Recommended Free Online Coin Collection Inventory Programs?

As I start to build my collection after a 10 year hiatus, I find myself needing a better method to inventory my collection than the good old Excel or paper methods.

First: Does anyone know of or recommend any good online inventory programs?

Second: If nothing like that exists (which I'm sure it must) is that something people would be interested in? Spreadsheets (electronic and otherwise) are great and all, until your house burns down with your coins AND inventory inside. Doesn't do you much good on the insurance end if your inventory list goes up with your collection.


The reason I ask is that I'm a web application developer and I'm always looking for a fun side project. If I can create something like this that would help me, as well as others, I might be able to justify the time (potentially 100+ hrs) to build it. It's something I'd like to develop with the community to make sure it's as useful as possible.

Any thoughts?

 

Log in or Sign up to hide this ad.

I'm open to anything that's free..........

 

Well there are a few free one out the. Pcgs,Ngc has inventory pages as does Heritage and David Lawrence. But it never hurts to have one more

 

www.numismaster.com

/thread

 

If you use Excel you need not lose your data due to fire, flood or other disaster. Simply load the file into the cloud or email the file to yourself at regular intervals. Both methods will allow access from anywhere at anytime. Additionally, you may keep your files on a small USB drive located in a safe deposit box or other location.

 

I had a program once that I paid about $100 for. I had just about completed my collection's listings, then it crashed, no recovery then, and lost much information. Now I just place the information on the 2x2s, slabs on stickers. Not worry about hiding the cost, and the family can know what it is, instead of a code when they have to divide them up or sale them. Been trying to get our club to take a collection when one of us die and the family has no clue of the true value. For the club to dispose of the collection and give the total to the family with out any cost. Hard sale now, we all will reach the point in time if no one in your family has anyone interested in the collection.

 

i purchased a program called "coin manage" an love it, got about 600 coins an mint sets listed so far with pics, think they have a free trail to check it out, very simple program with lots of info with options to add new info and/or varieties.
and i back it up to a flash drive regularly just in case my puter crashes

 

Similarly, you could just do them by hand with carbon copies, then registered-mail a copy of your carbons to a distant relative, and do that frequently.

Sounds like a lot of work! I'll stick with a more streamlined solution, and a more powerful one at that (I can build some wicked Excel spreadsheets, but nothing that compares to a nice database-driven web application for sorting, data manipulation, and custom reporting).

 

Doesn't look too bad... I'll have to look into it more. Thanks!

 

It's no more work than sending an email. Is that hard? Didn't think so.

 

NGC collection manager is really all I need.

 

Looks like I'll have to take a look at the NGC collection manager, even though it's not exactly free. Well, I guess it's "free" in the same sense that a car is free... after you give the dealership a bunch of money. I was considering an NGC membership anyway so maybe that route just makes sense.

Hard? No... never said anything about it being difficult, just more tedious than I'd like. Doing it once? That's fine. Having to do it every time you updated it? Definitely not the most efficient route out there.

 

I don't have such a velocity of change in my collection, or my inventory, that I need to update it more than once a week. This makes it trivial.

Have you looked at the PCGS registry? You can store all the data for your coins, even if they are not PCGS certified, on their database and there is no need to participate in the registry. By the way, it is free to use.

 

I use Numbers which is basically the Apple version of Excel. I have it saved to 2 different online cloud services (Apple & Crashplan). I also have a local back up. I don't know if I would feel comfortable using NGC.

I don't know what kind of security they have around the database? What happens if their system crashes? What kind of backups do they have. Do I really want someone else to know all the coins I own?

 

So privacy and security is a primary concern? I can see the downside to going the NGC route because they have your name, address, etc, as well as details about all your coins. Granted, it's a bit paranoid to think they're going to use the information for harm, but it's a valid concern regardless.

If I were to build a program, it wouldn't ask for any personal information (at least wouldn't require anything more than email address). The data would be redundantly backed up and all connections would be secure (SSL).

 

I don't now if I would call it a primary concern but with almost all online data nowadays it's definitely a big concern!!! Especially if you're not familiar with the service provider.

 

Would you still be concerned if the only identifying information that was collected was your email address? Not much someone could to with that... assuming there was even a security breech in the first place.

Psh... I could even go a step farther and encrypt the email addresses with 1-way encryption. Then it'd be virtually impossible for anyone with access to the database to have so much as a speck of identifiable information about you.

 

I just create a small excel spreadsheet with name, description, price, quantity for numismatic coin. For bullion, I keep the spot price and premium.