Tea Bags Catalog Exceeds 60,006 Teabags on Colnect

We on Colnect are proud to announce that the charming Tea Bag Catalog on Colnect has now reached 60,006 Tea Bags! The catalog has progressed a lot over the years,  into a beautiful and well structured catalog, that now also works as a counterpart to its brother catalog, Tea Labels. With over a thousand tea bags added just in the last month, the catalog's growth rate, years after its creation, is impressive.

This achievement is made even more admirable when you consider it's all the result of the ever dedicated coordinator and founder of the category, Carine De Pauw [crookscarine]. The Teabag category has gotten help from great contributors, of course, but as the sole coordinator and editor of the category, Carine is the main grand orchestrator and executor of it all, maintaining 2 categories at once. Without her, no of this was possible.

Carine with a Colnect T-Shirt at a fai 

Carine is a serious collector of Stamps, Phonecards, Tea Bags, Tea Labels and Beer Coasters. She has been a Colnect member since 2005, when Colnect was still a website only catering to Phonecard collectors. Let's take a few moments to get to know her a little better.

- Carine, you are taking on both the Tea Bags and Tea Label categories on your own as the sole coordinator and editor for both categories. How are you managing that?

This works because I use all my free time to work on both catalogs. I try to add new teabags every day. This is only possible thanks to my contributors who are sending scans. Some of them also send me new teabags, so I can enlarge my own collection, because I don’t have much time to swap. Sometimes I get comments regarding mistakes in the catalog which help me edit the catalog. Therefore I would like to thank all my contributors.

The first one. when I’ve started in 2009, was Els Van Gastel [leeuwin] from the Netherlands. In October 2011 I saw beautiful teabags from Brooke Bond on Facebook from Marjoke. I’ve asked her if I could get the scans for Colnect. She agreed and from then on I’ve gotten a lot of new scans from her for the catalog.

Here you can see a picture of Marjoke and Emilienne, another member on Colnect. It is at an international fair at Rijkevorsel in November 2012, where I advertised Colnect.

Left to right: Emilienne, Carine and Marjoke, collector fair at Rijkevorsel, November 2012

Special thanks to all my contributors, without whom I would never have had 60006 bags in the catalog:
From the Netherlands - Els Van Gastel [leeuwin], Marjoke Rozier [marjatea], Veerle Daams [dragons], Jan De Graaf [Saturn] ,Cees Verbaan [Cornelis], Irene Ramp [teagirl], Christel Aerts [CIEV2004], Hillie Janssen-Kiers [hillie1956]
From Belgium: Geert Vinck [GeertVinck], Nancy Vergauwen [bambi]
From Denmark - Flemming Axelsen [axpro], Inge Nielsen [vinkel]
From Finland: Ljuba Brown [Zamppa]
From Germany: Jacklin
From Latvia: Ivan Dimitrov [ventspils]
From Spain: Manuel Faja I Riera [ttags]
From Indonesia: Dhanya Rahardjo [dhanya]

- What do you think of how the TB catalog and Colnect have changed over the years?
Since the start of the catalog there are some interesting changes. I think the variants are very useful, as well as the link to the corresponding Tea Labels.

In the future I would like to add many new teabags and also spend more time on the tea label catalog which I have started in January 2013.

- What kind of reaction do you get from Tea Bag collectors regarding the catalog?
Some collectors are very grateful and they say “You’re doing a great job”.

- Do you have a favorite teabag?
My favorite teabag is not just a teabag, it’s a puzzle from an English tea shop with 25 small tea boxes. It’s a present from my daughter.

Carine's favourite item on her the Tea Bag collection

We're delighted to have Carine on board the Colnect ship and happy to celebrate with her a double occasion, her recent birthday and her great accomplished creation, the Tea Bags catalog on Colnect. Many Tea Bag collectors around the world now benefit from her generosity with her time and enthusiasm to the collecting of Tea Bags.

Google Indexed More Than 245 MILLION Colnect Pages

The world's most popular search engine has now indexed over 245 Million Colnect pages! That is a phenomenal amount. That is almost 10x times more pages presented than in Colnect's previous milestone. Colnect is ever rising and the results are definitely showing worldwide :)

What does it mean? It means that our catalogs are growing and so there's much more information that is made available to everyone around the world. It means Colnect is flourishing and that Google accepts its original content as something valid and useful.

Globe "Now Your World is One" United States Phonecard, newly added on Colnect

Chinese Puzzle Phonecard, newly added on Colnect

To give you readers a better idea of how far the Colnect catalogs have come since then, here are a few more numbers. In comparison, Colnect's Tea Bag catalog, then only in its beginning, has added more than 50,000 items, making it 20 times larger than its original starting point. The Stamps catalog, one of the most well-entrenched collectible fields on Colnect, has gone from 90,000 stamps to almost 450,000, adding close to 400,000 Stamps at that time period. The Colnect Phonecards catalog, then already celebrating a respectable size of 222,222 Phonecards has now almost tripled its size into over half a million phonecards and the largest Phonecards catalog in the world. This is not to mention (just for the lack of space in the article, since they do deserve a mention) all the new categories that have been added since then.

Emblem, Mother and Child Vietnam Stamp, newly added on Colnect

Growing catalogs mean a growing community. Colnect's collectors, then a lucky group of 8.888 members, has ballooned tenfold and will soon complete the even luckier 80,000 collectors. Colnect has then been experiencing 111,111 visits a month which are now more than 666,666 visits made by almost 400,000 users a month. The site rating given by the most reliable source available on website ranking, Alexa, has gone up from 83,000 to 36,485, climbing almost 50,000 steps up the competitive online ladder, which is more logarithmic than linear.

Grøn Te med Citrus, dif flap Denmark Tea Bag, newly added on Colnect

Earl Grey, dif flap Denmark Tea Bag, newly added on Colnect

All this data may seem cold, but what must be seen is that they are the mirror that reflects the work, dedication and heart of contributors, translators, editors, coordinators, too numerous to count. Each number contains years of searches, cooperation, attention to detail, challenges overcome and achievements made. It shows how much could be created when a group of people, no matter from which country, sex or age, gathers together over something they are truly passionate about.

Chinese Art China Phonecard, newly added on Colnect

Chinese Art China Phonecard, newly added on Colnect

Colnect's catalogs are meant to serve collectors wherever they may be and they do. On behalf of collectors everywhere we thank you, Colnect volunteers, for your efforts to create and perfect this invaluable source of information. This benefits all those who have or will chance upon collecting along their path.

Olivia sayana Ravenel Netherlands Antilles Stamps, newly added on Colnect

The New Colnect Core Coordinator - Hernan Bofill [hbofill12]

In the great Colnect team there are many different roles. Some start out initiating something new, some Colnect finds for a new role, for some a role simply grows on them. But this is not one of these cases, this case is unique. Here a role is just so perfect for a collector, that it's almost as if it was created for him.

The collector, as most of you know him, is Hernán Bofill [hbofill12] and the new role is Colnect Core Coordinator (CCC). This role will allow him to be in contact with coordinators of all categories, offering his support and advice. He will be with a finger on the pulse of all catalogs, so he'll know when something is needed to be done and what. At the same time he'll have the bird's eye view of Colnect, with the freedom to introduce and push forward ideas. Hernán Bofill [hbofill12] is now your top guy on everything related to the catalogs.

Hernán and his son, Nino

Since joining 3 years ago, Hernán has been relentless in pushing the catalogs and the community forward. Most importantly, he has been relentless in his enjoyment of what he does, refusing to let anything stifle his enthusiasm and momentum. He has very quickly made himself an invaluable resource. By offering his expertise, time, mentoring and always his care he won the respect and gratitude of many of Colnect's team and members.

You see him all the time, editing and coordinating on so many catalogs, answering on the forum and in private, swapping and listing, but let's hear a little more from him about himself.

hbofill12 as you all know him

- What do you collect?

My primary collecting items are coins. Then I have a lot of tokens and medals, that I am putting in order. Due to a "space issue” I only collect labels of the beverages that I drink. I am also a Beatles fan, so I collect Beatles CDs and memorabilia. I have a huge quantity of events tickets (Sports, Concerts, Admission) and Pins, and also some rocks, fossils and shells.

- How did you start collecting?

Since I was a child, I always had the collecting virus in me. Toys, magazines, stickers, glass balls. I always wanted to complete a series…

- Why do you think collecting is valuable?

Collecting, no matter what you collect, means two principal things to me. First, a lot of learning and knowledge. Second, creating relationships with other collecting partners.

- Which roles have you taken on Colnect before?

I've started in Colnect as a Coins editor for Argentina, Paraguay and Fantasy Issues. I would really like to thank Jim [Rubycored] for his mentoring. He was the one that motivated and pushed me to become what I am in this community. Then I became a Global Coins editor and Drink Labels coordinator. One year later, I was helping Jim and Angelo with the coordination of Coins, and handling the coordination of Tokens and Medals. In the middle of that Jim offered his Security Manager position to me and I accepted. With this, Amir also wanted me to become one of the site admins and I started working with some of the other category coordinators, helping them, for example, assign stars and grant editing permissions.

- What do you think are the main challenges Colnect faces?

We have a great catalog and we cover most of the “Swapping” collectibles, which is great. The main challenge that I see now is to improve the data in our catalogs. Doing this, I am sure that we are on the way to become the world's main collecting reference.

- Which are the first issues you'll be focusing on?

I would like to make the coordinator's day by day in Colnect more easy. I am working in a couple of ideas and I hope to share them soon.

- How can members help out?

There are many ways to help out in this community. I think that one of the best ways to start is asking your primary collection coordinator how you can help him. Be sure that he/she will find a task for you to do. This could be a good starting point.

- What would you like collectors to know about you, that they don't know yet?

Well, most of them know me but perhaps they don’t know much about me. About my personal life, I can tell you that I am from Argentina and I am 38 years old. I am married and have two kids. Nino who is 10 years old and Helena who is 6. I am a Systems Engineer and work for a pharmacy industry company, leading the Latin America software factory projects. As I said above, apart from collecting, I am a Beatles fan and enjoy going to music concerts. I also like to watch Football and Rugby.

Hernán Bofill and his family

To wrap this post up, we will finish resolving a mystery with another mystery. Many have asked and wondered, what is the meaning or reason of Hernán's OM avatar? The answer lies before you. As he wrote: "This is my necklace. It was created especially for me and it has been with me since 1997."

Thank you, hbofill12, for all that you have done and with all that you will do. Good luck and congratulations on this new role, we are all excited for you :)