hobbyDB members can earn special badges to proudly display on their Showcase. One of these is the hobbyDB Owner Badge which is given to members that who have invested in the company:
Read on to see the full collection!
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Volunteer Squad Badges
Most of our Badges are only available to Volunteer Squad members — the collectors who keep hobbyDB up-to-date and help build the site. Let us know if you're interested in helping out! We'd love to have you on board!
Squad Roles
There are five different Squad roles that come with different abilities and privileges, each building upon the previous role — Contributor, Creator, Curator, Champion, and Coordinator:
Pin Masters, the subset of the Squad responsible for Hard Rock Cafe items, have slightly different roles — Pin Creator, Pin Master Apprentice, Pin Master Curator, and Pin Master Advisory Board:
Plus the Shot Glass Curator:
Achievement Badges
One of the ways we show appreciation for work our Squad members do is by awarding achievement badges at various milestones.
Note that these badges don't stack, so if you had the 100 Price Points Added badge and then earn the 1,000 badge it will replace the 100 badge.
Just a heads-up — we have to manually assign all badges (i.e. they're not automatically assigned), so if you've earned one and don't see it on your Showcase, please let us know and we'll make sure you get it right away!
Price Points Added
All Squad members can earn these badges by adding Price Points:
Database Items Added
Creators can earn these badges by adding items to the database. You can tell that our designer is from Rome (hence the Roman legion theme...)
Verification
Curators can earn these badges when they improve the database by Verifying Database Items and Verifying Subjects:
Quests
Sometimes when we identify specific areas of the database that can use some improvement we'll set up Quests that Squad members can choose to pursue. Completing a Quest increases the member's Quest Level (sometimes by more than one level at a time if the Quest is especially involved). Here are examples of some of the Quest Level badges:
Data Bounties
We frequently receive requests from members to add new items to the database when they find something we're missing. Sometimes we'll post these requests as Data Bounties in the Volunteer Squad Facebook group, and each one that's completed earns the member a Bounty Level increase:
Rare Badges
While all Squad members can earn the badges above, there are also several rare badges that have special qualifiers or can only be obtained if you're in the right place at the right time...
Official Badges
These badges are reserved for accounts that have an official relationship with hobbyDB:
- The Official Account badge is for collectible brands that have partnered with hobbyDB to add their data or verify that their data is correct.
- The Team hobbyDB badge is for hobbyDB staff members (those are the folks who should be able to help you with technical problems).
- The hobbyDB Advisory Council badge is for members of our Advisory Council, an international panel of product category experts from across the collecting spectrum who provide data and imagery from their own collections and help develop category taxonomy and ontology.
Beyond the Squad
These badges are given to members who help out in areas beyond the normal Squad member scope of adding data to the site.
- The Guinea Pig badge goes to folks who help us a lot with testing.
- The Bug Finder badge is for chaps who are just very good at finding our mistakes and helping us to correct them.
- The Untouchables is an elite group that helps us investigate attempted price manipulations and identify fake Pops.
- Guest Blog Authors are esteemed members who share their knowledge with the community by writing features for the hobbyDB or Pop Price Guide blogs (read more about this here).
- hobbyDB is always growing and improving, and many of the ideas for new features and improvements come from our members. When we especially like those ideas we might reward the member with the Full of Good Ideas badge.
- The moderators in our PPG Community & Marketplace group on Facebook get a special badge for their excellent work.
- The Superhero Efforts badge can be awarded to members who go above and beyond to help make hobbyDB the best resource in the world for collectors!
Just for Fun
And lastly, we sometimes we'll just give out a fun custom badge. Those are often but not always self-explanatory:
Special Honors (Including Retired Badges)
Many other sites have joined us and sometimes key members of those sites are honored with a specific badge. Early Supporters (retired badge) were early and enthusiastic users of hobbyDB who helped get the site off the ground. Diecastlovers (also a retired badge) joined in February 2015, the Toy Collector App joined in June 2020 (some TCA Alumni are still trickling in, so that badge is still occasionally granted to new members) and, most recently, The Toy Peddler officially became part of hobbyDB in September 2022.
From time-to-time we have events like the Price Squad Record Day or the Member of the Month. These specific badges are retired.
There are many more still available, though! Why not start collecting now?