After a little over 15 months, countless hours of my own time and 30+ hours of paid assistance, I've finally gotten the Edgar Church Collection Data project to a point where I can release it.
What have I done so far? I've merged the original master list with an old list of CGC grades for the collection. On top of that I've added (with the aforementioned assistance) dates and publishers to over 99% of the titles.
I underestimated how long this would take when I started this in 2014. That's one of the reasons I ended up hiring folks to help out. I just wanted to get it to this point so that when I add/updated data it's already in a format that people can use. Even now we've identified some areas of the data that need double checking. I just didn't want to wait any longer. I'm never going to get to 100% accuracy, so holding out to move the needle from 95% to 97% before releasing it seemed like nonsense.
Right now the project offers two different options for end users:
- A CSV containing all the data. You can open this in Excel or another program and play with the data as you will. Also available as a zip file.
- A series of browseable resources on the github site:
Please check it out. At this point I'm actively soliciting errata and additions. If you're Github savvy, please just open issues on Github. If not, feel free to email me with any updates or corrections.
The data is released under an Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) license. Which means it's free to use (even commercially) as long as you give me proper attribution.
As an aside, if you appreciate this work (or any of the other work I've done for the hobby) please consider making a donation to Mass Bike, a cycling non-profit. Fear not, I'll keep doing this sort of thing for the love of the hobby. But if you want to pay me back in a way that I'll really appreciate, that's the best way to do it.
By Jeff from GoCollect April 8, 2016 - 12:35 pm
Hey Rob – at GoCollect we capture a large amount of data surrounding sales and associated CGC cert info. Feel free to reach out if you see any opportunity for us to help with the cause here.
– Jeff
By Rob April 8, 2016 - 10:21 pm
Thanks for reaching out. Right now I'm trying to update the CGC grades for the Church collection so any data you've got on that will be very welcome.
By Jeff from GoCollect April 9, 2016 - 7:55 am
We can tap into the CGC API if you've got a csv file of the cert #'s. Feel free to email me direct and I'd be happy to take a closer look.
By Rob April 11, 2016 - 9:04 am
It's the other way, unfortunately. I'm trying to get the full list of CGC graded Church together, so no cert #s to pull from.
By May 2016 Heritage Signature Auction Preview | It's All Just Comics April 21, 2016 - 6:10 pm
[…] with the whole running and fundraising for the Boston Marathon thing and got the first round of Edgar Church data released so I've got some time to do a good old-fashioned auction preview for the first time […]
By Luke February 13, 2020 - 9:09 am
Hi Rob , first of thank you for making this . I have a question the "MHC Price " is it the price for which the book was sold by Chuck ?
By Rob Larsen February 13, 2020 - 9:47 am
Yes, it's the price listed in the catalog.