What was new on www.sadcom.com in 2001

Latest news & additions in 2001:


	Other Old news: April 1998 - April 1999, April 1999 - August 1999, September 1999 - December 1999 and January 2000 - December 2000. * Every little image on this site is linked to a BIGger full screen sized picture !

Current latest news & additions

October 15th, 2001
Pages #9 (mostly MVD), #10 (assorted), #11 (GAI or Police patrool) and #12 (Military patrool) were added . There are some unique and rare badges among them. They are all linked from "KGB badges" page.

this badge is on Page12

9-25-01.Now, it is time for 25 modern dog-tags and patches:

9-24-01.It took me a while to get my act together and add more badges. 32 new Speznaz, Border Guards, MVD and AirBorne related badges. I placed links from to these additions on KGB badges page and Russian Military Badges page.

Also, 3 more badges were added to the "Great Deals" page - follow the link from the front page.

8-8-01.I haven't added any new pins for the last few weeks, but I did a lot of improvements and additions to various parts of the site:

Online collection of postcards from early 20th century on Gatchina (the city where I grew up in Russa) have been completed

Art classes of Marina Olchevskaia are opened.
All Slava's files have been linked to one page
Reports on my vacation on Chincoteague island and
my experience with chemtrails (spooky) have been added.

7-27-01.It has been a while since I added last pins to the online collection. Today, I have added a remarkable set of 8 pins - Uljanov`s family: father Ilja and mother Maria, all Vladimir's brothers and sisters. This set was dedicated to Lenin's birthday 100 years anniversary in 1970. Just go to pins selections page and look up 'Lenin`s family' selection.

This photo on the right is a tag that was attached to the set cover. The pins were manufactured by the "Experimental Creativly-Manufacturing Factory". All the sets were taged and rubber-stamped. I imagine that the number of these sets very limited to several thousands.

By the end of the day, I managed to add 3 more selections: New_Moscow6 (10 pins), New_Variety9 (38 pins) and New_Variety10 (50 pins)

6-27-01.I haven't added any pins today. Though, I posted an essay onKGB badges written by: Shawn M. Caza The link to that essay is also placed on my KGB badges page.

Yesterday, I created a special selection of discounted badges where you can find the best deals in town on various Soviet badges. While supplies last....

Deals & Specials.

6-19-01.About 570 pins on 11 selections have been added : Industry and hard labor, History, Tourism, Sport, Variety, Places of Interest. Just go to pins selections page

I forgot to mention a whole new bunch of commissioned pins were added a week ago. Most of them are modern KGB, MVD, FSB, VDV, GAI, Boder Guards, Speznaz, Paratroopers, OMON and other Military Badges. Follow this link.

6-11-01.25 aviation related pins added.

Aviation5

6-8-01.15 pages with 570 pins added

	Army17 Cartoons5 CCCP9 Holidays3 Lenin26		Lenin27 Leningrad1 Leningrad2 People11 Sport21		Sport22 Sport23 Town17 Variety4 Variety5

03-28-01. 6 pages with 253 pins added

All the pins are Olde Russian town crests. Here are the direct links to the new pages:

03-23-01.Last page with 29 pins added
From now on, I will not be able to pre-sort pins into different selection pages. You can either browse new pages or use a search and filter out the pins based on the descriptive words.

March 21, 2001:

I haven't added any pins since March 9th. About 200 more pins still in works now. Mostly - sport, some Lenin. I added several hundreds Russian watches: Vostok, Slava, Pobeda, though. Please, visit the new additions here.

I also made translations of all the pins` desriptions into English and Spanish. You can even search using Spanish and Russian words and expressions.

Here is an unorganized list of about 100 popular Russian melodies. Listen or download. I will be using placing them on relevant pages on the site later.

If you need to ask a question, links to call a form are placed around the site. Click here to open a form.

March 9, 2001:
	I75 new pins in space23, 24, 25 selections added .

March 6, 2001:

It was easier than I expected.

I finally built the filtering and searching capabilities into pin selection process. Now you can opt to see only available pins on the `selection` pages (My online collection is split into themes, like: Lenin, Sport, etc. Every theme can have up to 25 'selection' pages with 30 - 50 pins on each page). Secondly, you can type a keyword (or keywords) and found only the pins which description includes that keyword or ALL keywords. I am afraid to implement the search through the complete collection as it can stress the web server too much. Also, that could bring a whole lot of pins in your seacrh results. Taking into consideration that every thumbnail picture is between 3-5Kb in size, just 30 pins will give about 150Kb combined size to download. What if your search will unearth 300 pins on the selected keyword ? Depending on the feedback, I can make the search run on the whole theme, instead of just one selection page and limit the number of pins to display per search results page. Send me your comments

Don't forget to check the new items: Soviet heavy (from tanks and infantry carriers) night vision equipment and stainless steel flasks.

February 21, 2001:

I use this email that I sent in the morning to one of the visitors. It may answer many of your questions.

Dear Sir.

Thank you for visiting my site and your order. Have you been to my site before ?
Coincidentally, just yesterday I finished posting and updating a huge number of new pins on my site. Together with implementing new scripts and the layout that the pins are displayed, this could introduce new problems with browsing and ordering... Could you, please, tell me your comments (and frustrations) about your experience ?

On the bright side, though: your order was not lost. Before the customer has a chance to register the purchase at the checkout and provide a permanent order name, the system captures the IP address of the computer that does the selection and use it for tracking the ordered items. So, you can use this page to see what was on your order (I removed a couple of pins that were unavailable): www.sadcom.com/pins/myorder.htm The name of your first order is: 111.222.333.444

After your computer restarted and you went back to my site, your computer was assigned a different IP address dynamically by your ISP. That is why you were not able to find a previous order. So, the second order name is: 555.666.777.888 (there are 4 more pins on it). Use the same page to look its contents.

I haven't finished the script that would let you edit your previous orders yet. Just send me an email and tell which pins you don't want. You can calculate the total for the pins that you still want to purchase. Add $3.75 for Priority mail or $2.50 for insured 1st class mail shipping to the total;
Send a check or a money order to:
Felix Olchevski, PO Box 650143, Potomac Falls, VA 20165

You can also pay with a credit card on-line through the service of www.PayPal.com Their service is free and it expedite the order as I will mail it the next day.

Don't hesitate to email me if you have any questions. As soon as I am done with updating the rest of the site (posters, watches, etc.), I am planning to send an email to all previous customers (several hundreds) advertising the new stuff. In this email, I will offer 5% discount or a set of 11 Soviet army and air force patches for $5.00 to all customers who responds to the invitation and visit my site afterwards. You can take me on that offer now. Recalculate the order using 5% discount before adding the shipping cost or add $5 for the set of patches (here is a link to the patches: ) yourself.

Sincerely,
Slava Olchevski

-----Original Message-----
Subject: Message from site visitor
Text: I spent aproximately an hour and a half assembling a cart full of pins when my computer started having problems. When I restarted and whent back to your site, the pins I had chosen were now marked reserved and I could'nt reselect them.

February 20, 2001:

OK, folks. I did it. Now all the pages that display pins selection are dynamically built using the up-to-the-minute information on price and availability . Only, if you want to look at the old selection page which is linked to static pages, use that link: As soon as I am finished with adding description to the newly added pins (which will also be stored in the databse), I will make a script that will search though the description and build pages based on your criteria. You will be able to use bollean expression and exclude sold pins, for example. And please, don't hesitate to send me your comments. I appreciate (and agree with) the note I received earlier today:

Man your ordering suck's i try to buy a patch #s11 and it gives me all this crap, all i want is to buy the patch if u can contact me that please do becouse i realy want that patch. thank you

You notes and observation help me to get the site better. Do you think the new format of displaying many thumbnails on a page is better than the previous one where the thumbnails were displayed in a frame and the bigger images were opened in another frame ?

Slava.

February 13, 2001:

Here is a "secret" link to new pins selection page which is linked to dynamically updated pages with current availability and prices on the displayed pins: www.sadcom.com/pins/sets/index.htm The page looks exactly the same as the current pin selection page.www.sadcom.com/pins/sets/frames.htm I am testing the new scripts which drive the selection process right now and as soon as I am satisfied, I will replace the old one.

February 6, 2001:

Ladies and gentlemen.

For the past month I've been working on new arrivals. In a couple of weeks about 2300 pins will be added to the online collection. This is about 1/3 of the current amount. There are pins on all themes, this time I also added pins of the former Baltic republics: Estonia, Latvia and Lietuva; rare pins from Cuba, East Germany, Mongolia.. It is a long process as it consists of many steps - starting from scanning and image processing to creating final pages, framesets and associated scripts.

I hope to fulfill my last year promise soon - 10.000 pins online.

At the same time, I would like to introduce some modifications and enhancements. They will be applied only to the newly added sections. The list of modifications includes:

Every page will be dynamicly updated from a database with a current availability status;
Better search tool - order right from search results;
Cascading Style Sheets - for uniform look and feel;
I am open for your suggestions - (send them from here) When you experience problems with a site navigation, viewing or ordering, please - tell me
I also have some ideas that haven't come to fruition yet. Would it be nice to have a place where visitors can leave comments for the rest to see on every page depicting a pin ? Since many of the Soviet/Russian places, celebrities, facts are virtually unknown to the general public in the rest of the world, this ability can add a lot of informational value to the image.

January 18, 2001:
	Good morning! Good afternoon ! and Good evening ! It is nice to start a new millenium recovering from a nasty flu. Luckily, I will not be sick every millenium. So, thanks to the essential oils, I am live and kicking again. My first kick was at a set of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin photographs. I use them to illustrate Lenin's pins, but you can also browse through them here too. The second kick was at the oldest Soviet pin that I ever had. I can't even tell exactly what is the pin about. Please, send me a note if you know anything about it. I am sure that it is extremely rare and value it at $200 so far. Have a look, please.
Here are the last year "NEWS": January 2000 - December 2000

link to Soviet memorabilia and collectibles: pins, watches, etc. Back to a front page.pins,Russian,Soviet,patches, badges, coins, postcards, Christmas, chevrons, cockades, watches, pin, chevron, patch, town, crests, memorabilia, military, collectible, for, sale, watches, wrist-watches, Lenin, CPSU, commemorative, Russia, Soviet Union, exUSSR, Soviet army, NAVY, airforce, speznaz, KGB, communist, party,Andropov, Politburo,souvenirs,inexpensive,SADCOM