Wednesday, April 29, 2015

Colnect Catalog Passed 500,500 Stamps!

We are very proud to announce that the Stamps catalog has now surpassed 500,500 unique items, making it one of the 2 largest catalogs on Colnect and one of the top largest Stamp catalogs in existence today!
As the stamps category is a veteran branch of collectibles, particular care is given to the quality and accuracy of the catalog by the wonderful Stamps team, headed by the coordinators Guido Fußhöller [footy68] and Klaus Jochimsen [Lola22] and supported by so many great editors and contributors.


"Bogdan I Vodă" Stamp from the "650 Years Since the Foundation of the State of Moldavia" 2009 Moldova series, new on the Colnect Stamps catalog
Images are an essential and important part of the catalog. Stamp images have been greatly improved on the catalog due to a great effort lead by the stamp coordinators. Tens of thousands of stamp images have been added to stamps with missing images, thousands more stamps with low quality images have been replaced with high resolution images, making the catalog that much more beautiful, detailed and convenient.

"Tingia carbonica" Stamp from the 2004 North Korean Fossils series, new on the Colnect catalog
New standards for quality of stamp images have been enforced which have also significantly raised the level of the images on the catalog, both in resolution of images and in the presentation style of the stamps. You are welcome to browse through the results and see all the great new images up close using the zoom in feature.
"Kim reading at desk" Stamp from the 2004 North Korean series "40th Ann. of Workers' Party of Korea by Kim Jong Il", new on the Colnect catalog
This milestone is coming a long way from the previous milestone of 300303 Stamps. A lot of effort and thought have been put into the catalog, you can follow up on the progress on the Stamps Forum.

"Duck, Dog & Cat" Stamp from the 1996 Australian pets series. new on the Colnect catalog
Would like to contribute to the Stamps catalog as well? See how you can help on our Contributor Guide. You are welcome to join our world community operation to create the most complete and accurate Stamps catalog available anywhere today.

"Western Capercaillie (Tetrao Urogallus)" stamp from the 2007 Moldova series "Extinct Birds of Moldova", new on the Colnect catalog
We'd like to take this opportunity to say thank you for the absolutely amazing efforts of all the Stamps Coordinators, Editors and Contributors. Thank you for all the time, care and dedication that have been put into creating and evolving this incredible catalog.

"Lifeguard" Stamps from the 1961 North Korean "The 15th Anniversary of Children's Union" series, new on the Colnect catalog

Friday, February 6, 2015

Numismatics Delight

Making numismatists around the world happy, we are proud to announce some important milestones on our catalogs. The Colnect catalogs are breaking records and shooting out 5 pointed stars!

Our Coin catalog now lists 50,005+ coins. The coins catalog has also further developed on the presentation side, showing more detailed information in better ways. Rim, Orientation and Shape have been added to the catalog as well as support for Ancient Coins.

250 Afghanis (Snow Leopard), new on the Colnect Coins catalog
Our Banknote catalog now lists 55,555+ banknotes. The banknotes was reinforced with the help of a new co coordinator, and so promises to reach more milestones even quicker and with better quality of information.

1889 3 Russian Rubles, new on the Colnect catalog  
Our Decorations catalog now lists 15,051+ medals and decorations. This category has also gone through a fairly recent improvement of changing the definition from only "Medals" to "Medals and Decorations".

24-th Conference (Ag) of the Hungarian Coin Collectors Association commemorative medal, new on the medals and decorations Colnect catalog 
Our Tokens catalog is getting closer to listing 5,000 tokens.

Bitcoin MJB 2013, new on the Colnect catalog
But it's not only about the size of the catalogs, but the quality of information in them. We've been adding more data fields and many editors have helped updating data in an organized fashion. You can follow up on all discussions and progress on the Colnect forums.

Colnect supports very powerful navigation to help you find what you're looking for and have an overview of related items. Start browsing now and see all filters, search and organization options.

As hundreds of volunteers continue to help make Colnect what it is, you are welcome to join the effort to make Colnect better for collectors worldwide. Learn more on how you can help here.

We'd like to thank for the wonderful contribution and dedication of all our numismatics contributors, editors and coordinators who make all this beauty possible.

Wednesday, January 7, 2015

777 Colnect Contributors - Creating Colnect Magic

A new year, a new milestone reached, a new satisfying number to celebrate. Colnect has passed 777 contributors.

The number 7 has always represented some sense of wonder, of far reaching ventures, of worldwide phenomena, the seven seas, the seventh heaven, the seven wonders of the world, the seven colors of the rainbow. Associated widely in cultures throughout history with special occurrences, miracles and power, we on Colnect certainly hope this number bodes well for this budding year and its potential to unite and innovate.

A year after our previous milestone of 666 contributors on Colnect, more than 111 new contributors have joined to empower, improve and enhance Colnect.

Each of these sevens, seven hundred, seventy and seven, is comprised of individual collectors on Colnect that decided to give some of themselves, some of their time and drive, to the Colnect catalogs. The catalogs you see today on Colnect are purely the result of the combined contribution and dedication of these collectors.

On the website design front, Colnect is doing its best to provide new tools and improved features for contributors, editors and coordinators on Colnect. Those help make activity on Colnect easier, smoother and more effective.

Of the new features provided, there were many to enable and aid Colnect editors. A New Comments Counter allows for quicker and easier dealing with the collector comments. The Item Edit History has become available to all editors, the Editing Menu has been optimized and there were many other changes and fixes introduced.

The look of Colnect has been going through some improvements recently as well. As part of that the badges on the collector profile page, those that indicate the role of the collector as a contributor and the amount of the stars awarded to that collector, has been renewed and polished.

As always, we'd like to thank all the wonderful contributors, editors, translators and coordinators on Colnect. This ever-growing group of collectors joined by a common goal and passion has achieved much in the past year. It brought the Colnect catalogs another long stretch forward in making collectible information available to all collectors worldwide in the best way.

Monday, December 29, 2014

100 MILLION Items on Colnect Collectors Inventories

Yes, One Hundred Million items marked on collectors' inventories. As a community, it's wonderful to see how active everyone is in collecting and interacting. After all, this is what Colnect is made for, and it only goes to show that it is truly working.


What does this number mean? It's the accumulation of all items marked for swap on Colnect, all the items marked on the collections of Colnect's members, all the wish lists, all the custom lists. You can say it's the accumulation of all the collecting wealth, collecting hopes and aspirations of all the collectors on Colnect. This makes this inconceivable number even more impressive.

Colnect collectors have 40 million different physical items in their own collection. That's without including multiple quantities of the same item that a specific collector may have. So physically, there are lot more than only 40,000,000 items.

Additionally, there are now 8 million different physical items on collector swap lists. These are 8,000,000 opportunities for tens of thousands of collectors on Colnect. Even greater than that is the number of wish list items which is nearing an incredible 50 million, demonstrating once again that collectors will always have the ambition to find more and create better collections. Swaps are a major part of the Colnect community and social activity. In this day and age, it is an actual physical connection made between collectors on different points on the globe and it is the foundation of Colnect.

Looking at the numbers, you can find many more other curious statistics. For example, for every item on the catalog, how many collectors are marking it? Well, we can see that, on average, the Coins category is the leader in this case. An average of 85 collectors have marked a given item in their collection and an average of 178 have marked it on some list. This is great for Colnect because of another useful resource it has, the Item Score. The item score relies on data from the collectors themselves, The more marking, the more data, the more accurate the score.

We can see how much knowledge, connection and strength we can gain simply by marking the lists. So what else is there to say than - mark away! May the swaps roll on :)


Sunday, November 30, 2014

Colnect Looking Good Everywhere - Responsive Design

Colnect is now dressed to impress on any device in any size. Until now, Colnect's design was nice but not very adaptable to the many variations of screen resolutions such as on mobile phones, tablets and full HD screens. Now we are happy to announce Colnect has developed a new design that will comfortably adjust to any way you'd like to view it.

Have you ever tried browsing Colnect on your mobile? How about your tablet? or even putting it up on an HD screen? Now is the time to try and see how the new Colnect pages react to your choices.
Colnect categories page - Full-HD view
Colnect categories page - MOBILE view

The new design is available to Colnect members with only one click, Click here to try the new design. If you're not logged in, the new design would be the default now.

We welcome you to try the new design and provide us with feedback before we make the change permanent. We have rewritten much of the code related to the site's design and we'll be making many more updates in the coming week to finish and polish what's missing.

What kind of things you will notice in the new design? Selected items of important information has been custom chosen to each screen, so you will always see what you need, no more, no less. List length, amount of rows and image size now all change according the size of screen or browser window. Play with the Colnect browser window size now and see Colnect shrink and grow to fit perfectly. We also needed to address some device specific issues, such as adjusting the Colnect menus to the mobiles touch screen so browsing is made quick and easy and allowing for spacious view on wide screen resolutions without unneeded scrolling or empty space.

If the new design is not working well for you, please report the problems you experience on the forum, along with a screen shot, the URL you visit and the browser you use, and we'll do our best to respond quickly.

Click here to switch back to the old design

Please note that our forum system doesn't support responsive design yet. We plan to upgrade it soon enough though. This means that when you view the forums on your mobile, you'll likely have to zoom in.

So go ahead and give this new design a spin :)

Tuesday, September 23, 2014

Get ready for the Colnect Free Premium Weekend!

This weekend all of Colnect's premium services will be freely available to all members. The promotion will begin on Thursday noon and end at Monday noon. Relevant timezone UTC+0.

We've noticed that some Colnect members with large collections didn't have the chance to try some of the important Premium Membership features such as Auto-Matching and Best Matches. During the first trial Free Premium Membership period, some collector did not have enough items in their collection to make use of these features. We want to give all members an opportunity to see how these services work for them, let us know what they think and have fun :)

We also hope to encourage more collectors to consider supporting Colnect either by purchasing a Premium Membership or being given one through becoming a catalog contributor on Colnect.

So get your lists ready and clear your weekend to do some massive collection managing this weekend!

Learn more about Premium Membership in this video -

Read more >

Tuesday, September 16, 2014

It's the 80th Anniversary of the Lego Name, and Colnect Celebrates!

With most of 2014 behind us, which included the release of the incredibly popular Lego themed film "The Lego movie", we can take a look back at the history of Lego. We'll find out that there are more amazing achievements that the company that created this beloved toy, icon and collector favorite has reached this year.



80 years ago, in 1934, Ole Kirk, the founder of a Danish wooden toys company, was contemplating how to name it. He already had 2 names in mind but he was not sure. Eventually he had decided on a name of his own invention - Lego, named after the Danish phrase "Leg godt" which means "Play Well". Little did he know that the name he chose will turn out to be not only a good choice but a prescient prediction of the company future. The word "Lego" in Latin means "I put together" or "I assemble".

"Emmet" minifigure from the 2014 Series: "The Lego Movie", from the Colnect catalog
Jumping forward 30 years to 1964, half a century ago, the Lego Company has launched its first Model Set. The model set has later become one of the most popular and widely recognized features of the Lego company. It is also the corner stone of the Colnect Lego Sets catalog, dedicated to showcasing all sets from the 1960's until this very day.
"Locomotive" Train set from 1966, from the Colnect catalog
The documentation of all Lego Sets in history is no simple feat. From Train sets to Minifigures, from "Homemaker" sets to "The Hobbit" movies themed models, there are so many wonderful details to capture, so much information to add. On a community catalog that is based on volunteers, such as Colnect, this means contributors. Enthusiastic collectors, each adding what ever pieces of information they have. The more help the catalog has, the better and more comprehensive the catalog is. The existence of the catalog enables Lego collectors to gain access to a worldwide community and advanced comfortable collection management tools.
"Horizon Express" train set from 2013, from the Colnect catalog
The catalog has been created and has gone a long way based on the initiative of its coordinator, Graeme Kilpatrick [nzexchange]. He has single-handedly added thousands of sets to what is now a beautiful catalog of sets old and new. It is a remarkable achievement. So now, what about more? :) Come join to make this catalog even greater and let us know your opinion.
"Falling Water" set from the Architecture series 2009, from the Colnect catalog
Have sets in your collection that you'd like to see on the Colnect catalog? Interested in helping develop the Lego Sets catalog? Learn more on the Lego Sets Contribution help page. Want to get even more involved? Would like to help lead the charge to develop this global Lego Sets catalog? Check this out and let us know.
"Electric Train" train set from 1968, from the Colnect catalog

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