I’m wondering, what kind of software do you all use to keep track of all your cards?
I myself am buying from different lots and sellers and ultimately my goal is to get most graded, but I’d like to keep track of which card came from which lot to judge how good of a deal it was when I purchased it
Using Excel sheets was one of my attempts but it doesn’t provide relational access or any other way to for example show you any statistics about a part of your data set, I believe Excel is just one big data dump, while useful, I would like to do better.
One of the things I’d want to be able to do is to enter all my purchases, grading attempts and eventually sales as well as I replace parts of my collection, and then I would like to be able to zoom in on an Unlimited Charizard for example and see all purchases, gradings and sales that are associated with it for example. I have a hard time seeing how Excel would provide that, I have experimented a bit.
Pivot Tables would let you do that I’m pretty sure. The options for excel are pretty much limitless considering you can add your own macros/programmable functions with VBA.
If you have a column for the card-name (Charizard in this case), 1st/unl. edition, and the purchase price, you can very easily get all purchases of UED Charizards in Excel. Here is a quick gif I just made to show you how (you might want to open it in a new tab to zoom in…):
And if you know the formulas a bit you can do A LOT in Excel. I once made an automatic sorting mechanism with some formulas in Excel, which sorted all the rows as soon as you’ve entered a new row, without needing to do this automatically. And this was without any VBA script, which can be used to extend the formulas and possibilities of Excel even more.
I actually use the PSA website to keep track of my graded cards. They have fields for things like how much you paid, sold it for, when you got it, etc. If you have the app you can just scan the barcode for quick data entry. PSA also lets you dump the data to a csv.
If you’re interested in analysis excel is a good option for some manual data manipulation. I know your background though and if you wanted to get more serious, I’d import the data into Python using pandas and write a few scripts that do the types of analysis you’re interested in. If you want to take it to an even more serious level, create a relational database for it (as you kinda implied in one of your earlier posts) or personally I would just use some simple denornomalized system like mongoDB since I don’t think the data would benefit much being split into tables.
Excel, the best software there is! I made my own checklist in which I keep track of my entire collection and every card that has been published. Here’s an old screenshot:
My Excel spreadsheet is my baby. If it didn’t contain so much private information I’d be showing it off more than any of my cards. It’s truly a work of art.
Maybe I should look into Excel more, I guess I could see it working if I used for example three sheets purely for my data and other sheets for lookup + VBA magic. I tried Access but that didn’t fit what I wanted and of course I can program things myself but I’m lazy while I’m not at work.
Was hoping there was alternative software around that sort of would manage these things, but that seems to be a far shot.
Adding to the chorus on Excel. I use Google Sheets but its basically the same thing. You have to have some knowledge of the program but a quick tutorial and you’ll be able to make a basic sheet. The software’s got the computing power to perform pretty much any analysis you like aside from some advanced stats stuff. Love some of the automatic operations you can set, whenever I get a new card I update it in my spreadsheet and it updates my completion percentage. Thanks to my spreadsheet I know I’m exactly 87.64% done with my collection!
Here you go: LOF102’s Collection overviewA quick guide, there are 2 pages from which you can navigate through the entire Excel. Alle the icons in it are clickable so you can jump to the sheet you neede quickly. I Believe every English card is covered in it as far as possible.
Please be aware this will always be a work in progress Any feedback is welcome!
Now I realised another reason why I was having my doubts with Excel… Sometimes I have purchases or sales that are about a complete lot, say you purchase 5+ cards in one deal and you cannot really give them an individual value, same holds for sales but to a lesser extent.
How would you handle that situation in Excel? Ideally I’d want to write down the actual data and calculate the cost of the items via whatever formula is desired at any later moment. I’m having some trouble right now in Excel on how I would manage that? Is making multiple rows with the same order number a way to start?
amount paid/5 gives average cost per card?
not what you wanted hah but thats what i do. say 500/5 is 100 per card…sell 1 for 400 and 4 for 60 you still know your profit
or if you bought a lot for a few main cards and paid 120 then /main cards and then the others are bonus money setting at 0 and anything is profit after fees postage etc?
This may sound stupid…though I am an excel noob How do I clear all of your checks so I can put my own in please?
Also Is there anyway to decipher which are the rares please? just curious ha! I have a binder of all common and uncommons, then an ultra pro for my non holo holo ex gx etc in order
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How do I clear all of your checks so I can put my own in please?
just curious ha! I have a binder of all common and uncommons, then an ultra pro for my non holo holo ex gx etc in order