I receive emails daily from collectors with scans of new items for the Caribbean ChipGuide (CCG). Some of the scans have just a single item, while others may have many. Some items are from casinos already on the CCG and other items are from casinos that are new to the CCG. Some of the scans are oriented and cropped and ready to go right on the CCG, some scans require a great deal of photo editing. In other words, there are a number of factors that determine how much work will go into adding an item on to the CCG.

Worst Case Scenario (But perhaps the most fun) - The casino is new to the CCG and I have to research the casino and determine the location, when it opened, is it still open or closed, do they have a website, find some scans of the casino and the casino logo and give the casino a casino code. The scan will contain many items, so the scan has to first be cropped into individual images and each image is then given a catalog#. Then each scan has to oriented (tilted so that it is straight up), cropped to the right size and saved. Then the image is saved in a minimized size format and moved into the folder for that country. If the item is not the same on both sides, then the same process has to be done over again and the two scans have to be tied together. I tie them together by giving the reverse scan the same catalog# as the obverse, but add an "x" at the end. Then the item is added to the CCG detailing the info about the item and referencing the images. Finally a news item is added referring to the new casino and the new items. Some times this process can take a 1/2 hour for just one item.

Best Case Scenario - The casino is already in the CCG and the image is already oriented and cropped and one sided. It can take less than a minute to get the new item into the CCG.

I have the development version of the CCG on my PC at home. When I add an item, I reply to the email sender: "Thanks for the scan, the item will added to the CCG with the next update." What does that mean? Well, it means that I added the item to the development CCG and when I have accumulated enough updates, I then upload all of them together to the website. The upload process takes just a few minutes and involves FTP'ing (copying) the images from my PC to the website and saving the database on my PC and then restoring it to the website. I then check every update on the website to make sure that everything worked the way it was supposed to.

I try to get easy items on the CCG the same day I receive them. More difficult items may take a few days or more, depending on my workload. But this is all fun, fun, fun.