The Big Picture
- What is Stashmatic?
- Why should I use Stashmatic?
- Is Stashmatic free?
- What are the key features of Stashmatic?
- How do I get started using Stashmatic?
How is information organized in the Stashmatic database?
- What is the difference between the shared community database and my Stash?
- What are categories, items, attributes, inventory, and tags?
- How do I create a new category?
- What if I think a category definition should be changed?
- What is the review process for categories and what are private categories?
- What if I think an item or category is incorrect?
How do I work with items in my stash?
- How can I search the items at Stashmatic?
- How do I add an item to my stash?
- My item is special or unique (it is autographed, etc.). How should I enter it?
Personal Information
- How do I edit my profile?
- How do I keep my Stash private?
- Can other users see my real name or email address?
- I forgot my password
- Can I export my information out of Stashmatic?
Community Members
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What is Stashmatic?
Stashmatic is designed for collectors, catalogers, and hobbyists to organize, track, and share information and their collections. Our shared community database lets our users benefit from each other's knowledge and collecting history.
In addition to the answers below, you may also take a tour.
Why should I use Stashmatic?
We have two goals at Stashmatic: to provide cataloging and tracking tools for our users to build the ultimate collector and hobbyist checklists, and to make it easy for them to track which items on the checklist they have or want. The foundation for these checklists is the Stashmatic shared community database. When one person enters information about an item, everyone can view that item and indicate whether the have or want it. The Stashmatic database is a powerful tool for collectors and catalogers because:
- You can track your stuff without typing everything in. Other Stashmatic users may already have entered the information into the database for the items you own. Tracking your stuff can be as easy as one click on that rare coin, antique car, or action figure.
- Searching and sorting your stuff is easy. Stashmatic tools make it easy to track what you have and to figure out what you're missing. Just visit My Stash (in the browse menu) to start organizing your stuff. Our system of tags allows you to uniquely categorize your items and access others' tags as well.
- You'll benefit from the community's knowledge. You didn't know that rare item was released somewhere overseas? Well someone else in the community did, and he or she entered it into the database. Now it's just up to you to track that one down ... don't worry, in the future Stashmatic will be able to help you with that as well.
Is Stashmatic free?
Yes, the basic service that you see today is free, and you will never have to pay for it. You may enter as many items into your stash at no charge! As we grow, we will introduce additional services that would be available for a modest fee.
What are the key features of Stashmatic?
Shared Community Database—Since any member of the Stashmatic community can add an item to the community database, our database grows as our collections and membership do. This shared knowledge is a powerful tool: any Stashmatic user can edit the item information in our database, and users can use tags to describe and organize their items. Someone interested in collecting Corvette memorabilia can tag any relevant item with the tag Corvette, making custom searches and list creation that much easier. Also, some items in the database can't be "owned"—for example, we have a growing list of live concert information. Any user can tag any show they attended as "attended" and view a list of their concert history with one click.
- Personal Stash—If an item is already in our shared community database, adding it to your stash just takes one click. And if you have an item that the community doesn't know about yet, adding it to the database is easy as well.
- Groups—Groups are another great way to find items of interest and to compare what you against a group checklist. If you’re interested in a particular area, say Bruce Springsteen, you should join the Springsteen Group! Group moderators and members keep track about which items in the database that group is particularly interested in … it’s a great way to access an entire list of Springsteen stuff regardless of category: books, posters, DVDs, and more. See a list of groups.
How do I get started using Stashmatic?
A great way to start would be to discover if other users have already entered items into the database that are of interest to you. The simplest way to do that is to search the data base using the search box in the upper right hand corner of this page or browse the database. If items you are interested in are in the database, you can add them to your stash ... and you can even start to add brand new items to the shared database.
What if you're one of the first people from your hobby, interest area, or collector community to visit stash? You can begin creating categories that are of use to you and others like you. Items cannot be stored in the stashmatic database unless they have been entered as a specific category. If your categories don't exist yet, consider creating them!
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How is information organized in the Stashmatic database?
What is the difference between the shared community database and my Stash?
Stashmatic makes an important distinction between community information about an item and personal information. If you enter a book into Stashmatic, the author, title, and synopsis of the book is considered community information and is viewable by everyone. Whether or not you have the book, the condition of the book ("the dust jacket is torn"), and how much you paid for it is personal information and is private.
In the future, we wil introduce features that will allow other people to see the usernames of people who own items in the database. However, you may choose to keep certain categories of your stash, or your entire stash private so that no one else may ever see what you have or want. Go to the Privacy Settings to change these personalized settings. If you choose to keep certain categories or your entire stash private, you may continue to enter information into the community database, but no one will know that you own the items you entered.
Your privacy and trust are very important to us; please feel free to read our full privacy policy.
What are categories, items, attributes, inventory, and tags?
The Stashmatic community database is built around five types of information:
Categories: Categories are types of things, and Stashmatic users organize their stuff into a constantly growing list of categories. Examples of categories include books, vehicles, stamps, coins, trading cards, music recordings.
People's collecting interests often span different categories. For example you might collect World's Fair memorabilia or Lord of the Rings collectibles. But when you try to enter each item into a spreadsheet or database, you realize that a souvenir program is very different from a snowglobe. That's why the foundation of Stashmatic is categories. Category attributes and tags (described below) are used to link different caegories in the same interest area.
Items: An item is a specific object. For example, one of the many items in the book category is The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald.
Attributes: Categories are described with attributes. For example, the book category would include the following attributes: title, author, publisher, year, synopsis, ISBN, etc. When you enter a new item into the book category, you would complete a form desgined for the book category's attributes.
Inventory: When you add an item from the community database to your personal stash, you may make personal notations about how much you paid for it and its condition. For example, you might note that the copy of The Great Gatsby that you acquired for $5 at a recent garage sale is a first edition in Near Mint condition. And you could note that you just insured the book for $150,000.
Tags: Tags allow you to add a descriptive phrase to any item in the database and to develop your own classification schemes. If you are browsing a list of live concert performances, you might tag those you attended with "attended" or you might tag a poster with a specific character or actor that appears in the poster. You'll always be able to see your personal tags, and Stashmatic keeps a running total of popular tags on items, so you'll benefit from all Stashmatic users' informal classifications. You can enter multiple, distinct tags in a list by separating them with commas. There is more information about tags in the Wikipedia entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tags.
There are four steps to creating a category:
- Step 1: Make sure the category does not already exist in the community database.
- Step 2: Name the category, enter a text description, and outline it's attributes while you enter the first item in the category
- Step 3: Confirm the work you've done in Step 2
- Step 4: Construct how the name will appear in database listings.
Step 1
Stashmatic is a community database structured around categories, so it's important to everyone that users don't duplicate existing categories. So if you're considering adding a new category, first please check to make sure it does not already exist. You may browse and search the categories here. Option 2 on the Add Items page will also let you browse categories.
Step 2 and beyond
Once you have determined that the category does not exist in the community database, you may go directly to the Create a New Category page. There are individual help buttons on the subsequent pages to help you through the process.
What if I think a category definition should be changed?
Changes to categories have to be carefully considered since other Stashmatic users may have already added items in the category to their stash. For now, only Stashmatic staff can make changes to categories. We are happy to make those changes when appropriate, so please don't hesiate to send in your suggestions.
Later we will be allowing advanced users to make changes to categories as well.
What is the review process for categories and what are private categories?
Because everyone can view the shared database, the Stashmatic team wants to make sure that no test, duplicate, or inappropriate categories are added to the shared database. When you create a category, it is considered "private." Once the Stashmatic team reviews and approves the category, it will become public, and all users may enter and view items in the category. If the Stashmatic team decides not to make the category public (we'll let you know why, and work with you if you still think the category should be public), the category will remain private and be accessible only to you. You may have a maxium of five private categories.
What if I think an item or category is incorrect?
If an item in the shared database contains incorrect information, you may edit the item. Note that the information you edit will be visible to everyone.
If you locate a duplicate item in the database, please notify us. Since some portion of users may have added the duplicate item to their Stashes, the Stashmatic team will merge the two items and update users' Stashes.
If you would like to suggest modifictions to an existing category's definition, please notify us. Changes to categories have to be carefully considered since other Stashmatic users may have already added items in the category to their stash. For now, only Stashmatic staff can make changes to categories. We are happy to make those changes when appropriate, so please don't hesiate to send in your suggestions.
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How do I work with items in my stash?
How can I search for items at Stashmatic?
The Stashmatic search capabilities are constantly improving.
There are currently three methods of searching and filtering your stash or the shared community database. All three may be accessed on the browse page .
- Keyword Search: When you search the database by keyword, Stashmatic searches only the titles of items in the database.
- Tag Search: When you search the database by tag, Stashmatic displays items which have been tagged with the search term.
- Category Filter: By entering a category name in the category filter, Stashmatic will only search items within that category. Note that as you type a category name into the filter's input box, Stashmatic will display category names that contain the text that you have typed so far.
The search box at the top of every page is a Keyword Search only. To search by tags or filter by categories, you should visit the browse page.
How do I add an item to my stash?
First, search the community database to see if that the item already exists. If it does, click on the search result to visit the item's page. On that page, you may click on of the buttons in the "My Inventory" box in the upper-right hand corner of the page.
If the item does not exist in the community database, you may add it. Select "add items" from the menu bar, look at option 2 on the Add Item page, and enter the category of your item. You will then be taken to a form to provide the information for your item. When you have done so, the item will be added to the shared community database and you will have the option of simultaneously adding it to your personal stash.
If the category does not exist in the community database, you may define the category. Select "add items" from the menu bar, look at option 3 on the Add Item page, and select "Create a New Category."
My item is special or unique (it is autographed, etc.). How should I enter it?
Stashmatic offers choices on how to handle this. We see a big difference between generic items that have "no value" unless they are autographed (baseballs, scraps of paper), and items that are already collectible that
have also been autographed or are unique in some other way.
Generic Items: We would suggest creating a new category if one does not exist already -- one such category could be "autographed baseballs", for example.
Collectible Items: For items that are already collectible in their own right, we would not recommend creating a separate category for autographed items, as the information about that item may already be elsewhere in the database. Instead, please note in your "condition" or "notes" about individual items in your stash if they are autographed or unqiue in some way.
Personal Information
How do I edit my profile?
To edit your profile, log into your Stashmatic account, then click on your username in the upper right corner of the screen. You may use the second-level yellow menu to navigate through the different areas of your profile.
How do I keep my Stash private?
Your privacy and your trust are of the utmost importance to us. As such, we make an important distinction between information about an item in the shared database and your personal ownership information of that item. You may choose to keep certain categories of your stash, or your entire stash private. Go to the Privacy Settings to change these personalized settings. If you choose to keep certain categories or your entire stash private, you may continue to enter information into the community database, but no one will know that you own the items you entered.
You can read our full privacy policy.
Can other users see my real name or email address?
No, your real name and email address are kept private. If you interact with other Stashmatic users on our site, they will only see your username and will have no way of identifying you. We will be introducing a messaging system that will let you send messages to other Stashmatic users while still keeping your email address private. Stashmatic will never give or sell your email or any other personal information about you to anyone without your specific permission.
I forgot my password
Please go here to retrieve your password -- that link is also available on the login page.
Can I export my information out of Stashmatic?
This feature is coming soon.
Community Members
How do I view someone else's profile and Stash?
Select the people link in the top menu bar. From there you may browse and search the list of members. Click on a member's username to view his or her profile, click on the "View Stash" link to view that person's public Stash directly.
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What size and type of images can I upload?
Stashmatic supports JPEG and GIF image file types. The size limit for an individual image uploaded to Stashamtic is 500 MB. We recommend setting your camera to its lowest resolution for pictures you take to put on Stashmatic.