VAPS For Sale Question

Ghostlyguy

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I go onto a VAPS page for a game. For example, I'll use Space Zap. It lists:

Very Common - There are 78 known instances of this machine owned by Space Zap collectors who are active members. Of these, 75 of them are original dedicated machines, and 3 of them are only circuit boards which a collector could put into a generic case if desired.

For Sale - There are 4 active VAPS members with Space Zap machines for sale.

Wanted - Popular - There are 13 active VAPS members currently looking for Space Zap. There is one active VAPS member looking for a Space Zap circuit board set.

When I click on the list of members who own the game:

Active members own 53 of these games

2 are for sale, from active members.

(25 additional games are owned by inactive members.)

So, in this example. There are 2 machines I can view from active members. Then there are 2 machines for sale from inactive members hidden from view. As far as I understand, there is no way of viewing nor contacting them about it? VAPS doesn't even list the inactive members. :-/

I remember in the past being able to contact inactive members via email (maybe back in 2012-13), who have games listed as For Sale.

Am I mis-remembering this, or was this feature changed? :confused:
 
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Oh come on... no one remembers something from 7+ years ago? :rolleyes: :D

Guess I'm just a raving lunatic.
 
Is it possible that what you're seeing (or not seeing, in this case) is just due to the member's personal settings, set such that they don't want to be visible and/or contacted? I seem to remember something like that as an option.

Maybe randomly pick another game or two and see if the results are always the same?

(And, I just didn't want you talking to yourself, so there's that)

EDIT: nevermind, I don't see any option in my VAPS Bio that says "hide me"...just "not open to visitors" and "hide my city".
I do see the same thing you are seeing for Space Zap...4 members have it for sale, but the member's list only shows 2 For Sales. No idea.
 
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Is it possible that what you're seeing (or not seeing, in this case) is just due to the member's personal settings, set such that they don't want to be visible and/or contacted? I seem to remember something like that as an option.

I believe you are right about that option being a thing. However, this is more of a ommiting un-active memebers from the list. It appears you can still send emails to active members.

Out of curiosity, do you mind if I send you a email through the VAPS contact page/link just to see if it even still functions?

Maybe randomly pick another game or two and see if the results are always the same?

It appears this happens with every game. I just checked Hydro Thunder.

121 members own the game. 57 visible 'active', 64 invisible 'inactive'. :confused:

(And, I just didn't want you talking to yourself, so there's that)
I appreciate that. :D
 
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I made an edit to my post above also, I don't see an option that would create the scenario you are seing.

Sure, go ahead and send me an email. I'll let you know if it works.
 
Email received...I forwarded it back so you can see how it was formatted.
 
and did you notice the info on the 2 sellers says that they last updated their vaps in 1969.

I see that a lot. What's up with that?
 
Oh come on... no one remembers something from 7+ years ago? :rolleyes: :D

Guess I'm just a raving lunatic.

No, you aren't. :)

I have had some questions regarding VAPS myself but never really asked...it always seemed VAPS was an afterthought to many on the boards. So, thanks for being the "brave one!"

Yeah, the 1969 thing is weird...I always just thought it was a placeholder.

For what its worth, I keep my VAPS up-to-date and try to verify it (even if I have had no new purchases/sales) every few months...which reminds me...
 
and did you notice the info on the 2 sellers says that they last updated their vaps in 1969.

I see that a lot. What's up with that?

Yeah... there are some really strange hiccups with this site.

There are some other strange things I've seen on this site... I remember once seeing 500-1700+ (viewing) the sub forums. Which frankly seems uncanny. Not sure if that is a simulated test load or a error. But it happens sometimes.

1969 could be some sort of default value it goes to when it is missing info. :dontknow:
Edit: Sumer beat me to it. :)
 
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No, you aren't. :)

I have had some questions regarding VAPS myself but never really asked...it always seemed VAPS was an afterthought to many on the boards. So, thanks for being the "brave one!"

Yeah, the 1969 thing is weird...I always just thought it was a placeholder.

For what its worth, I keep my VAPS up-to-date and try to verify it (even if I have had no new purchases/sales) every few months...which reminds me...

I like keeping mine up to date. Not sure why people don't want to do this. I recently picked up an Attack From Mars Remake LE and wasn't able to update my list to reflect that. Only the original machine from 1995 comes up.
 
As we rebuild the whole site, VAPS will get a redo also.

Yes, there is some inconsistent data. It's almost all due to old if not ancient records. Twenty years ago, VAPS required you to confirm your entries every 6 month or it deleted your record. Over time, this pushed back to something like 3 years. But it still deleted your record.

At some point we decided that we would make a record go inactive after 2 or 3 years, and then maybe get deleted after something like 5. I don't know if we still delete at all or not.

The basic concept was that it was more likely that either the person still had the game, or at least sold it to someone else who wasn't on vaps, rather than it being a duplicate (like the game was sold to another VAPS member). I started noticing that a lot of rare games would end up with 0 entries on VAPS when it used to have 1 or 3. So it was worth staying that the games really existed in the wild, rather than that they didn't.

It's been so long that a lot of the inactive entries are tied to invalid emails. At some point we started encouraging people to put in secondary email address, and although it allows phone numbers, we will start encouraging people to put in valid cel numbers so that they can be texted rescue codes too (All the time we get people writing that they want to get back into an old account but that they don't have access to the email address any more. It sucks our time and we don't frankly have the resources to help every one of these manually).

But I digress. When the site was built, there was no such thing as inactive VAPS entries and then existed and its changed a few times. So yes, different parts of the site may provide different VAPS info.

As far as 1969 dates. It's because someone hasn't updated VAPS in a very long time-- before we started saving updated dates.

In unix, time of '0' = 1/1/1970. I don't know why it reads 1969 instead, but I guess it is because the site runs in Pacific time which is 8 hours off and somehow I'm turning midnight 1/1/1970 back 8 hours in one of the functions.

Greg
 
I feel personally attacked here, as I talk to myself more than I talk to other people.

There's nothing wrong with that...but if you start telling yourself jokes and laugh like you've never heard it before, then I'd start to worry. :)
 
It's been so long that a lot of the inactive entries are tied to invalid emails.


A lot, but not all. You'd be surprised how many people keep the same email for years. I recommend listing the person and their details, but marking them as inactive. Even if the email is bad, it's helpful to know clues about where a rare game is located.

For instance I just picked up a US Billiards upright. There was a cocktail listed before, but now all details about it are hidden by being inactive. I really wish I could contact that owner and see if they have a set of schematics.
 
I havent updated mine in a couple years. I just kind of felt like nobody looked at people's collection on there. And I think everybody just utilizes the trading post sup forum to buy and sell instead of the vaps
 
There's nothing wrong with that...but if you start telling yourself jokes and laugh like you've never heard it before, then I'd start to worry. :)

You might want to start worrying, then.

To be fair, though... when that happens, they are usually(like, 99.9% of the time) jokes that I made up on the spot... so I legitimately didn't hear them before.
 
mclemore said:
As far as 1969 dates. It's because someone hasn't updated VAPS in a very long time-- before we started saving updated dates.

In unix, time of '0' = 1/1/1970. I don't know why it reads 1969 instead, but I guess it is because the site runs in Pacific time which is 8 hours off and somehow I'm turning midnight 1/1/1970 back 8 hours in one of the functions.

Greg

I doubt it's anything you are doing. Unix epoch is 1/1/1970 GMT. It reads 1969 due to exactly what you say. It's the local time offset.
 
As we work on the main site, one of the things we will be doing is finally getting out an occasionally newsletter. One of the benefits of that is that we will have better data on what email accounts are still active or not, etc... and we will revisit how to handle inactive (aka ancient) records in general...
 
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