Phonecard Catalog Exceeds HALF A MILLION Phone Cards - The World's Biggest

As some of you may already know, Phonecards was the very first category on Colnect. It is the founding corner stone of our community. All other categories on Colnect have originated following the first footsteps made by the Phonecards category, community and most of all - coordinators, editors and contributors.

"A Sua Melhor Companhia No Vital" Brazilian Phonecard, newly added on Colnect

It is incredible to see how far it has gone since! Colnect now is very proud to announce that the Phonecards catalog now displays 500,005 phonecards, surpassing half a million cards.

"Jap. Writing" Japanese Phonecard, newly added on Colnect

"Igreja De Pedras - Vigia - PA - P5978" Brazilian Phonecard, newly added on Colnect

How was it done? It was done by the ceaseless quest of so many collectors to add more items, more information, make it more accurate and in general - make the Colnect Phonecards Great. It a long journey that aims for perfection. In the last 30 days alone, 2,701 Phonecards from 50 countries were added to the catalog.

"Goldcard" Japanese Phonecard, newly added on Colnect

And therefore we have to give credit, as we can, to the numerous wonderful collectors who have made it happen and are continuing to make it happen every day. Coordinators that manage the catalogs, keeping a keen eye for detail, country Editors that diversify, clean and correct the catalogs, Contributors that add new information and images every day.

"Jap. Writing" Japanese Phonecard, newly added on Colnect

The current Phonecards category coordinator is no other than the amazing Ignacio F López Vico [iflvico], Colnect's community manager and one of the original core team on Colnect. He has coordinated this category before as well, but there were more coordinators along the way who have helped bring the category to where it is today - Yury Yelensky [Landerstorm], Carlos Rodriguez, [venezuelanphonecards], Vadym Sulimenko [Dravec] and Trudy Hoogenboom [trudyh]. Important to note also Karl Heinz Degener [neizi], Hernan Bofill [hbofill12], Sombat Tamtirapong [kung1951], Graeme Kilpatrick [nzexchange] and Jorge Pablo Villegas [Jorgepablo2005].

"Jap. Writing" Japanese Phonecard, newly added on Colnect

It is not possible to properly thank the many many collectors who have each added to this accomplishment in a great way. As you see on the editors and contributors lists, they are too many to mention. Each of them taking much care in their treatment of the catalog, each responsible for different part of the catalog, sometimes even creating a whole section from scratch. Thank you all, for bringing all this beauty into the world's view.

"Jap. Writing" Japanese Phonecard, newly added on Colnect

Thank you very much to each and every one of you, for making the catalog beautiful for the hundreds of thousands visiting it every month from around the world.

"Paris s'eveille L'Arc de Triomphe" French Phonecard, newly added on Colnect

Want to join the Phonecards category team? Have Phonecards you would like to see on the Colnect catalog? Read more on our Catalog Contribution Guidelines help page and get started!

Medal Catalog Surpasses 10,001 Medals

The Medals category has been long discussed and much anticipated before it was finally created in March 2013. Medals, items that are made only for the most special and selected occasions, are precious and rare. Creating a catalog of them, much like the collection of medals, is more like a treasure hunt than regular cataloging.

"Medal Fire for Courage" Bulgaria 1950-1975, from the Colnect catalog

That is why Colnect is extremely proud to announce that the Medals catalog is now displaying over 10,001 Medals! Not only that, but the catalog has a perfect shiny 100% of items with beautiful quality images and completed with usage, composition and Colnect catalog codes. Despite the challenges the creation of a Medals category presents, the coordinators, editors and contributors of the category insisted adding as much information as possible in the best way possible.

"Medal of Motherhood" silver Albania 1950-1990, from the Colnect catalog

We would wholeheartedly like to thank all those have brought this category to light. Thank you to the category coordinator, Hernan Bofill [hbofill12], for his leadership and for the meticulous and relentless work to bring this category to perfection. Special thank you is owed to top talent collaborators Petyo Shopov [PShopov], milanovt600 as well as to hashtablakoo2000 for the creation of the Iranian section. To all the Editors and Contributors, without whom this catalog will not be possible and to all those who supported this category from the very beginning. The catalog itself is a Medal reflecting your amazing efforts :)

"Commemorative Medal to visit the Manchu emperor in Japan 1935" China, Dynastic Empires, from the Colnect catalog 

"Ordre de la Centreafricaine Reconocimiento, Chevalier" Central African Republic 1962, from the Colnect catalog 

You can follow the whole discussion that brought about the category into being, including the deliberation of what form the catalog should take, on the Medals category forum thread on the New Categories forum. Interested in creating a new collectible category yourself on Colnect? Go to the More Collectibles? page for more information.

"Order of the Zähringen Lion With Oak Leaves Commander" German Empire 1812-1918, from the Colnect catalog

Would you like to join the Colnect Medals team? Want to add more Medals to the catalogs or some other collectible? Read more on how to become a Colnect contributor on the Catalog Contribution Guidelines help page.

"Medal In Memory of Nicholas I for university" Russia 1896, from the Colnect catalog 

50,005 Banknotes on Colnect

Just as a banknote is thin in size but has value much beyond its measure in weight, the Banknotes category may not be the largest on Colnect in quantity, but its meaning and worth are way beyond its number of items. Each banknote added to the catalog is a substantial addition to the catalog.

New 2014 banknote, 500 Francs from the French Pacific Territories

With that said, thanks to the beautiful work of the Banknotes coordinator on Colnect, Vidami Istvan [mozistv], and the categories editors and contributors, the Banknotes catalog has reached the impressive milestone of 50,005 Banknotes listed on our Colnect catalog.

New 2014 banknote, 1000 Francs from the French Pacific Territories

The catalog has grown and so has its diversity. Banknotes is not the oldest collectible item type, but still we have the oldest banknote on Colnect, a 300 cash Ming Dynasty Chinese note from the year 1368. You can do also a nice leap of over half a millennium forward in time and see the beautiful modern banknotes of 2014.

The oldest banknote on Colnect, 1368 300 Cash Ming Dynasty Chinese note

Around 400 new banknotes are added to the catalog every month. You can see the new notes to join the catalog here. Have banknotes that are still not on the catalog? Would like to help the category grow? Learn how to become a contributor on Colnect on our Catalog Contribution Guidelines page.

New 2014 banknote, 1 Disney Dollar, a fantasy issue from the USA

The category coordinator is dedicating efforts to make the catalog not only as large as possible, but complete with all accurate information, including beautiful pictures. What is a good catalog without good quality pictures? Right now we are looking for collectors willing to help adding pictures to banknotes with a missing picture. There are 2,770 active Banknote Collectors on Colnect and the category needs your help!

New 2014 banknote, 3½ Polar Dollars, a fantasy issue from the Arctic Territories

Thank you to all who made this wonderful catalog possible and to all who will make it even better in the future.

70,707 Collectors Connecting on Colnect

Less than 2 months have flown by and lo and behold, Colnect is growing faster! More than 4004 collectors have joined our community since our last 66,666 milestone post and so we have developed into a community of 70,707 happily colnecting collectors :)

Not only the community has grown, but the catalogs as well. We've had a new Kids Meal Toys category and Milk Cup Lids category joining our ranks recently. We wish the new categories, with their coordinators, editors and contributors, the best of luck.

Newly added lid on the Milk Cup Lids catalog on Colnect

Each catalog has added many new items to its pages, with the great dedicated help of the wonderful Colnect coordinators, editors and contributors. It's worth to note especially the Stamps, Gift Cards, Medals, Paper Clips, Phonecards, Postcards, Sugar Packets, Trading Card Games and Tea Bags categories. Combined they have added more than 15,000 new items to the Colnect catalogs in the last month.

Newly added toy on the Kids Meal Toys catalog on Colnect

Colnect is not just a tool and catalogs, though. Most of all it's a social network of a great vibrant community. That community showed also it could really take a joke on the last 1st of April, when "Automatic Exchange" was introduced. Many more discussions have developed on the forums in the past weeks and you are welcome to join! Go see what's on our forums now.

Newly added Stamp on the Colnect Stamps catalog

Have collectibles you'd like to add to the Colnect catalogs? Read all about how to become a contributor on the Catalog Contribution help page.

Newly added card on the Colnect Gift Card catalog

We would like to welcome all the new collectors to join Colnect and thank our wonderful community that makes Colnect what it is every day.

Newly added card on the Trading Card Game catalog on Colnect

Kids Meal Toys - Fun and New on Colnect

We're excited to announce that the new Kids Meal Toys category is now available on Colnect.

"Chevrolet Corvette" McDonald's toy car from the "Hot Wheels" series, now on the Colnect catalog

Kids Meal Toys is a home for all Food Premium toys, all the surprising hidden passengers you would find when purchasing your food items. The catalog is open to include Fast Food toys, Morning Cereal toys and Kinder Egg Surprises.

"Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith" toy from "Burger King", soon on the new Colnect catalog

This category is such a great idea that we decided to go ahead with it even though currently it has no coordinator. We very much need a coordinator for this category! This category has a lot of potential with collectors worldwide collecting toys of different kinds. We already have resources for information and pictures for the catalog and we can get more. What we need now is the orchestration master :) If you are interested in coordinating this category or participating in any way or know anyone who might, please post on our forums or write to [Dana-Levitas].

The category was initiated by Steve Jones [SteveJ09], an enthusiastic collector on Colnect that made the efforts to make this category come to life. You can read the whole process of starting this category on the Kids Meal Toys thread on the New Categories forum.

"Bambi" fixed figure toy from "McDonalds", soon on the new Colnect catalog

The category still needs coordinators, editors and contributors to realize it's potential. Kids Meal Toys is a large and diverse collectible field. As such it needs your help to try to encompass as much as possible from what it has to offer. Want to help to add information to the catalog? Read here more on How to Help the Catalog Grow.

"2003 Lady Bug Girl" doll from the Madame Alexander series for McDonalds, soon on the Colnect catalog. 

Your collectible category is not yet on Colnect? Would like to create a new collectible catalog? Read more on how to add More Collectibles, take the reigns and make your suggestion on the New Category Forum.

Come take at the new Kids Meal Toys catalog, and let let us know what you think!

"NASCAR" McDonald's toy car on the "Hot Wheels" series, now on the new Colnect catalog

Milk Cup Lids - Now Joining the Colnect Catalogs

We're happy to announce that Colnect now displays a new Milk Cup Lids catalog.

"Nutroma" Belgium Milk Cup lid, on the new Colnect catalog

Milk Cup Lids are a delicate and lovely collectible. They are also appreciated for the beautiful and detailed prints displayed on them. Many collectors choose to collect those items by the themes of these prints.

"Frischli" German Milk Cup lid, on the new Colnect catalog

We would like to thank all those that helped this category get on it's feet for their efforts and dedication. We wish the new coordinator of the Milk Cup Lids category, Els Van Gastel [leeuwin], luck and success with this new catalog :)

"Nutroma" Belgium Milk Cup lid, on the new Colnect catalog.

The catalog it starting it's way with 1,255 Milk Cup Lids. We need your support and help to grow the catalog and hold more and more lids from different countries, companies and themes.

Would like to know how you can help? Interested in contributing information to the Milk Cup Lids category? Learn how to do it on the Catalog Contribution help page.

"Anaemone hepatica" Austria Milk Cup lid, on the new Colnect catalog

This category has started at the initiative of collectors on the forum. You can see the whole process and see how it came about on the Milk Cup Lids thread on the New Categories forum on Colnect.

"Frischli" German Milk Cup lid, on the new Colnect catalog

Your collectible category is not yet on Colnect? Would like to create a new collectible catalog? Read more on how to add More Collectibles, take the reigns and make your suggestion on the New Category Forum.

Come take a look at the new Milk Cup Lids catalog, and let us know what you think!

66,666 Collectors on Colnect

We at Colnect are happy to welcome more than 10,000 new collectors who have joined our global community since marking our previous milestone of 56789 collectors. Now we have reached the devilishly delightful number of 66,666 Collectors.

The community of collectors now compliments the group of contributors on Colnect, that not long ago reached it's own "sixy" milestone of 666 Contributors.

As always we have new categories joining Colnect as well. We welcome new collectors of these items to familiarize themselves with Colnect and check out the catalogs for Sports Cards and Paper Clips. Come see what other new categories are being suggested and built on Colnect on the New Categories forum.

Check out also new features recently added to Colnect such as the Item Condition and Quantity menus for Inventory Notes, Collectors Inventory Notes appearing on item lists, extending the Personal Custom lists and more additions you are welcome to explore on the Announcement forum.

Want to turn those sixes around into a nice and "niney" milestone? Join our world multi-lingual community of collectors of all kinds by Signing Up to Colnect it's quick, free and easy.

Colnect Welcomes the New Sports Cards Catalog

A much anticipated collectible category is making it's first steps on Colnect. The Sports Cards catalog is now publicly available on Colnect.

1990-91 Wayne Gretzky Score card, from the new Colnect Sports Cards catalog

1990-91 Wayne Gretzky Score card, backside, from the new Colnect Sports Cards catalog 

Sports Cards are a well-established, well-known and popular collectible worldwide and for good reason. Sports are a great device to bring people together both regionally and worldwide, through the admiration of the players, their effort and talent. Collecting is also such a uniting factor, bringing people together through their appreciation of the art and effort of building and maintaining a collection. Sports Cards, therefore, are a natural powerful union and we're glad to have them on Colnect.

2013 Matthew Boyd Select Australia card, from the new Colnect Sports Cards catalog

This category holds, at it's very beginning, 6,454 Sports Cards of 5 Sports, from Seasons raging from 1910 to 2013, from a variety of Brands and including cards with Special Features. With your help that number will grow quickly. Read more on how to make the catalog larger on our Contribution Guidelines.

2012-13 Cameron White SE Products card, from the new Colnect Sports Cards catalog

This category has started at the wonderful and welcome initiative of collectors on the Colnect Forums. You are welcome to read the whole process on the New Sports Cards Category forum thread.

1992 Joe Carter Donruss card, from the new Colnect Sports Cards catalog

The category will be co-coordinated by Dana Levitas [Dana-Levitas] and Graeme Kilpatrick [nzexchange]. Thank you to all those who helped us make this category come true. A special thank you is owed to [neweden], without whom the category would have never come alive.

1990-91 Gary Roberts Score card, from the new Colnect Sports Cards catalog

Your collectible category is not yet on Colnect? Would like to create a new collectible catalog? Read more on how to add More Collectibles, take the reigns and make your suggestion on the New Category Forum.

New: See Collectors' Inventory Notes on Item List

As collectors looking to exchange, trade or just look around, browsing collections of other fellow collectors- you need to look at the exact details of the items, look at the collection itself. Now this has been made easier with the help of Personal Inventory Notes. You can now see the notes made by collectors when browsing their lists.

The new information that appears is the public notes made by the collector of the quantity, condition and any additional free text notes they have added about the item in their collection. Simply go to a collectors page, look at their list and you will notice that new information now appears along the item details, marked in a separated colored box.

Previously, public inventory notes where only available on the single item pages of the catalog, together with all collectors that have this particular item. Now you can also see it on collectors' individual list.

Come take a look, browse some collections, and let us know what you think :)

Bogus Requests From Msnbot/Bing Crawler Resulting in Error 404

Apologies to the collectors on Colnect, this post is a technical post not related to collecting and collectibles.

Recently, we've started seeing a lot of bogus requests from msnbot. These were requests to URLs that never existed on our website and were filling up our error logs. Internet searches have led to nothing which is the reason for this blog post.

Suggested solution: disable msnbot on your robots.txt file and submit a ticket to their support. While it did take them some time to respond, they finally did and the issue has been resolved. We've then removed the block on our robots.txt and for over a week now, everything seems fine.

When asked about the reasons for these problem, the support team provided NO EXPLANATION as to what might have caused the problem:

"Thank you for patiently waiting. The product group have resolved this request but no additional information was provided."

"We are sorry to inform you that we cannot provide any information regarding this. We hope you understand."

Which leads us to believe the reason is a bug in msnbot or an attack on msnbot which messed up URLs between websites.

Here are a few such bogus requests:
[27-Dec-2013 03:48:51 GMT+0] REQUEST[/content/dam/aba/global/global_nav_logo.png] REFERER[]
USER[0] AGENT[msnbot-media/1.1 (+http://search.msn.com/msnbot.htm)] ADDR[65.55.215.33]
[27-Dec-2013 03:49:36 GMT+0]
REQUEST[/bin/dashboard/default-avatar-unknown.png] REFERER[]
USER[0] AGENT[msnbot-media/1.1 (+http://search.msn.com/msnbot.htm)] ADDR[65.55.215.39]
[27-Dec-2013 02:50:38 GMT+0] REQUEST[/enclosure.jpg] REFERER[]
USER[0] AGENT[msnbot-media/1.1 (+http://search.msn.com/msnbot.htm)] ADDR[199.30.20.57]
[27-Dec-2013 02:53:48 GMT+0]
REQUEST[/user_data/packages/ginichi/img/common/btn_en.jpg] REFERER[]
USER[0] AGENT[msnbot-media/1.1 (+http://search.msn.com/msnbot.htm)] ADDR[65.55.215.71]
[27-Dec-2013 02:54:14 GMT+0]
REQUEST[/DesktopModules/CATALooKStore/MakeThumbImage.aspx?fileticket=ikazmqBNAjM%3d&PORTALID=0&W=120&H=120] REFERER[]
USER[0] AGENT[msnbot-media/1.1 (+http://search.msn.com/msnbot.htm)] ADDR[199.30.16.47]
[27-Dec-2013 03:33:21 GMT+0]
REQUEST[/upload/save_image/category/c1177.jpg] REFERER[]
USER[0] AGENT[msnbot-media/1.1 (+http://search.msn.com/msnbot.htm)] ADDR[65.55.215.74]
[27-Dec-2013 03:49:20 GMT+0]
REQUEST[/wvc-1365778711/wordansfiles/images/2013/4/12/186393/186393_340.jpg] REFERER[]
USER[0] AGENT[msnbot-media/1.1 (+http://search.msn.com/msnbot.htm)] ADDR[199.30.16.30]
[27-Dec-2013 03:52:45 GMT+0]
REQUEST[/core/media/media.nl?id=343820&c=337772&h=2fd9dd88833b005b614a] REFERER[]
USER[0] AGENT[msnbot-media/1.1 (+http://search.msn.com/msnbot.htm)] ADDR[199.30.16.14]

Paper Clips Collectors Welcome to Colnect

First in a batch  of new categories joining the Colnect catalogs is Paper Clips. These sweet, shiny and sometimes colorful devices will be gracing the Colnect pages from now on. We are calling all collectors of Paper Clips to come, take a look, let us know what you think, and help the catalog grow :)

Axion Paper Clip, newly added on the Colnect catalog

We wish the new category coordinator, Bruun Visser [Bruun01], good luck with his new role and thank him for the efforts to create this catalog for the benefit of all collectors.

Wing Paper Clip, Newly added on the Colnect catalog

This category is starting out with 2,390 Paper Clips and with your help it will grow soon to be more. Read here how to add Information to the Colnect catalogs.

Dutch Paper Clip, Newly added on the Colnect catalog

The category has started, like all categories on Colnect, at the imitative of enthusiastic collectors on the forum. You are welcome to read how it all came about on the Paper Clips forum thread.

Promo Paper Clip, newly added on the Colnect catalog

Your collectible category is not yet on Colnect? Would like to create a new collectible catalog? Read more on how to add More Collectibles, take the reigns and make your suggestion on the New Category Forum.

Wing Paper Clip, newly added on the Colnect catalog