Inventory Thresholds

In another context ( https://goscf.com/t/41570#354398 ) GeoffHa asks:




The spreadsheeting / inventory question parallels the expertizing question.

If you maintain an inventory - by quill'n'candle, like GeoffHa - or by DIY spreadsheet - or by purpose-built software - or by someone else's website - what is your cutoff / threshold?

Surely, no one inventories everything, just as no one expertises everything.

If you do inventory everything, is this from OCD, or from GCH (good collection hygiene)?

Personally, I'd rather shop & sort & research & scan'n'post than inventory but, then, I've little worth the effort of bookkeeping, and I despise bookkeeping, and if I did any serious bookkeeping, it would be avoided & piling-up undone, anyway. But that's me.

Q/ What do you inventory/not?

Cheers,

/s/ ikeyPikey (who edited this to remove remove a redundancy)

I try to inventory everything I mount in an album. This means that 1/2 of my accumulation is uninventoried and unmounted. I might have more mounted if I did not inventory thoroughly. But inventorying everything I plan to keep (which is what mounting in an album means, substitute mounting in stockbook or on stockpages if that's your storage method) is the only way I can continue to accumulate intelligently. By inventorying I have a portable checklist to avoid purchasing the same thing again.

Of course, much of my purchasing is done online, so I check my inventory by clicks on my computer, sitting surrounded by my albums. But it's a lot easier to click a file or two on my computer than to get up, pull down one of 50 albums and open it to the proper page to see whether I have what I'm considering purchasing.

Anytime I buy something I do cut and paste the ebay or BidStart or individual online dealer purchase record (with the scans) into Word files. Thus I have a record of what I purchased but have not yet mounted in Word files divided up by countries. But a purchase may be a collection of 120 Ivory Coast on Minkus pages, for instance. I thus have a general record of the purchase but don't know for sure just which Ivory Coast stamps I have or don't have. So any future purchasing of Ivory Coast has to wait until I get the already-purcahsed Ivory Coast identified, mounted, and inventoried.

I could get a lot more mounted if I didn't inventory carefully and I could then eyeball album pages with empty spaces and their penciled catalogue numbers to see what I don't have. But to do that I have to have my album at hand. Inventorying gives me a portable means to check my holdings.

Some people do this by checkmarks in a catalogue. Lugging the catalogue around certainly is easier than lugging 50 albums but . . . a spreadsheet or even a list in a Word file fits on a flashdrive. (No, I'm not into cloud storage and don't plan to be. But then I have only an old flip cell phone and am mystified by smartphones. I'm one of those minimally wired types way too old to learn new tricks. My students are convinced I remember the last Ice Age.)

I Inventory everything I mount into my albums.

You can see my current level of insanity here:

http://www.eworldstamps.com/worldwide-collection/

I don't keep an inventory of stamps (I am no dealer). I do have a mental inventory of the nicer ones. Knowing what I have and it's catalog value only interests me in regard to selling, trading or insuring.

As a collector I am more interested in knowing what I don't yet have.

I do the inventory of stamps that I put in the albums and stockbooks and also the duplicates as well. My reason for this is I could check it and buy stamps to prevent any duplication. Also for insurance purpose too.

I use Numbers to do the spreadsheets. My library job requires me to work with a lot of details so that's probably why I have the urge to do spreadsheets. It's a hard habit to break! :P

Anyhoo, here's the screenshot of page 173 of 186 of my inventory (USA stamps only):

I inventory everything that I place in my album.

Forgot to add that I just use an Excel spreadsheet for this.

I use the EZStamp software to catalogue/inventory my collection. But it is woefully incomplete. A year or so it was reasonably complete, but I have acquired material this past year faster than I can update the database. My pace of acquiring new material has to slow down eventually (as I run out of money) and I can catch up then. I enjoy the details of cataloging. It enhances my knowledge of what I have collected. But that often has the effect of making me aware of something I think I need to complement what I already have. It is a vicious cycle, really, that never seems to end.

I keep a reverse inventory - i.e. a want list for my main ("serious") collection. Every empty space in my Steiner albums is in that want list, regardless of catalog value - high or low. If I ever had to come up with a complete inventory (such as for insurance purposes), I could do so just by making a list of items NOT on my want list, which I store in a Google spreadsheet.

I also collect a lot of countries on a casual (kiloware and packets) basis. I do not inventory those as they have almost no real monetary value and I am not actively working toward completion. Keeping an inventory of them would be fairly time consuming and I wouldn't have much to gain by it. At some point I'll probably get more active in those countries and create a want list for some of them, i.e. another reverse inventory.

iKeyPikey

Snuffing out the guttering candle and blowing ashes over my fresh-quilled parchment to dry the ink, I turn to your question.

Probably the most obsessive puece of inventory work I did was on my record collection (disposed of twenty-five years ago to pay off my now ex's business debts and cover the mortgage payments). Around 8,000 45s and 3,000 LPs all listed in a pleasingly complex way. In theory, my books are also all listed, but the list hasn't been updated for a few years. I started listing postcards, but gave up, not least becau I couldn't come up with a useful system. My literature collection is lined up on shelves by country and then by DoB of author, like any good university library. I don't list my cigarette cards, but I do have a richly annotated reference book of Ogden's cards - especially photographic cards from the late-Victorian/early-Edwardian era) - which shows what I have or don't have. I actually don't bother with stamps - sometimes I might underline items in the catalogue, but it's largely in my head (or, as time goes on, floating out of my head).

So a combination of GCH and ... well, I do like lists. Worryingly, the latter interest has been passed to my daughter. The burden of having a single, male parent, I suppose.

The needle, Watson.

Geoff

I keep an Excel inventory (SG Number, quantity, catalogue year, value) of anything valued at £10 or more.

This is partly for my own edification and partly for my heir, when she comes to sell off my collection.

Duplication doesn't worry me. More often than not, the material I collect is sui generis anyway.

Hi

I inventory everything and do not use a spreadsheet (do not have EXCEL) but do everything in WORD. It is a very basic inventory and is of the form: 1147 1148 1148a 1148b which is just catalog numbers that are highlighted in different colors and has associated location flags. There are 12 files designated Collection Mint and Used and Need Mint and Used each group broken into Regular Issue, Air Mails and BOB. There is also a Table that contains all the catalog numbers and Mint and Used Catalog Prices (updated yearly). The price table is really a reference only. This system was built in the days before spreadsheets and has sufficed for many years.

Maintenance may seem impossible but a set of programs were developed that facilitates maintenance and links everything together. Update one item and the changes are propagated to all pertinent tables. I am currently in the process of converting to .NET. The new code is similar to a "spreadsheet".

Jerry B

I have just about everything in my collection organized and inventoried with all the accompanying information that goes with them weather it be singles or covers. I started doing it early on so now I only have to deal with new arrivals. OCD - yeah probably but I can find almost anything in a flash! (thank you Vario/lighthouse system!) I do not use a spreadsheet but pencil and paper in my binders.

Hi

In my previous post I should have mentioned that I collect only 3 countries. Therefore, my "flat" system is more than adequate. If I collected World-Wide I probably would have used some sort of data base software, purchased like Access or "homegrown".

Jerry B

I have been working on a spreadsheet that includes ALL US postage stamps pre loaded. I created it in Numbers on my MAC and that is where I keep my complete inventory. I am currently converting it to an Excel format. It has been a lot of work (months worth) but I have friends that would like it and do not have a MAC. The spreadsheet allows for album placement , inventory not mounted, Plate Block qty, FDC, Mint Sheet etc. I want to offer it to anyone in the community that needs it.

I will try to post a screen shot in the future. If that is allowed

I also use Excel and try to inventory most of what I have but the primary aspect is to inventory what is in my albums and duplicate trading material. It has been time consuming but fun to create. I like it over a dedicated program since I can add fields etc quickly and with a little planning use simple filters to create any view I need. I am always interesting in now others use Excel or other spreadsheet like program.

I have a want list for my US used, broken down by definitives, commemoratives, BOB, and PNC singles. I started the list with Excel but moved to Google sheets. I keep no lists for my WW collection.