Help
Here are some questions asked by the collectors we had test the system...and the answers. Other questions and answers will be posted here as they come in. Note: One good way to find what you're interested in is to use the "FIND (on this page)" function of Internet Explorer. You will find it at the top left of the screen under EDIT. Just type in a word and hit FIND NEXT. If that doesn't work try another word you think might apply to your problem. If this help section doesn't answer your question email us directly and we will try to help. It would probably be worth your while to take a few moments to read this section entirely. It should answer most questions you have and give you a better understanding how things work. Good collecting and thanks for using germanmilitariacollectibles.com How much does it cost? One annual membership fee of $25 and you have full use of our web site. You can run as many ads or auctions as you wish... no limit, answer the ads,buy items and bid in the auctions. You have unlimited use of the site. You can even be a Featured Seller without paying anything extra for it.... And that's like haveing your own militaria web site. Best of all, we don't nickle and dime you for every thing you do and there are no commissions. All this for about $2 a month. You won't find a better deal that that! Who are you? Your webmaster is Bob Treend of Houston, Texas. I started actively collecting one month after I graduated from collage in 1972. In 1974 I saw the need for, and started publishing a monthly tabloid magazine called "Der Gauleiter" (you old timers remember it) where collectors and dealers could buy and sell Third Reich militaria. This was before the days of the internet and so it was sent out by mail the first week of each month. I continued to publish it every month, never failing to get it out, for the next 20 years. Finally, other business affairs started taking up so much of my time that in the mid 1990s, I had no choice but to pass it on the Leo Watermeire of New Orleans. For the next few years I became somewhat inactive in the hobby, but never lost my love of it. A few years ago I retired and started looking at militaria on the net. I was not all that impressed with what was available to collectors in the way of a site where they could buy, sell or auction their own militaria. The high commissions and poorly done websites just didn't seem to cut it as far as I was concerned. If you will excuse me for saying so, I thought I could do better. The site you are on right now is my effort to prove it. This is an ongoing project and will never be "finished". I work on it every day and am doing everything I can think of to make it the best militaria site on the web. P.S. There is someone here in Texas who goes by the name "Der Gauleiter" on the web. This is NOT me and I have no association with this site or person. Bob I can't seem to sign-up and create an account or renew my subscription...What's wrong? It could be several things. Make sure you filled in all required fields on the sign-up form and that you used your "real" email address. Sorry, no fake emails allowed! If we don't have your REAL email address you can't communicate with the other members to buy and sell. If you feel you are not receiving emails from us, it is probably because you used a bad email address or you have a "Safe" or "Approved" list in your email program and we are not on it. If you think this is the problem then you need to add: info@germanmilitariacollectibles.com to the list. If you are still having problems, then email us and we'll try to help. Another common reason for sign-up and subscription renewal problems is user error. Paypal is the easiest way to pay, but if you want to use a credit card you have to be extra careful in fulling out the information. Make sure your name is exactly the way it is on the card. And your address should match the credit card company's records. Also, make real sure you type in the correct card number and expiration date. Any errors and the transaction will be declined by the processing company. If it is declined the first time, I suggest you try again. If it doesn't work the second time... you have a problem. I would suggest you use Paypal. Finally... Don't be concerned with security as our system is completely encrypted and your card info is perfectly safe. I doubt the KGB could get at it ! I just joined but when I try to log-in it asks me to pay again. What gives? I've seen this before. What's probably happening is that you computer is pulling up an old page from it's cache instead of the fresh page. Try clearning out your cache and refreshing your browser and see it that fixes it. If not, please let me know and we'll do whatever it takes to fix it. Explain the "Reserve Bid" when posting an auction. This is the lowest bid you will accept for the item. Your reserve will not appear in the listing. All auctions start at $0.00. When someone first bids on your item the computer will record the bid and make it the current bid, and will advance from there as other bids come in. However, it will show "Reserve not met" until your reserve bid is met. The item will not sell until your reserve is met. If there are bids but not one meets the reserve your item will be unsold. The auction I just posted does not appear when I look at ALL AUCTION ITEMS. This is a problem that can appear when looking at many different pages. It's not something wrong with our system, but a function of Internet Explorer. What is happening is that when you click on a page your browser is not showing you the updated page, but is showing you the page in it's cache or temporary internet files. To fix this on your browser go to "Tools" then "Internet Options" and you'll see "Temporary Internet Files" and "Settings". In the "Settings" make sure "Automatically" is checked. This should solve the problem. I just signed up but I can't contact a seller. What's wrong? Probably you didn't activate your account by going to the email we sent to your listed email address and clicking on the link. Try that and if it still doesn't work let us know. I bid $10 above the amount shown as the high bid but it says I've been out bid. I don't understand. What probably happened is the other bidder had put in a much higher bid than was shown but it was knocked down to one increment above the previous bid. When you bid the system saw that there was already a higher bid for the item and raised the bid. You need to bid again if you still want the item. How long do auctions and ads run? We will run your auction for 10 days from the time you submit it. Ads are set to run for 365 days. After that they are deleted from our site, however you may resubmit it. If you sell the item in your FOR SALE AD you should go to MY ACCOUNT and delete the ad yourself so other collectors won't be trying to buy the item. What about repros? You may post them for sale. All repros must be clearly marked as such in the ad/auction and they should be listed in the categories for repros only. Ads for repros found in the "original" categories will be deleted. We allow repros, we don't allow fraud! What are the "increments" all about? We have set the program to raise bids by certain amounts. Items with bids from $1 to $99 are raised in increments of $1. From $100 to $999 the raise increment is $5. And from $1000 on up the increment is $10. We don't think it would make much sence to raise a multi-thousand dollar item by only $1 at a time. If an item has a bid of $1500 and you bid $1501 the computer will not accept it, you will have to go to at least $1510 in order to raise. What is the "Seller's Template"? The Seller's Template is a time saver! If you are selling or auctioning items on our site you can fill out the Seller's Template with your shipping and payment information and then tell it to "update". (Go to MY ACCOUNT and then to PERSONAL DATA.) Now this info is saved and when you're listing items all you have to do is click the little box that says USE MY SELLER'S TEMPLATE and our system will automatically include this info in your listing. This saves you having to fill in this information over and over again when selling items. You can edit or change your template at any time or if you have an item that has different shipping requirements than usual, you can simply "not" click on USE MY SELLER'S TEMPLATE and fill in the info manually. Then with the next item you can go back to using it. Try it, you'll like it! I sold an item in the auction and the seller won't pay me. What can I do? We can't force someone to pay for something, but we do want to know about any "deadbeats" using our service. If he has no legitimate reason for not paying and you can't come to an agreement we would like to know about it. People who do not honor their agreements have no business on our site (or in our hobby) and we can take action to exclude them from the site. But try to settle before you contact us. What is the feedback all about? Unlike Ebay, where only the buyer can post feedback about the item he bought, and the seller answer, with our system any member can post feedback about any other member at any time... as long as he can find an ad/auction by that person. I've never tried to put photos on the web. Any suggestions? It's really not difficult, and we did everything we could to make our system as easy as possible. For one thing, you don't have to find another web site to "host" your photos like you do on some auctions. We load the photos right from your hard drive and put them on our server. The first thing you need is a camera, and digital is the only way to go. You can pick one up almost anywhere. It doesn't need to be a fancy or expensive model, even the most basic will work fine for militaria pics. Super high resolution is not a factor because our system will reduce the pics to 50K anyway (which is enough). If you want to get a camera on the cheap, try a used camera store or even Ebay. After you take the pics just transfer them into a file on your hard drive. When you post an item the system will ask you if you want to include pictures and you simply follow the instructions. Its really very easy. The only other thing that comes to mind is that you might want to "tweek" the pictures before you download them. Sometimes you might want to adjust the contrast or brightness, maybe crop the pic etc.... Windows Explorer itself will let you do some of these things. When you "preview" a picture there is an edit function among the icons at the bottom of the screen. Try that and see if it does what you want. If that's not good enough, then you will need a "real" photo editing program. The best is Adobe Photo Shop, but for our needs that's like going mouse hunting with a cannon. I use Paint Shop Pro 5 for all my image work and I think it's great. If you search the web you might even find a free copy to download. I'll be happy to answer any questions you have about photos... if I can. Just drop me an email.... Note: When listing items with photos be sure you don't have other programs running that are downloading or uploading data. This can cause a sever slowdown. I'm having trouble putting pictures with my ads and auction items. What's wrong? Probably nothing with our system.... we've tested the heck out of it! Make sure you're putting the pictures in a folder on your computer and that you are telling the system the correct file. We have set a size limit on pictures of 50K each, so you might want to reduce the file size of pictures if they are very much above that. However, our system is set to automatically reduce the size of pictures that are above 50k. Smaller pictures will load faster. Also, make sure the picture is in a format that the system accepts, such as a .jpg for example. Read the instructions on the add photo page carefully and you should be able to figure it out. You can teach youself how to post pictures by putting "bogus" items in the TEST catagory. You will find an explanation of the TEST category in this section. Just search for TEST using the FIND function of your browser and you should locate it. After you once learn to post items you will find that it is a very fast and efficient system. It's so easy a caveman could do it! Note: When listing item with photos be sure you don't have other programs running that are downloading or uploading data. This can cause a sever slowdown. How do I keep track of the auction items I'm bidding on and selling? You can keep track of them in the MY ACCOUNT area under ACTIVE AUCTIONS. Or you could simply create a file in your FAVORITES on your browser and keep them there. I want to list an auction item in two categories. If someone bids on it in one category will that bid also be recorded on the item in the other catagory? Absolutely! And the system will only sell it to one winner... the person who bids highest in either catagory. Do I have to ship or mail my items to germanmilitariacollectibles.com to be included in the auction? No! You retain possession of your items until they are sold and paid for, then you send them to the buyer. This is really the best way. You don't have to pay shipping to us (and return shipping if it doesn't sell). No waiting for months to get your money, you have your money before you part with the item. And because it requires less work on the auctioneer's part you don't have to pay those sky high auction commissions. Why should I use your auction instead one of the other auctions? One reason is cost. If you advertise or auction an item here and it does not sell... what have your lost? Nothing! If it does sell you get all the proceeds. Also, have you looked at "THE GIANT AUCTION" lately for German militaria? They don't really want our collectibles and are more concerned with being "politically correct"? We want your German militaria... and pictures with swastikas are ok! Why should I sign up? germanmilitariacollectibles.com is a group of collectors and dealers who participate in the buying and selling of military collectables. To buy, sell or trade through this site you must sign up as a member. By joining you are showing the other members that you are a real person and a serious collector, not just "Lookie-lu" with an email address. Our members want to do business! Who can view my information? Only you know your password. When you responde to an ad, ask another member a question, buy an item etc., your name and email address will be displayed. Your street address, phone number etc. is for our records only, and only you can give it to another member, or post it in an ad. We will not sell or give your address, e-mail etc. to anyone so don't be concerned about spam or sales calls. We value your membership! How do I sign up? Just fill out the sign-up form and pick a Username and Password. You will find a link to it on the Home page. How can I change my password? You can change your password or any other information on your profile by going to the UPDATE PROFILE section. I forgot my user name and password, what do I do? Go to the FORGOT MY PASSWORD link. Submit the form giving the email address you used to sign-up. Our automated system will send your username and password to that email address. If you have problems you can email us directly and we'll try to help. What is the TEST category on the list of auction items? We put this category here so you can practice listing auction items or ads (if you need to) before you actually list a real item. You can place an auction or ad for a "widget" and put a picture of your dog if you wish... just to see now it works. When you have the procedure down pat you can then go to the "real" categories and start listing you militaria. Items in TEST will not appear when you click Gallery or All Auction or For Sale items. You will have to go to TEST to view them. And these items will not accept bids. Please! Don't abuse this feature by posting anything objectionable. Thanks. I posted an ad and now I see I made a mistake in the ad. What do I do? Go to your account then pull up your ad. You will find an EDIT button next to the ad. Click on it and you will be able to make changes. Be sure to save your changes after you make them. If you decided not to sell the item then instead of clicking on EDIT you can use the DELETE button and when it asks you if you're sure just click OK and the ad will be gone. If you go back to check and be sure it's gone don't forget to refresh the page so you won't be looking at the old page your computer pulled up from its cache. Note: Although we won't say you can't do it, it would be better if you did not delete an auction item after it has been listed. This is especially so if there are bids on the item. Deleteing it will make the bidders wonder what happened and will probably result in some confusion and emails to you or us. If you do find that you must delete an auction item please send us an email telling us you are going to do it so when people ask what happened we will know what to tell them. My ad copy did not come out just the way I typed it... why? For security reasons (to keep the hackers out) we have disabled certain characters so they can not be used in ads (like the ones about the numbers on your keyboard). Unfortunately these are used by hackers to write scripts which allow them to get into the administration areas of web sites and screw them up. If you see a mistake after posting your ad you can always go back and edit it. I can't say which characters are disallowed because we change them frequently for security. Use of these special characters can cause an error message when trying to post an ad. If you get an error message try deleting all special characters and see if that fixes it. The item I offered didn't sell, can I try again? Yes. Simply go to MY ACCOUNT then to COMPLETED AUCTIONS or EXPIRED ADS. Find the listing and tell it to REPOST. You can even make changes to the new listing. If it doesn't sell after 2 trys we suggest you post it as a for sale ad and not just keep re-posting an auction. What is the GALLERY I see on the home page? The GALLERY is a listing of the "first" photo that appears in the auctions and ads. Newly listed items appear first. When you click on a photo it will take you to that item and you can procede from there. This is a quick way to see what's new. What is your NEWSLETTER I see mentioned? We will be sending out the NEWSLETTER by email once or twice a month (or when we get to it!). Our intention is to keep you informed of anything about our site we think you should or would like to know. Things like improvements or modifications to the program and it's features (we have some already planned for the future), features and articles we intend to publish about collecting and even new goodies for sale, if we feel they are something extra special. It could contain anything. Why don't you put a larger link on the various pages to go back to the home page? All I see is the tiny one at the bottom of the pages. There is one. On every page all you have to do is click on the large GERMAN MILITARIA COLLECTIBLES logo in the upper left corner of the page, and zoom, you're back to the home page! I'm not getting emails from members about auction items I've sold or bought. If you're buying and selling on our site then you probably don't have this problem. However, sometimes people change their email address or get a new provider and problems happen. So here goes... Most likely the problem is with your email server. If you have an "Approved" or "Safe" list, make sure that you have our e-mail address on it.... All enquiries are forwarded through: info@germanmilitariacollectibles.com. If this address is not on your list, your email server is probably blocking incoming and possibly outgoing emails from us... and the other members. The Blog Unfortunately Google made some changes to the way the blogs operate and we can not publish at this time (spring 2010). We will hopfully be able to publish again in the future. In this section you will find a series of articles on the various aspects of Third Reich militaria collecting. These are intended to introduce the new collector to a preticular area of our hobby and to provide the experienced collector with a refresher course, or perhaps some new info. They are not intended to replace reference books in one's library, but are here to "wet the appetite" of the collectors, and encourage them to aquire the books or magazines they were taken from. Many of these sources are currently available from book dealers, or the publisher, and some are long out of print. In the case of the later, it might take some hunting to aquire them. Militaria shows, other collectors and this web site might be good sources. Most of this info was aquired by scanning pages and running them through an optical character recognition (OCR) program. While this is the most efficient way of aquiring the text, it is not fool-proof and errors are encountered. We have proof read all of these articles and made the corrections we found. However, don't be surprised if you find a mis-spelled word or other error here and there. We could only do so much.... In the case of the photos that accompany the articles, some are from the article itself, while others are photos I added from other sources as I thought appropriate. This feature of germanmilitariacollecibles.com will be an ongoing project. I will add more material as often as it is available and I have time to do so. These first few days I'll post what I have already prepared. One thing I noticed is that when you open the link you will see several articles listed one after the other. These are not the only articles we have posted. Near the top of the page on the right you will see "Previous Posts". Look at the list and you will see the other articles available. Just click on them to view. Below "Previous Posts" you will see "Archives" listed by month. I suggest you look at all three places; the opening page list, the previous posts and the archives to see everything. Have fun! We need material for this feature. If you are an author who has written something about German militaria collecting, and would like to share it with our readers, we would like to see it. You can email a copy to us. Photo copies, scans etc. are also fine. If we use it, and we will try to, you will receive full credit. Be sure you tell us your name, the title, where or who published it (if it was) and the date published. Also, if you have something in your reference collection you think the other collectors would like to see, please let me know and we'll see if we can publish it. Older material from the 60s thru 80s would be especially welcome, and especially items that come from other than the standard reference books. Again, if we can use it we will give you full credit for your contribution. Trading Links If you have a militaria web site and would like to trade links with us. please do the following. First, put a link to our home page in your link section of your site. Then go to our "add your link", located near the bottom of almost every page on our site and fill in the info and submit. After you do that, email me and let me know you want to trade links. (If you don't tell me I won't know about it.) I'll then activate your link on our link page.
Featured Sellers This featue is for full or part time dealers who sell militaria on a regular basis. In order for this feature to work properly, it is necessary that we have some guidelines so everone will understand. There is no charge for being a "Featured Seller". Featured sellers will have their banner displayed in the "Featured Sellers" section. A link to this section will be prominetly displayed on the Home page and My Account page. Clicking on a banner will take the member to a listing of all the items the seller has for sale or auction on our site. If you do not already have a banner, and don't know how to create one, I will be happy to create one for you. Just give me an idea as to what you would like. Banners can be a maximun of 80 x 550 and 15K. If you need help, just email me. There is no limit to the number of items that can be offered, but the seller must have at least 50 items either in the "For Sale" section or "Auction" at all times. Rusty tinnys or broken buttons are not acceptable in making up the 50 items. Items must be of reasonable quality. New items must be offered on a regular basis, and sold items must be removed in a timely manner. The position of the seller's banner will be determined by the number of items listed. The more items, the higher on the list the seller's banner will appear. This is done automatically by the program. If a seller's items drop below 50 his banner will be automatically removed, however, he can resubmit it at any time his total is 50 or more by send us an email. No advertising or posting addresses of any web sites (we have a links section for that). The seller must maintain a good record of relations with our customers. Unresolved complaints are grounds for removal of his banner from the list and removal of his items from our site. We reserve the right to change or modify these guidelines at any time. Tutorial - How to post an ad or auction. You might want to print a hard copy of this to make it easy to refer to. Before you start learning to post you will need an image (or 2 or 3) to use in your test ad. Find an image(s) and put it in a file on your computer. The image can be anything... this is only for learning. Keep it small, say 100K or less. Remember where it is for later use. Now you're ready to start posting your ad. 1. Sign in and you will be sent to "My Account". This is where to start for almost everything. 2. Select what you want to do. Let's post a "For Sale" ad, so select that. 3. In "Category 1" select a category. For learning let's select TEST at the bottom of the listings. Don't bother with "Category 2" right now. 4. Type something in the "Headline" and "Description". We're just learning, so anything will do. Random letters would be fine for testing.... 5. Type an amount in the "Asking price" space. Dollars only, no cents. 6. Click what you want in the Guaranty, Shipping and Method of Payment. (Later you can set up a template to save this step). Now hit "Continue". 7. Next we'll add your images(s) to the ad. Use the "Browse" to find them. Then click on the image you want. The file name of the image you chose should now be in the box next to "Seclect a file to upload". Next we'll load the image to our website's server, so just hit the "Upload Now" button and watch what happens. 8. After a few seconds things will stop blinkin n' flashin, and you will find that it says (in green) that your image has been uploaded. 9. At this point you can "Preview/Confirm", if you're finished uploading images, or you can repeat the process to add other images. When finished hit the "Proceed to Step 3. Preview/Confirm". 10. Take a look at your ad, you can change anything you wish or, if you like it, hit the "Post/Update For Sale Ad". 11. Now your ad is posted. You can go take a look at what you did. Items in the TEST category don't show up in the Gallery, so go directly to the TEST category on the Home Page to see the ad. Posting an auction is about the same as posting an ad. If you can do one, you can do the other. Reading our HELP section would be a good idea. Questions or problems, just email me. Bob Thanks for using: germanmilitariacollectibles.com
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