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Friday, September 30, 2016

Poll Results - How Do You Track Your Collection?

2016 Chachi #72
A little over a month ago, in an effort to seek a viable alternative to Zistle, I asked the question how do you track your baseball card collection?  Only 15 readers/collectors voted, but the results are pretty much what I expected.


There's no denying that Zistle is a powerful card tracking tool, and I sincerely hope they straighten out their legal woes and get back on track.  The "winner" of the poll was the good, old fashioned spreadsheet which has become an increasingly attractive option to me.  With a spreadsheet, or any self-maintained database, the collector is in charge of the input, the data fields and the integrity of the data. With Zistle, I'm reliant on an administrator approving my suggested edits and as I've seen recently those edits could take months or be completely ignored altogether.

Not surprising to me, not one person responded that they use the Beckett database to track his/her collections. 

For the short-term, I'm going to stick with Zistle.  For the long-term, I'm going to start laying out a spreadsheet format with the goal of eventually migrating my collection tracking away from a third-party provider.  This is serious stuff.

Thanks to everyone who commented and voted in this little poll!
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4 comments:

  1. AnonymousSeptember 30, 2016 at 7:05 PM

    I've spent a lot of time converting online spreadsheets into spreadsheets (for uploading into my database), so you might find this post helpful:

    https://shlabotnikreport.wordpress.com/2016/02/06/using-ms-office-to-convert-topps-pdf-checklists-to-more-useful-formats/

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  2. AnonymousSeptember 30, 2016 at 7:06 PM

    (Sigh) "... onverting online *CHECKLISTS* into spreadsheets..."

    I'm sure you figured that out.

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  3. Section 36September 30, 2016 at 7:29 PM

    I don't track my collection, which is why I didn't vote. But, i can certainly see the appeal of a self-run spreadsheet. The only drawbacks would be starting it out correct, right from the start, and a lack of automation. i assume the third party trackers don't make you type out all 36 words in the names of some of these inserts and parallels. But, where you've been using a system, you probably already know what details are important to you to store in a spreadsheet. Hope you'll be sharing the format once you get going.

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  4. JimOctober 1, 2016 at 10:24 AM

    Thanks guys and I actually started working on my spreadsheet this morning. I think I'll start with my 2016 Phillies cards and see how that goes.

    To date, I've been unable to enter my 2016 Bowman, Topps Pro Debut, Topps Chrome and Topps Bunt (physical) cards into the Zistle database and for some reason I've been able to include my 2016 Topps Heritage High Numbers. It's just too unreliable at this point to continue.

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