Sunday, February 8, 2009

Organization... HELP!

I know everyone decided to get organized at New Years. Well, I'm a little bit behind. I've got all my cards fairly well organized (year, set, number), but I can't even begin to tell you what I've got.

The sets that I'm currently working on are very organized. I've made spreadsheets telling me what I have and how many I have. I've realized how much simpler this makes trades. But if I'm not trading 88 Score or 87 Topps, I have to go through card by card.

What I'm looking for is some sort of database software that has all the sets included. I don't want to have to enter every card I have by hand (but give the option to create new sets by hand). Ideally I'd like something that I could click on a set, then card number or player's name and enter a quantity. It'd be nice if this program could print reports by set or by player or however I wanted it. I'd also prefer it to be free.

Does such a thing exist? Back in the late 90s when I was playing Magic the Gathering I had a program exactly like I described. It had every card in the database and all you had to do was enter the quantity you had. The program would make a report for you for everything from set, to color and even mana cost. It was great.

I've downloaded a few programs over the past few months, but none are what I'm looking for. It doesn't have to be a marvel of technology, the old MtG program I had was DOS based.

Any ideas, or should I keep using my spreadsheets?

*****EDIT*****

Here's an idea of how my spreadsheet database looks. Right now it only contains 81, 87, 89, 09 Topps and 88 Score. I got the checklists from Baseball Almanac and pasted it into Excel. The X column is for extras.



A lot of work went into it, but I'd still trash this for something simpler.

3 comments:

Mark Aubrey said...

Not quite what you're looking for, but Zistle.com is working okay for me.

They're expanding their services and are open to user feedback and customization.

But, if you find something else out there, I'd like to hear about it.

I've mucked around with creating a database, but it hasn't quite worked they way I envisioned it in my head.

Ben said...

I signed up for Zistle last week. It's closer than anything else I've found, but still not exactly what I'm looking for.

I guess I'll keep digging.

Don said...

I have used The Card Collector software in the past and have been pleased. Check it out @ thecardcollector.com