Putting Checkers On the Map: Literally!

The Checkers Worldwide map on our Checker World web site has become an important resource for Checker fans everywhere.

In just one year, there have been 5,702 views between the months of March 2016 and February 2017.

The Checker World Map

Our goal was to create a world map that shows every Checker that we know about whether in private hands or for sale. Until now, that map looked like this:

The Checkers shown by a car icon are privately owned. Those with the letter S are cars for sale. While the map lets you zoom in on every state or country, it is clear that this map is pretty cluttered.

So, we've taken the liberty to add a menu that lets you choose exactly what you want to see. That looks like this:

Using the menu on the left, you can turn off any of the categories that you don't want. For example, if you only want to see cars that are for sale, you uncheck all of the other choices. Note that all of these cars are indicated by a letter "S" pin.

Then, you can zoom in and look at just the cars that are or were for sale in your neighborhood. Here, for example, are the cars for sale in Florida.

When you click on one of the round pins, a description of the car pops up.

Every car has a unique ID that we assign. In this case, US-FL-S03 means that the car is located in Florida in the USA and has a 'for sale' suffix of 'S03'.

In addition, the ID is shown in blue, meaning that you can click on it see photos of the car.

Each photo in the gallery can be clicked to show a larger version of the photo. Then, you can close the gallery to come back where you left off.

If you go back to the map and turn off cars "For Sale," turn on "Private" cars, and then zoom out to see the rest of the world, the map will look like this:

Now you can look at some of the Checkers in private hands. So, zoom in on another location like Sweden.

At this zoom lever it looks like there are around 13 Checkers in Sweden. But this can be deceiving since some cars are clustered in a specific location. So, let's zoom in a bit closer.

By clicking on the pin with the shadow around it, we can see that there are actually 4 Checkers in roughly the same place. Since none of them have a blue highlight, we know that there are no photos available for these cars.

So, let's choose another car for sale in Sweden. In this case, we have a 1968 Checker A-12E diesel car.

When you click on the blue link, the photo gallery for this car opens.

Note that this gallery looks a bit different than the gallery for cars that are for sale. This is because we are storing the "for sale" photos in a location that makes it easy to download them for reference purposes. This policy may or may not change in the future.

Once you are in the photo gallery, note that the menu includes an item called "CAR INDEX." If you click this menu item, you will be brought to a page that lists every car for which we have photos. These are listed in chronological order and within that by geographic location.

While the unique car ID numbers will tell you roughly where a car is located, the index entry gets you a bit closer by listing the town/city and country.

This photo gallery index is still in its infancy. We have a lot of photos that need to be added and will do that throughout the year. The process, of course, can be helped along if you send us information and photos of your car using the submittal form (see next section).

It is important for you to know that we value your privacy. For this reason, we do not list the name of the owner or the exact location of the car. Instead, we give each car a unique ID number (e.g. US-NY-45) and place it on the map within the appropriate zip code / postal code area. If the need arises to contact the owner, it can be done by filling out the Checker World Contact Form.

Putting Your Checker on the Map

Until now, getting your Checker registered with the Club and having it also show up on the Map has been a fairly time consuming process. If you have been a Club member, we normally collected information about your Checker during our annual Membership drive in February. This did not, however, collect enough information and also did not ask for a photo submission. Then, what little information we got had to be manually entered into a spreadsheet and then into the web site.

We have now found a way to reduce manual processing and collect the data and the photos at the same time. By using an on-line form within the Checker World web site, you can now give us all the information you have about your Checker and submit as many photos as you like in one simple step. This is what part of the Registry form looks like:

Once the form is submitted, we review the information and then upload it to our web site. While we store personal information like your first and last name, we DO NOT share it with anyone.

Selling Your Checker

We can help you sell your Checker by creating a listing on our web site using a form that is similar to the one shown above. Naturally, this form asks for a bit more information (including the VIN number and desired price) and requires the submission of at least one photo.

To get to the form, you just need to move your mouse cursor over the "MAP" menu item and select the "Sell Your Checker" menu item.

Listing your Checker for sale is free. If you have also listed it elsewhere, we will create a link to that site as part of our service.

And don't forget: The person who buys your Checker is entitled to a one year free membership in the Checker Car Club!

So, How Many Checkers Are Mapped?

As of this writing, we have mapped over 150 Checkers that went on sale from the beginning of 2015 to today. In addition, there are roughly 550 more that are in private hands including museums and commercial enterprises. In other words, there are at least 700 Checkers out there that are known to us. How many more actually exist that we don't know about?

Well, that is a question for which there is not yet a clear answer. Stay tuned...