Does anyone else not keep track of their collection?

As much as I buy and sell, keeping a log of my collection would be a pain.

Does anyone else not keep a log of their collection?

 

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I buy every weekend and sell through out the week on eBay. When I think about it, I put a check mark and underline the grade in my red book.

 

I did when I first started then sold some to pay for a trip and haven't redone it. Need to though.

 

Mine is tracked on an Excel spreadsheet I created myself. I have all the denominations, dates, etc. from Red Book on the sheet, and next to each is the grade, and price I paid for the coin.

 

I keep track to a certain degree. I have a bunch of rolled common date wheat cents and junks silver in rolls and for those the coins are not individually cataloged. But, for my "main collection" I have the coins cataloged.

 

By and large I do keep track of what I buy. A few times I have bought coins that, as I found out a little later, I already had in my collection. Nothing expensive, but it still bugged me. So yes, now pretty much every coin that I paid more than about €10 for gets "recorded" or checked in a list.

Christian

 

I keep track of mine,just a liat of what I have and approximate values.That way if something should happen to me,my family knows what they have and wont be ripped off should they decide to sell them.Also there are some good apps for smart phones that I use,that way I always have a catalog of what I have and what I don't right in my pocket at all times.

 

I used to but then I fell behind and couldn't catch up.

 

(raises hand guiltily)

Um, yeah, I have no clue what coins I own. I know many, and if I see others they may ring a bell, but others still I can dig through my drawers and have absolutely no recollection of. Its kind of fun in a way. Every few weeks I dig out an old purchase still in vendor envelopes and its like I bought them all over again. Last weekend it was a group of silver. It was mainly silver Canadian 5 cent pieces, many of them brightly toned. Where are they right now? Put back into the envelope. In a couple of years I will probably forget again that I have them.

Its a new year's resolution to go through them and at least get them put into flips and labelled, but I am afraid its quite a lot to get done with a 4 month old in the house. One of these weekends I need to buckle down and make some progress.

Chris

 

Yeah same here i tried using excel sheet but the problem was description i usually had there where vague. I found easier to track using pictures.

These days i just built a table with pictures with columns that has some basic info year, country, denomination, description, cost, s&p, seller and if the coin is interesting throw it in my site. I am also going thru and making sure all the albums are properly sorted by specific categories (Europe, France etc).

 

I would say if you are a collector who rarely sells coins, no problem. If you sell low priced coins, it probably still won't be a problem. Sell better coins on a regular basis, you might find yourself explaining your position to the IRS one day. Bad habits are hard to break. You are starting out with one now. The sooner you get better control over your transactions, it will reward you with a stronger and better collection. All knowledge is beneficial, including this aspect of it.

 

Just my slabbed coins for sets I am putting together on the NGC website.

 

Good thoughts. For me, I never sell coins and am an accountant by day. I really don't want a "busman's holiday" and have to create spreadsheets and track stuff for my hobby. Therefor I am somewhat intentionally skipping this part of the hobby.

 

Awesome.

 

I use to write everything down. Then about two years ago, I stopped.


Right now, I am in the process of sorting coins within the 5 Safety deposit boxes I have. I have misplaced two old gold francs at the house, but otherwise, they are all at another box in a another town.

With the silver, I sort all $1.00 denomination of the loose sort in one box. I sort all the half dollar denominations in another, etc. As I presort, I use canvas bags to hold the coins.

The plan after sorting is to list by date. That will leave me with a inventory.


I keep copies of my receipts when buying. I might start writing the price paid for a coin on the packages I store them in. I don't want to write on slabs, but would like to keep the price closer to them in the event my heirs sell and have to pay a ton on taxes.

 

If you are buying and selling so much - how do you know if you actually made money? Especially if you add it to your collection without documentation. Then when you sell - how do you know how you did?

 

I go by memory, pretty bad idea cause when I get older I am sure my memory will get worse & will forget but that how it works for me at the moment.

 

I buy and don't sell. At least so far. I hope I don't ever have to sell. I purchased scrap copper to sell for an emergency. I have other scrap metal behind the shop for such a need too.

I know that I can not get buried with my coins, but I sure hope I don't have to ever sell them. My old tokens are especially cool. I have a young nephew that is big on prospecting for gold. I hope to pass on my California Gold fractional collection to him. He is currently into modern US Mint products. He also likes nickels, esp the Buffalos.

Good point about keeping a record. When my stash was stolen years back, all I had was a faint memory of what I paid for it all. I couldn't remember all the details. The lost of my Silver Cert collection was completly undocumented. That was in 1982, and frankly, I am not a whole lot better, except I store the stuff in a locked bank box.

I really do need to get back to documenting everything. This is a good post discussion.

 

I don't keep track like most people seem to. I have all my coins in 2x2s in plastic pages sorted by country alphabetically. There are about 10 countries I'm working on completing sets for at the moment, so for those I keep a list of what coins I need, so I know what to target and don't buy doubles. But I don't keep track of what I do have and don't write down the values. Even with my lists, I end up buying doubles with disturbing frequency, and I don't quite know how that happens. I think what I do is, for example, I am looking at my list from France and see that I need a 1927 5 centime and buy a 10 centime instead. But anyway, I don't feel like I need a catalog of what I have, just a target list.

 

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My excel spreadsheet has been growing for about 15 years, adding columns and sheets as I learn what is important data to connect to each coin in my collection. It is developing a life of its own, sometimes I'll spend hours just looking through it, checking, correcting, etc.
The wife got me software, "Collectors Assistant" five years ago and so I am using that program to start cataloging my complete and older sets. Can't give up excel, at least yet, and entering new coins not in CA database is a pain.
The last few years we've been writing off hobby expenses on tax returns, so I'm being more industrious with record-keeping.