Digitally Cataloging My Collection

Back in the late '80s, early '90s I pulled my late '60s, early '70s card collection out of storage to see what I had and what it might be worth. Up to this point the cards were pretty much grouped by team and held together with rubber bands. It was time to get them in penny sleeves and organize in sets.

Around this time we got our first home computer and I had access to a data base program called Paradox. Long story short, over time all the effort to create those files and lists was lost. So in 2017 when I was ready to start selling off some of my collection, I turned to Excel to re-enter my more than 2500 baseball, basketball, and football cards.


Here is one example above. I copy/pasted the set description with values by grade from PSA. I then added in a Qty column for the cards in my possession. This also helped me see the higher value cards I had and which I should try to sell first. I also decided to start collecting new cards again... because why not. 😀

I soon saw that my Excel solution wasn't going to work very well with modern day sets. With all the inserts, related sets and such it was going to be too much to track. Luckily after searching the internet a bit I found the Trading Card Database.

Since all the sets and lists were already made it was just a matter of me checking off which cards I had. Plus they are partnered with E-Bay so prices were readily available.


Now I am able to look at my collection several different ways and see what kind of prices cards might be going for. It is also a very good resource for looking up seldom seen cards by browsing or posting an image and asking if any one in the community knows what it is.

Pleas feel free to post comments and questions.

Thanks for reading! 😀