Version History
13.x
Added traditional search results page
Revamped the stats pages so you can look at stats for an entire genre or filter by a series within the genre.
Added ranking of figure's value within it's genre/category. I probably need to revamp the stats pages so you can filter by group, but at least this will add visibility to the stat pages which I don't think most people know exist
You can now make inline edits to your collection if you are in landscape mode on your phone or on a desktop. You can also use the original way via the form.
Tweak to how most and least valuable figures are calculated in the dashboard for your collection
Added simply copy link button on figure detail pages
Infra upgrades
12.x
Adjusted Mural (Galaxy) series to show full pre number on tablet/desktop view
Created Mural view for the Movie/Show series of black series figures
Link to mural view from action figure adjusted to go directly to the series
Made some tweaks when doing bulk add of figures to your collection
5/21: SEO tweaks.
5/14: Adjusting visual guides so image sizes are included when grid is built.
5/13: More pagespeed config, added missing height/width, adjust item display carousel
5/12: Tweaked pagespeed config, eliminated CLS on item display page, upgraded jquery jquery.ui bootstrap frameworks, various testing to defer javascript loading, added logic to monitor site map build
Added the ability to search while managing your collection. The tab you are in determines where you search
Fixed a bug with search not returning all results
Increasing the time you stay logged in
Reworked the my collection toggle switches and added more finesse. e.g. 1 item vs 2 items.
Fixed bug where prices over $999.99 (comma issue) were not calculated correctly
Added (P)reorder to condition dropdown on your collection. Some other minor tweaks
Spliting up Marvel Legend Exclusives into more manageable groups
You can now save Transformers in your collection
Various breadcrumb and navigation tweaks. Fixed a horizontal scroll issue on price guide pages.
The performance the 6" Black Series Visual guide was terrible because of the number of images it was attempting to autosort on page load. I had to split up the Visual Guide into 4 parts. The price guide and checklists can still be one huge list.
Now you can show/hide wishlist items on your own personal collection.
eBay deprecating a lot of APIs so I had to rewrite a lot of the code.
11.x
Adding McFarlane DC Multiverse
Fixed a bug where total retail price was not accurate in mobile vs desktop modes. Also tweaked logic so total value of a wave includes any avg auction prices or if there is no avg price, use the retail price. I also now exclude the BAF from the total value and don't count that as a figure in the baf list.
Minor SEO updates and tweaks that were annoying me. Also added mini nav to checklists which do not show when printed
Rewrote visual guide pages
Found a bug where a sql call wasn't being cached properly
Modified chart logo to show daily auctions if 2 months of auction data is not ready. Helpful for when new figures have a spike in value and drop down sharply in 1 month
Enhancements to my collections to show price diff of what you paid vs retail. Fixed some bugs with total counts not dynamically calculated based upon new genres being added. Also fixed user stats page to dynamically show new genres and better formatting of data.
Fixed a bug where certain exclude terms were not working properly. Should help where 40th anniversary auctions were being blended
Refining the figure display pages
Adding Power Rangers.
Allow used auctions for BAFs
Adding Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Cowabunga!
10.0x- Feb, 2021 - June 2021
Fixed MOTU Add collection icon and bug where active tab wasn't active
MOTU is now part of user collections
Updated title tags not to show a price of $0.00
Mover/Shakers were broke and fixed in price guides.
Harmonize Amazon Prime auction pages across all collections.
Auto hide # column for price guides that do not have numbers
Added Masters of the Universe Origins and cleaned up a lot of code to make adding new collection types easier
Adding sort of column headers for Marvel figures. Mainly useful on the Exclusives price guide
Format tuning on the item display pages
Auctions that should not be included are now gray'd out in the For Sale listings
Made figure display pages have more info if you turn your phone horizontal
Added avg Buy It Now price for active auctions.
Added total wanted items on User Collection Dashboards. Have to set condition to (W)anted
Fixed a bug where sort wasn't working for chrome/android
epn updates, fixed sold auctions not appearing in map auctions
Added 
for anyone to send us tips for improvement on the figure pages.
Added dashboard to my collections and cleaned up some of the tools. Also added user collections page
Fixed a bug where BAF Item Detail pages did not include the link to the set
Added images to search results
Now that I know how to sort data in a table, updated marvel baf and sets pages to use javascript sort vs backend sorting
Fixed sorts for numeric that were using strings. I should really just pass a pure num in than javascript coding around it
Improved sort performance on price guide tables.
Added the ability to sort price guides by column header. Had to split up the tables so that they could be individually sorted. The column alignment from table to table is not aligned, but not sure what else to do
Added ASIN and DPCI to action figure item details
Created a new favicon
Tweaking visual guide masonary layout
Added EE and Mercari to "where" purchased options in my collection.
Changing visual guides to make image thumbs smaller on smaller screens
Fixed some formatting bugs on the Amazon price checker pages
Fixed bad data on vintage collection waves showing wrong repacks
Fixed bug where variations for other genres were showing on the Star Wars Variation guide
Added my collection stats
Added tips to the bottom of item display pages
Date picker was not working so removed it and replaced with traditional mm/yyyy input field
Recently added figures now will have this icon next to their name in the price guide view.
Rewrote the price guide pages and added the ability to bulk add figures to your collection. Check figures you want to add and then click the icon at the bottom of the list to save them to your collection
Added figure # to predictive search
Fixed sorting for some of the Star Wars figure sets.
Added symbol for variations next to figure names for those that have variants
Fixed a bug in search for visual checklists always defaulting to star wars
Added lite ability to add variations collections
Damn spammers so I had to add captcha to the registration form
Made some adjustments to new registration and forgot password emails so the link is available to copy and paste
Fixed some bugs on how figures were grouped in collections
Rewrote the visual guide pages to make the layout dynamic for non wave listings
Wow, how long were BAF price history graphs broke? I just noticed and fixed.
Fixed a bug where groups that were named the same were grouping together in collections
Added a bunch of new attributes for collections. Also consolidated all the new features to a dedicated My Collection Help page.
Added thumbnails to collections
Added the ability to download your collection
Made it so you can turn your phone to see more columns rather than being on a tablet/desktop. Had to create my own grid format since the older bootstrap I'm using didn't suppor it. Seems to work
Added the ability to save the quantity/# of figures you own
Added ability to share your collection
Updated login state to more than a day to minmize logging in. May change to a week
Added the ability to save your own personal collections which introduced a lot of challenges to ensure user generated content could be cached for speed as well as securing user data in hashes. Also had to setup an email system so I can have registered users validate accounts and reset their own passwords.
Tabs were wrapping on smaller screens so fixed and added a background colo
9.x - March, 2020
Google complaining about CLS issues. Added some div height tags for carousell and graph so it doesn't shift content after it loads
Updates ALL thumbnails to be a consistent size. The variances in genres and between the genres was really driving me crazy
Updated the eBay aggregator auction pages to refresh every 3 hours vs daily
I think I fixed the Flixity carousel issue where related items were not appearing
Added missing alt tags and trying to optimize mobile speed by moving google charts to the bottom of the page load
April 30: Google pagespeed dinging the site because Facebooks comment API was running too slow. As if I can fix that? Anyway, I removed it because nobody was using it anyway
April 29: Added global stats
Added the ability to find action figures by movie for Star Wars genre
Backend software/server upgrades
8.x - Jan, 2020
Adding GI Joe as a new genre to track.
7.9 - Sep, 2019
Major rework of Amazon Prime pages to show biggest savings: Star Wars Black Series Amazon Prime and Marvel Legends Amazon Prime
7.8 - Jan, 2019
Found a bug where marvel figures can show up in star-wars and vice-versa. Hopefully fixed that without any performance issues
Optimization for SEO in how figures are named
Added Vintage Kenner Collection - First 12
7.x - Feb, 2018
Fixed an issue where lowest price found wasn't working
SEO tweaks
Added Vintage collection
Swapped out price history graphs to use Google Charts
Fixed price history graphs to scroll for items that have been around for a few years
Fixing some jobs so they time out rather than hanging
Added cpu load checks to get alerted when server is running at high capacity
Analytics updates
Minor SEO tweaks for Marvel section
7.x - October, 2017
Enhanced search
Found some issues with pages not being cached
Added one huge Marvel Legends complete visual guide
Fixed bug where related items preview image for Marvel were accidently coded to go to Transformers
Updated default sort to BAF for Marvel since some sets do not have a movie and "Misc" looked odd
Updated home page to include recently added items
Adjusted logic to find auctions that go over the maximum price
Fixed ebay aggregator for Marvel not caching
Adjusted Visual Guide format for Marvel. I think I might have to change to the brick layout format.
Added some new links on the homepage and fixed some broken links in the Transformers section
Transformers ebay aggregator wasn't working
Added lowest price found to Amazon prime checker and Walmart for Star Wars/Marvel. Also fixed bug where new lowest prices were not being stored
Fixed issue where Amazon auctions somtimes didn't have a title
Amazon, Walmart and Scalper Cantina (ebay) weren't dumping cache properly
Fixed a bug that I wasn't passing genre over for marvel modals
Duh. Can't set the zipcode in a cached file so had to externalize the function via javascript
Enhancements on weeding out false-positive auctions
Forgot to set cookie expiration for saving your zip code for Walmart in store lookup
Adjustment for cache time so content doesnt expire before the next content gets created
Fixed an issue where I couldn't find new lat/long for new cities. Also did some more checks for data quality
Added Figure Seek section for mapping recently sold and for sale auctions as well as moving Amazon and Walmart searches into the same section
Saving your zip after looking up if a figure is in your local walmart.
Optimized caching so there is no delay from when cache is cleared to when pages loaded. The idea actually came to me while going for a walk
Limit search results to prevent too many from returning
Fixed a bug with search not working for non star wars genres
Updated to Marvel to add sets without BAF
The launch of actionfigure411.com
6.x - Jul 31, 2017
Updates to support Marvel waves that have no movie name associated to them.
Fixed bug where items without auction where showing the retail price as negative for total value
Fixed bug where total collection value for retail wasn't including items with no auctions
Adding avg value of item to title tag so it shows up when sharing links
Fixed a bug where lowest vendor prices were saving 0.00
Found a bug in the Transformer stats page
Added Force Friday 2017 checklist
Fixed a bug where case images were looking at figure images
Fixed issue with auctions loading as disabled as default for Transformers. Updated visual page so that images are aligned better. Removed figure number from item detail pages as well
Fixed issue with for sale auctions for Transformers and also adjusted logic not to exclude dashes in names to build SEO url
Fixed some sorting issues on Transformers and including Japan auctions
Adding Transformers as well. Perhaps this is getting out of hand...
Adjust the job that caches the site to also dynamically create the sitemap. I hope that pleases the Google Gods
Adjusted price guide pages so BAF figure doesnt mess up results since it technically doesn't have a retail price. BAF figures are a pain to support
Started to add Exclusives
Added the BAF as it's own figure to sets
Created home page with links to BAF and Exclusives
Found a bug where figure detail pages did not include group name in URL. Oh well, leaving it as is
Lots of changes to ensure BAF wasn't shown on Exclusives pages. Now Ill be screwed when I get to an exclusive BAF set!
Still not sure how to images on Exclusives pages
Adjusted stats page for Marvel so it didnt show BAF complete figures, but added dedicated table at bottom
Added Marvel lines
Somewhat of a big change because now I have spawned off the site to include Star Wars Black Series and Marvel Legends with plans to add Transformers. I had to do a lot of work refactoring the code to handle different genres. Some of the UI had to be copied, but the backend code and DB are mostly reusable at this point. I'm hoping it is as useful to the Marvle collectors as it has been for the Star Wars world.
5.x - Dec 18 2016
Added GameStop as new vendor
Added logic to prevent lowest vendor prices of $0
Added vendors of Forbidden Planet and Robot Kingdom
Bug fix for Amazon product urls which suddenly needed to be encoded and decoded.
Adding Target as new vendor to check prices. Good for exclusives
Just noticed I didnt have a h1 tag on product pages.
Added icon next to graph names in visual and price guides to identify they are clickable. Also optimized which pages are responsible for creating new graphs so there isn't duplicate work on startup
Added more graphs for basically all the groups. I may need to migrate to a better graphic program because they are hard to read with the current .png generated system
5.10 - March 18 2017:
Finally added 3.75" Black Series Figures from 2013-2015
Fixed timezone issue
Added time left and # of bids while also adjusted formating for cantina and finally got the padding between cells to work
Performance fix for cantina
Added the Scalper Cantina
March 5, 2017: Fixed graph for 40th anniversary figures to show short name on graph plot rather than number (which doesn't exist)
Added Hasbro Toy Shop to vendors and fixed a cookie issue with using curl
Added TRU as vendor to track prices against
Adding HTS eBay as vendors to track prices against
Minor fix to show no savings for figures that are the same price as retail
Started to keep track of lowest price found from vendors
Added group info to title tag attributes. It would be nice to have the group name as part of the URL, but for now, this will do.
Added ability to directly open up link to stats graph
Another adjustment for Where to Buy section for mobile. Also added support for cases which was a PITA to do
Fussing around with the WTB section and formatting. Fixes for monitoring tools
5.7 - Feb 3 2017: Aded Where to Buy section on Item Detail
Updated the Walmart figure finder on figure pages to use standard mechanism.
Walmart now offers free 2 day shipping so I created a special Walmart 2-Daya> shipping page to track
Added more multiple graphs for The Force Awakens and Rogue 1 to stats page
Fixed Amazon Prime auctions that are over retail price to properly show that there isn't a deal. Also fixed issue with subtracing retail vs amazon price
Changed Amazon Prime page to check hourly. Finally figured out how to clear cache for an individual page. I must be using an old version because not all the methods in the wiki are available.
Formatting changes to Amazon prime info.
Improvement to search to strip out dashes so search like 3-CPO don't need a dash to find him
Added dedicated page to monitor Amazon Prime Auctions
Cosmetic items and some mobile optimization on tables. I left out thead and a tr tag as well and I'm surprised it's been rendering ok all this time. I really love Font Awesomesome icons
Added links to Amazon for items that are available via prime
Minor amp styling app
Seperated the variation and knockoff guides
Jan 21, 2017 - Added brickseek like lookup by SKU for figures that have a SKU identified
Fixed amp issue when ebay auction comes back with no image, don't display in carousel
More tinkering with the movers and shakers. I found that it didnt seem accurate unless you had a detailed view of daily auctions (as opposed to avg by month). Because of this I changed the logic to look at current month vs previous month, but smartly thought about year as it's Jan and the previous year is 2016. Also, no movers/shakers in the beginning of a new month until there is at least 4 auctions
Enhancements to admin interfaces
Added variation of most valuable figure on stats page
Added search with ajax autocomplete
Improvements to admin tools to manage items
Adding Facebook commenting to item detail pages
Fixed issue with elite premium figures not fully being loaded
Added graph of auction loads by month to stats page.
Added price history graph for orange and blue waves. Tough to read as line plots step on each other, but somewhat interesting
Added fancybox for images so that they don't open directly and inside a pretty little frame. Very nice library and easy to implement
Adjustment to image hover so that on touch devices it doesn't stack images
Added a footer and fixed some of the new pages
Added some cool stats
Added an about page.
Still not happy with movers/shakers. The problem is that sometimes it shows a bit change in price but it's not reflected in the graph. This is mostly because the graph doesn't have enough auctions to show the current month. Adjusted logic accordingly.
Fixed bug in order of graph so that years comes last
Left some debug code in which was scewing around with php performance. I recommend running grep "opcache_reset" . -Rn on your site. Also setup some cache monitoring pages
Adjusted cache and added method to clear cache before recreating content. This should fix movers/shakers not reflecting changes in figure categories
adusted certchain. google webmaster is saying my cert is self signed, hope that fixes it
updated some path of images from ebay to use https
Optimized most of the images
Updated all coded links to https (oops, forgot to do that)
Added SSL and redirects only to https. Hopefully didn't screw it up
Automatically flagging any auction with "bitnami"
Move hosting to Lightsail. Lots of speed improvements!
4.10 Dec 14th
Added pictures of cases for wave figures
Adjusted logic on movers/shakers to match what is shown on the price graph
Adjustment to remove embedded font style for AMP
Oops, accidently broke roll over images
Added auctions carousel and structured data for AMP
Reduced the number of for sale and sold auctions to 10 to reduce size of page
Made max carousel size to 10 so it doesn't try to bring back a lot of images.
4.9 Dec 5, 2016
Included mobile carousel from Flixity to view similar items within in a group.
Adding retailer exclusive SKU's and UPCs when I find them
Updated home page with better pictures to describe the sections.
Added share icon for AMP version of pages. Couldn't use amp-social because Facebook requires an AppId.
4.7 Nov 30th - Added AMP optimized pages for item detail pages
Added Share link for Facebook and eMail to the item detail pages
Added versioning to css so that I could force reload
Changed top nav so it's not sticky and now my in page links don't look off
Added additional og:meta tags to fix link preview and make Facebook happy
Added series description and link to switch views
Added ability to link directly to wave on visual checklist
Fixed a bug in visual checklist for Elite Premium figures
Changed breadcrumb to link to specific section of group page. Also moved group name to after figure name in brackets
Added cache control in headers to improve page load speed
Adjusted breadcrumb nav on item detail pages to also include group name (if there is one)
Added similar items on item detail pages. For example, Obi Orange Wave and Obi Blue Wave
Added job to automatically load cache pages for performance (Nov 15th)
Redesigned index page in traditional bootstrap style
Added image hover on price guide pages to show a thumbnail of the figure
DST bug
Adjusted order that auctions are retrieved on eBay so they come back in similar groups
Fixed the tabs on the item detail page to properly show and hide current and sold auctions. Now it works like you would expect.
Added a little icon overlay on top of thumbnails to show there is a bigger to view. Positioning CSS is a huge pain but found some examples I could adapt that didn't screw up while in mobile format
Seems like Darth Maul's pics were broke.
Fixed a bug where breadcrumb nav would load wrong guide or none at all for google cached pages
Adjusted movers and shakers so you need at least 3 sold auctions to qualify
Added favicon for /star-wars/*
Added new page to list all the variations which include reproductions and knockoffs
Added logic not to include visual guide links for price guides that don't have one (Hallmark and Variations)
Added rendering to check to see how fast page is loaded from cache
Added movers and shakers depicted by green and red arrows in price guides. These are the figures who had the biggest change in price
While trick or treating I realized that my breadcrumbs would not work when there is no referer so I updated to an ajax call
Added breadcrumbs to item detail pages
Added a little switch icon to go from visual and price guides
Added notice on bottom of price guides that more info can be found if viewed with desktop or tablet
Fixed title and description meta tags to more acurately page content
Added more detail about item on detail page because the smart phone version has it removed
Created an iphone (I assume it works with any smartphone) version of the price guide that hides columns when viewed on a smart phone.
Google didn't like that my site wasn't responsive and it was getting annoying to use on mobile. I looked into Foundation but finally settled on Bootstrap to make it responsive.
It's somewhat of a hack of how the tables just scroll now, but maybe another iteration will include a table with less info on mobile. I personally hate showing less info though because
that normally means trying to get to the desktop version
3.4.x - Oct 28, 2016
Added wearables as well
Renamed all visual checklists to visual guides and setup 301 redirects so old links still work and Google is happy
Changed the menu header so you can easily switch bewtween the price and visual guides. I hate working with CSS
Added icons for home button
Added Titanium vehicles and helmets to visual check list. Wow, that was a lot of images to grab, size, etc. Also doing the
repacks was a little tricky as well.
3.3.x - Oct 26, 2016
Added Elite figures to visual check list
3.2.x - Oct 25, 2016
Added 3.75" Walmart Exclusives to visual check list which also means I had to hunt down images, thumbnails and descriptions for all of them.
3.1.x - Oct 24, 2016
Added variations with description of variation and link to picture
3.0.x - Oct 22, 2016
Added more canonical urls and some h1 tags for SEO goodness
Fixed sort order not including wave and the wrong year on 3.75" luke
Adjusted graph width to match item picture and description
Moving everything under one directory. I originally started with one file and now that it's morphed into something bigger, I decided to tidy
things up by putting everything under /star-wars/. I thought about registering a new domain name, but for now, Ill keep it under my personal domain
name fperkins.com
created SEO friendly page names, item links and image names so Google is happy
2.8.x Oct 2016
adding figure meta information and description on ebay detail auction pages to help with SEO
small tweak to align VCL images on top so they look more aligned due to wrapping names below
minor cleanup of image sizes and added some SEO for links/titles/images/etc
Added Exclusives and Deluxe sites to visual check list. Had to account for different sized pictures since these are not just standard figures
Added thumbnails to speed up the visual check list
Found a weird bug where cache was not working for result sets and after all this time it finally revealed itself.
Fixed a bug with sort order of figures
Beta of visual check list
Made header menu dynamic
Removed hard coding of "and" type auctions by checking display name
Fixed bug where newly added auctions would always be excluded because avg price was $0
Adjusted figure ordering to include year and name for sort order so that if I add new items, it will appear sorted
Adding Hallmark items (most of them for now)
2.7.x
Adjusted graphs to be wider and less clutter in labels
updated code so I can purty up the names vs what I search for on eBay
2.6.x
Fix for excluding auctions with "and" but also excluding new guy Captain Cassian Andor
Adjustment for stats page
Small fix to auction management tools to sort figures by group rather than added data
Sometimes the auction script would time out connecting to SQL. Added some exception handling so it doesn't abort the entire job.
Fixed a bug where graphs y axis was higher/lower than actual avg monthly values
Adjusted stats page so it doesn't show the current day which is just partial load results.
Auto excluding any auctions from China/Hong Kong as there are lots of repros coming in
Added stats to see daily auctions and how many unique items were loaded by day
2.5.x
Added Elite figures. Not black series, but whatever!
Fixed another issue with figures not sorting properly
Added some rounded corners to the tabs
Some SEO optimization on title/description tags
2.4.8
Similar figures are causing issues try to sort them. Had to build some more admin tools to quickly change
Wrote logic to exclude "and/&" type auctions for multiple figures, but some items naturally have an and so don't exclude those by accident (like Luke and Wampa, Rey and BB8)
2.4.5
Found an issue when adding the new 3.75 Walmart figures as I was sorting by id, but not including group
Setup auto-exclude rules for auctions that include title descriptsion like and, &, 2x, etc. Also excluding any auction that's double the avg price, figuring it's a bundle
2.4.2:
Fixed min/max Y axis on graphs
Bunch of updates to backend tools to maintain auction results as they come in
2.4.1:
Duh, changed ebay search to only return NEW listings. Might verify listings from China as well
Minor SEO tweaks
Added automatic method to find range of ids to scan daily vs manually changing max id count
2.4:
Added lightsabers and helmets (wearables) and helmets to titanium
Removed hardcoded group settings
2.3.x:
fine tuning of tabs
Fixed urlencoding issue when viewing stored results
Added titanium vehicles as well
2.3:
Ok, added support for the 3.75 Walmart figures as well! I guess this is no longer just a 6" tool
Lots more behind the scenes stuff to manage all the data and rules coming in.
2.2.x:
Added total count of auctions
Lots of work on behind the scenes stuff to administer auctions. Excluding items is a big part
Added graphs of avg price over time on detail page
Adjusted main table to use last 45 days of auctions instead of all
2.1.5:
Caching driving me crazy
2.1.4:
Caching...
2.1.3:
More adjustments for caching.
2.1.2:
Bug fixed with caching routines.
2.1.1:
Added a welcome description and fixed the cron job to dump the cache after it's done updating
2.1:
Added some jquery so you can add up your own collection
Fixed the table so the summary goes into the last row instead of outside the table.
2.0.1:
Moved all the groups to one page now that I can easily query all the prices without any eBay API lag. I still have a few things hacked in, but will fix later
2.0:
Migrated code from file based system into database
1.4.2:
Adjusted code to set min price for chinese knockoffs
1.4.1:
Fixed issue with some exclusives not appearing.
1.4:
Added maxPrice per item in query to eliminate sold auctions for cases or groups of items affecting individual figure prices
1.3.2:
Fixed a bug with SDCC stuff over 230 bucks not appearing
1.3.1:
Added Rey Starkiller base
1.2.1:
Adjusted some auctions query terms
1.2:
Added comparison of retail price vs current avg price
1.1.2:
Fixed clone trooper auctions in orange #14 and blue waves #13
1.1.1:
Excluding 3.75 from search. 3 3/4 still seems buggy when i try to add it though
1.1:
For performance, display by waves and added exclusives and deluxe sets
1.04:
Added Amazon and EE exclusive 4 packs
1.03:
Forgot to include Google Analytics
1.02:
Added total value of a collection on bottom of summary page. This only includes items that have had recent completed sales.
globalized some of the debug and utility commands
1.01:
Added versioning ;-)
Adjusted shipping info to include calculated and free shipping
Added how many days the avg price is calculated against
1.0:
Added exclusives
Fixed issue with price not converted to USD
.01: Initial release - Jan 2016
