Hot off the press - Latest News!!
08.08.2011: Due to personal health problems I have not been able to upload the material as I intended. Additionally, because of my increasing mobility problems, it was decided that I would be rehoused from my house to a bungalow. Initially, it was envisaged that the time frame would be in the latter part of the year or even early next year (2012) but as it transpired, the initial move was arranged for just two weeks from the original decision to move me. Consequently, I had no time to pack up my home before I started moving. However, I have now started to settle in to my new home and now as time permits I will continue to add new items to the store. I am hoping to populate many more areas of the store over the next few months and I refer you to my previous posting in relation to the material I am intending to upload. For those who have had to wait whether it be customer or new members, I offer my apologies for any delays that may have occurred.
11.01.2011: I have as time permits continued to add new items to the store and although some items have already been sold I have increased the the items For Sale to 1091. I am hoping to populate many more areas of the store over the coming months and in particular I will be looking to add material to Japan, Finland, Czechoslovakia, Hong Kong, Hungary, Netherlands & Yugoslavia. If any of these countries are within your collecting sphere, then I am sure I will be able to whet your appetite in due course. As always - keep well and happy hunting!!
06.01.2011: It has been around six weeks since I closed the store so that I could undertake a major revamp and rebuild of the stores core systems. I hope you approve of the new layout and the page design. It seemed appropriate that as the humble match is made of wood that I should use a template that makes full use of wood in its design. I believe that the design of the store bodes well for the future and is pleasing and comfortable on the eye.
I am pleased to announce that I have managed to meet my opening day target and in fact the store is open now for business. There are a number of tweaks I have yet to do and it is important that they are done as it enables all visitors to take full advantage of the detailed information that accompanies all the elements of the store.
In rebuilding the store, I wanted to be able to inform visitors about the different aspects of the hobby besides just putting labels on pages to sell. For those looking to buy, I think it is important where possible to give as much information as one can about the labels or other phillumenic material they are looking at. To me, it is essential that customers should be informed if a particular label is scarce or not, whether there is more than one of the same design and also whether there any major differences between one label and the next. It is also important that details relating to the quality and age of a label should be displayed if such information is known.
Throughout the pages you will be presented with letter and number codes. Some are in red and some are in blue. These letters and numbers are unique in that they relate specifically to the Worldwide Encyclopaedia I am building. They are known as Label Identity Tags (LIT's|) and once allocated remain permanently attached to the labels they are allocated to. For those who are interested inmy encyclopaedia, I will in due course be producing a paper which I will upload to the web. This will explain in detail my encyclopaedia project. The red and blue text is also important as Label Identity Tags in Red refer to mint/unused labels and when printed in Blue refer to used label.
17.12.2010: I have been advised by my hosting company that they will be operating a limited support service over the Christmas & New Year Period. Part of the security of the store for my customers is to have in place a Secure Socket Layer (SSL) which encrypts all transactions in real time and secures all personal data in the same manner. The SSL functionality is part and parcel of the stores "back end services" and therefore will not be in place until the 6th January 2011. This will therefore delay the stores opening date by an additional 5 days - however, I think everyone will agree - the wait will be worth it!! The countdown calender has therefore been adjusted to the new day of 6th January 2011.
11.12.2010: I am pleased to say that although labourious, I am gradually beginning to upload more and more labels to the store. Hopefully by the last day of the countdown I will have uploaded enough diversive material to whet the appetite of any visitor to the site. To see at a glance what areas have so far been worked on, please select from the "Important Links Sidebox" item 14. Detailed Site Map. This is a tree menu of the whole store and shows all the branches that have been added to the Categories section since the commencement of the rebuild. It is important to note however that any entries with a small + sign next to them indicates that a section has been prepared but is currently unpopulated. Many thanks to you all for your patience - I think the wait will be worth it!!
Important Information!! Welcome to the new Sussex Matchbox Labels eCommerce Store. If you have visited here before you will immediately notice the store has had a makeover. This is part of the upgrade that was mentioned in the advance bulletin posted on the old store. In addition, it was originally envisaged that the new store would be hosted on a new server. However, after running a number of speed tests with a bare bones mock store on the new server, it became quickly apparent that the page load speeds were so slow as to be totally unacceptable for me or my visitors. Having spoken to my current hosting company, I am confident that with the brand new state of the art servers they have recently installed, they will meet all the needs and more of my 'niche' products and therefore I have taken the conscious decision to keep my store with them.
I was hoping that I could keep my old store running and upgrade on the fly so to speak (that is to upgrade whilst the store is still functioning). However, a number of technical issues made this impossible and therefore, it became necessary for me to remove the old store so that I could build the new store from scratch
