch

Looks like the Swap site is the brainchild of this site:
http://www.minifiguresseries.com/

Which is registered to:
Registrant:
Wido H
west
Allmellow, OV 1616AA
Netherlands

Registered through: Cheap-DomainRegistration.com
Domain Name: MINIFIGURESSERIES.COM
Created on: 17-Feb-12
Expires on: 17-Feb-13
Last Updated on: 17-Feb-12

Administrative Contact:
H, Wido [email protected]
west
Allmellow, OV 1616AA
Netherlands
3-165-474-0033

Technical Contact:
H, Wido [email protected]
west
Allmellow, OV 1616AA
Netherlands
3-165-474-0033

And based on the main website, Wido is listed as the owner. I think the lack of good grammar may be due to the language conversion/barrier. I'm gonna sign up and see how it goes....

Yellowcastle

If I'm not mistaken, there's a user here with the userid of @minifiguresseries ...

ChanMcL

^Nice found. Hope see if it is the right person or not.

@UKtsumi wondering what did you ask them about? And I think the message email goes into your Junk box at first until you marked it as safe and it will go into your Inbox. (I use hotmail and not sure other clients)

Im still waiting for a reply to swap one of my spare figs for others, I have sent a request in.

UKtsumi

@chanboy messages from the creators get sent to me, but internal messages get kept on the site. You have to log in and check your messages on the site. Thanks for the tip on my " junk " box, I'll remember that for future reference. ;p

CCC

Strange that The Netherlands is not one of the allowed countries.

CCC

I tried registering - got loads of script errors, and cannot login, even though they emailed me with my password - in plain text fully readable.

That said, I know of a site which is pretty good for arranging swaps. Here.

ChanMcL

@CCC, it is great on here as it is international too, unlike the swap minifigureseries website. But just looking for only mini fig collectors, I think that website has it's advantage because you only put in what you have and what you want and done.

ChanMcL

Well, this is silly, I accidentally pressed "Successful" for a swap, then I can't do anything else to recover that swap back. I couldnt find my swapper's address now.

Sherlockbones

So I live in the UK, and I cannot join in with this website?

ChanMcL

^Im not sure why that happens.

minifiguresseries

Hi guys my name is Max and I am the Site admin of swap.minifiguresseries.com site.
We suddenly saw a lot of traffic coming from this forum. Which is awesome!! We read all your comments.

A little background story.
Last year we started with a trade site in dutch because we had a lot of duplicate minifigures and nobody in our neighborhood to swap / trade with. the dutch site is http://www.minifiguren.net as the site got and has a lot of active swappers. We started to think to take the site international. We hired a very good graphic designer. Added the scripts and see what happened.
The site is now 10 days online and we are still in "beta" see if the databases are holding. See if people are interested. We are working to correct the spelling. Thanks for mention this to us again. Our development team used google translate to translate the dutch to English. We hired an English native person to rewrite all the text to proper English.
The video on top needs to be redone to explain the user how the site works. But we are a little shy to make the video correctly.

So How it works.
You tell the system what you have.
You tell the system what you need.
System tells you with who you can swap with
You select the persons with who you want to swap with.
Person receives email. Accepts / Denies the requests.
After request is accepted. Shares his address details.
You see in the my swap page "swap in progress" with a message enter address details.

A good tip to see if swap is still ok. Send a message first. The messages stay within the system. In an older version we shared email addresses. As we wanted to protect the users email address. We solved it via this functionality.

Above each swap possibility there are user statistics.
Days after last login. The lesser days the more active the user is.
Amount of incoming requests.
Amount acceptances and denials
Amount of still to process (if this is > 3 then the person is not processing the incoming swap requests)
Swap score (every succesful swap gives you 10 points)
Swap % successful vs unsuccessful swaps if this is below 50% then the half of the swaps where indicated by the other person as unsuccessful

We received some feedback the last days. And we will create a desired function list.
1. Have an inbox option.
2. Show history of swaps (so if you hit successfull, unsuccesfull you still can see the old details)
3. See total collection per user
4. Possibility to send user a message even before you requested a swap.
5. Show new added minifigures.
6. Be able to add more categories to swap with.

The problem is that programming costs $$
We have a monthly budget and we will prioritize the new functionality based upon incoming requests.

So is the site legit. Yes we try to supply you with a good functional platform to swap your minifigures with. And maybe one day we win a prize and become famous ;-)

if you have questions you can post them on our facebook/twitter page. (they are located at the footer of the site).
Here we will share ideas and inform you about new functionalities.
(in the coming days the twitter and facebook buttons will be put in the middel)

So hopefully i was able to clear things up.

ChanMcL

^Im just wondering, I accidentally clicked "Successful" for a trade but I didnt enter my details etc, anyway I can go back and do it again?

I still remember the other person's name etc

Thanks


Good to see that it is a legit site and confirmed, too bad that the website is on a budget and hoping to see new functions added to it soon!

CCC

I've had a go - a few familiar names have popped up!

minifiguresseries

btw thanks for pointing to the whois. It looks terrible. We adjust

minifiguresseries

Hi chanboy. what was the swap about? your ... for the other persons .... ?
We can put the swap back in your swap in progress list.

ChanMcL

I will PM u. Thanks.!

ChanMcL

To add priority to your function list, I think most important is the
"4. Possibility to send user a message even before you requested a swap."

So that you can discuss between each other for other figs too, if both are happy. Like on here.

minifiguresseries

Its noted.

UKtsumi

Every time you hit the home button you get taken back to the login page.

minifiguresseries

Yes the landing page.
I guess you want it to land at the dashboard right?

UKtsumi

please.

ChanMcL

Perhaps a "keep you logged in" function?

CCC

It would also be good to set a minimum number of swaps per trade. For me, it is not worth swapping unless you can do at least three tardes in a deal, so it would be good to convey that information somehow. I know it can be done in messages once you agree to a trade, but perhaps if another swapper can know this before asking for a trade.

CCC

I think it would also be easier if for each match, you just got what the swapper wants from you, and what you want from them. If you have six things they want, and they have four things you want you could just get a list:

XXX from XXX has A,B,C,D.
XXX wants E,F,G,H,I,J.

At the moment you are presented with 6x4 so 24 possible swaps.

ChanMcL

To be honest, I think this is a great system, it just basically a bit poor now as it is new, so maybe if we all starting to use it and feedback to @minifiguresseries to improve the website more and maybe advertise it to other people and this will be a perfect system for all the mini fig collectors!

IronMan

I think the idea is great, and hopefully with some time it can become an all minifigure swapping site rather than just CM's. Seeing as the "minifig craze" is full bloom a website like this has a great chance at becoming something that A LOT of LEGO lovers will use!

CCC

It would also be good to highlight messages when they arrive. Currently you have to check each trade to see if there is a message.

CCC

Arrrgh. It would be good to see successful swaps. I just clicked it by mistake, and it has gone. No record of it now.

ChanMcL

^I did that too, Just ask @minifiguresseries to reset it.

CCC

I think the data base is wrong too.

If I want a horse rider, it suggests swaps to get a judo woman.

ChanMcL

^I think the TEAM GB database is wrong, where the image is different to the name, I have asked minifiguresseries to fix that problem.

cynthilina

Im still having problems logging in, Any advice on this one?

Brick_Obsession

I believe this site was started with the best intentions, but it needs a lot of work. I just signed up in Canada and put all my information in the system. I am seeing no data what so ever of any other users in the system period. There are numerous spelling mistakes. In my opinion, when trying to run a legitimate site or business for that matter, things like that should be paramount.

I do hope with the feed back that people are providing that the site will grow into the potential it can be. For the time being, I would say this is months away. Working on the fly and doing patchwork just rushes things and attention to detail gets missed.

If this site does run without errors in the future, it would be good to branch out into the other line of mini-figs.

Just my thoughts...

minifiguresseries

Hi Brick Obsession
we appreciate your concerns.
Did you read our first post? It will answer a good amount of your questions.

There are only 2 registrations from canadian users so far. Its normal with this amount of registrations that there is a change that there are no swap possibilities.
Leave your needs and haves as they are. Every day new people register. So the changes increase that you would get swap matches and swap requests.

Can you indicate via PM which errors you are getting?
We will not patch things up. The dutch site is where new functionality will be tested first before we put it on the international swap site.

The goal of the site is to swap 1 minifigure for 1 other minifigure with 1 person.
Keep it simple. We see now that there is advanced swap functionality required for the hardcore trader ;-). We are processing all requests and will add them over time.

List at the moment
1. fix spelling (work in progress)
2. Add facebook and twitter buttons to the top.
3. Be able to revert successful or unsuccessful clicks
4. Be able to send message to other person before swap request
5. New advanced swap design. show per user entire collection that you can swap with.


Kind regards
Max

CCC

I would also say add some affiliate links, so you can make a bit of money to help fund at least hosting costs, if not development costs just yet.

cynthilina

no one to swap with in the US??

ChanMcL

Maybe ones you have that no one wants, or no one has what you want.

minifiguresseries

Hi cynthilina.
There are also US users. Probably they dont have what you are looking for. Just hang in there. Daily new users register and for sure you will get swap requests.

minifiguresseries

He CCC
Yes but we are looking for something cool to add. An affiliate link to amazon or shop.lego.com is boring. Or lets say sell minifigures probably first a donate button or so. Google adsense is maybe an option. We are open for any ideas.