Why Donate to TroveStar?

Hundreds of folks visit TroveStar each and every day to research more than 30 collections, such as Mexican Silver, Erte Sculptures, U.S. Coins and Model Trains. They access reference data, images and background information on over 62,600 items.

Since 2015, the TroveStar team has worked hard at making this collectors' resource available. George Michaels built the TroveStar website because he loves collecting (pens, stamps, coins, model trains) and wanted to create a general purpose wiki-style collecting site where people could share their knowledge on collectibles. A small handful of volunteer contributors and curators who love sharing their knowledge help populate the site with data. George, of course, works hard every day (seven days a week!) adding content, new functionality and fixing bugs.

To be sure, it is satisfying to see website traffic consistently rise over these past years. We are thrilled so many people find value in TroveStar, a Not-For-Profit Massachusetts-based Limited Liability Company. The number of daily visitors tells us that lots of collectors regard TroveStar as a valuable resource. So, we have we recently decided to ask our website visitors for monetary donations as a way to help defray some of our operating costs. TroveStar like any website venture has expenses including website hosting, graphics and specialized tech support but it has a tiny revenue stream (through links to eBay, which we believe add value for collectors). We would truly appreciate it if folks could help us offset some of our overhead expenses by clicking on the newly-added Donate button on our site.

Getting Value & Giving Back
Lots of folks use TroveStar to help track their collection, do pricing research or just learn more about their collectibles. It would be great if everyone who used the data from TroveStar to help them manage their collections, price an item to sell, or have a better idea of how much to pay for an item, took some time out to 'give back.' We've made it very easy for folks to enrich existing data and share what they know. And we truly appreciate all the hard work from our volunteer contributors and curators. However, not everyone has the time, inclination or patience to add data to TroveStar. So we are offering website users another way to show how much they value TroveStar: monetary donations.

Please feel free to donate any amount of money. It all helps when it comes to making sure site performance is fast, security is strong and backups are done regularly. However, if there is something specific you would like to see listed or uploaded on TroveStar, such as an obscure manufacturer's work or imagery, please feel free to make a 'directed' contribution to your particular area of interest. It all helps.

We could sprinkle garbage advertisements all over the site and show people things that they do not want to see or buy. We find many of these ads on other sites to be aggressive and offensive. Instead we are seeking out a few select advertisers who offer products and services directly pertaining to the collections they will advertise with. We don't expect this advertising to come anywhere near covering our costs, so to enhance this very small amount of revenue, we believe it is appropriate to ask folks to help out if they are receiving value from what we do.

Thank you from George and all the TroveStar team :)