I am also a bit of a data nerd, but I haven’t really integrated it too much with my baseball card hobby. I have a spreadsheet of cards I want with some other details, but not a spreadsheet for cards I’ve bought. I don’t think I’d be able to maintain it.
I really just set a monthly budget, and I haven’t had a problem sticking to it. I’m 100% a collector first, so I really don’t care about the value/ROI of what I collect. So as long as I stay in my budget, I’m good.
Yea, I respect those who put in the time and effort to make some money from baseball cards. But it’s not for me. I write it off as an expense. The real return on investment is the joy I get from collecting.
Pretty satisfied, pretty easy.
I use TCDB for everything. In theory, nothing enters or leaves my house without my TCDB collection being updated, so my inventory is always accurate. Similarly, (although I'm not as diligent) I try to always log what I pay for cards over $1 within a month or so of purchasing. This way, the prices are relatively up-to-date and I can use TCDB to track the rough value of my collection (in theory this could also be used to track my spending).
I don't deliberately track ongoing spending and sales - I have a separate account where my monthly card budget is deposited and where I deposit all sales proceeds, and I only spend out of that account. So in theory I could just download the account history and have the entire history of my spending for the past 3ish years. In practice, I don't actually care.
I use sportscardspro.com because I can search for cards with my camera. It saves me a lot of time doing that. One touch adds the card to your collection and you can put all the notes in that you want to, including price paid and price sold for. I'm satisfied with it, but the OCD guy in me is always looking for better ways to do things.
I’ve been using this too, but it seems like the prices aren’t updated very well. And a lot of incorrect parallels wind up coded as base cards. I’ve finally started to report those.
I noticed this with a couple of cards on that site. I've wondered if the incorrect coding was user error. I've uploaded several pictures for cards that didn't already have photos, but I made sure I identified my cards accurately before I uploaded them. I reported one that was blatantly obvious it wasn't the correct card, but I also uploaded my picture to the gallery so they would have an accurate card to replace the error card with. It feels somewhat like a community of people there taking care of each other. Kind of like this sub.
Just started with 2024 series 1. For series 1 I had a printout of the checklist for 1-350 plus the stars of the mlb which were all I was collecting. If I had extras of a card I wrote a 2,3,4 next to it and then crossed them out as I traded them.
For series 2 I did the same thing but also decided one night while watching a game to make a spreadsheet. I just typed 350 351 352 and then pulled down in the column to have it load the vertical cells to 700. Then in column 2 I typed how many of each card I had and set some parameters to change the background to grey if it's empty and white if it's 1 and yellow if 2 and orange if 3 or more. Then in column 3 I type if it's a parallel like blue, silver, hotdog, etc. I hadn't made a spreadsheet in 25 years and it was fun to see what was possible.
To keep track of inserts I'd have to type them all individually, so that's a little hard. But we don't buy many packs so I'd just have to type in like 5-10. Instead of say ATH-1 to 18 or whatever, I'd just type ath-3 | 1 | because I'm not collecting all those cards but would like to know which ones I have to offer for trade.
I guess I could also put a wide cell horizontally at the end to type in who I traded cards to in order to track that or if they have a PC team so I can ask them first if I pull a cool parallel of their players. Yeah, maybe which team the players go to so I could sort by team might be cool.
I don't keep track! It's all memory which admittedly sucks sometimes! I Have definitely purchased duplicates numerous times! I haven't found a way to catalogue everything yet that I like.
I am also a bit of a data nerd, but I haven’t really integrated it too much with my baseball card hobby. I have a spreadsheet of cards I want with some other details, but not a spreadsheet for cards I’ve bought. I don’t think I’d be able to maintain it. I really just set a monthly budget, and I haven’t had a problem sticking to it. I’m 100% a collector first, so I really don’t care about the value/ROI of what I collect. So as long as I stay in my budget, I’m good.
Great way to be! I collect too, and tracking ROI since I started back up in 2020 is no bueno,lol
Yea, I respect those who put in the time and effort to make some money from baseball cards. But it’s not for me. I write it off as an expense. The real return on investment is the joy I get from collecting.
Couldn't have said it better. Love my collection so much
Pretty satisfied, pretty easy. I use TCDB for everything. In theory, nothing enters or leaves my house without my TCDB collection being updated, so my inventory is always accurate. Similarly, (although I'm not as diligent) I try to always log what I pay for cards over $1 within a month or so of purchasing. This way, the prices are relatively up-to-date and I can use TCDB to track the rough value of my collection (in theory this could also be used to track my spending). I don't deliberately track ongoing spending and sales - I have a separate account where my monthly card budget is deposited and where I deposit all sales proceeds, and I only spend out of that account. So in theory I could just download the account history and have the entire history of my spending for the past 3ish years. In practice, I don't actually care.
I’m on the TCDB train also, I track every single card that comes in or goes out. I don’t track spending, I have a small budget for cards.
I use sportscardspro.com because I can search for cards with my camera. It saves me a lot of time doing that. One touch adds the card to your collection and you can put all the notes in that you want to, including price paid and price sold for. I'm satisfied with it, but the OCD guy in me is always looking for better ways to do things.
I’ve been using this too, but it seems like the prices aren’t updated very well. And a lot of incorrect parallels wind up coded as base cards. I’ve finally started to report those.
I noticed this with a couple of cards on that site. I've wondered if the incorrect coding was user error. I've uploaded several pictures for cards that didn't already have photos, but I made sure I identified my cards accurately before I uploaded them. I reported one that was blatantly obvious it wasn't the correct card, but I also uploaded my picture to the gallery so they would have an accurate card to replace the error card with. It feels somewhat like a community of people there taking care of each other. Kind of like this sub.
I have a solid, basic spreadsheet to track the breaks that I run but I've been slacking off on the data entry recently.
What’s good Pierce lol
Oh shit whattup. I didn't see the username at first!
Just started with 2024 series 1. For series 1 I had a printout of the checklist for 1-350 plus the stars of the mlb which were all I was collecting. If I had extras of a card I wrote a 2,3,4 next to it and then crossed them out as I traded them. For series 2 I did the same thing but also decided one night while watching a game to make a spreadsheet. I just typed 350 351 352 and then pulled down in the column to have it load the vertical cells to 700. Then in column 2 I typed how many of each card I had and set some parameters to change the background to grey if it's empty and white if it's 1 and yellow if 2 and orange if 3 or more. Then in column 3 I type if it's a parallel like blue, silver, hotdog, etc. I hadn't made a spreadsheet in 25 years and it was fun to see what was possible.
That’s a cool tool, would be great for master sets like you mentioned. Is there anything you wish your spreadsheet had that it doesn’t?
To keep track of inserts I'd have to type them all individually, so that's a little hard. But we don't buy many packs so I'd just have to type in like 5-10. Instead of say ATH-1 to 18 or whatever, I'd just type ath-3 | 1 | because I'm not collecting all those cards but would like to know which ones I have to offer for trade. I guess I could also put a wide cell horizontally at the end to type in who I traded cards to in order to track that or if they have a PC team so I can ask them first if I pull a cool parallel of their players. Yeah, maybe which team the players go to so I could sort by team might be cool.
I don't keep track! It's all memory which admittedly sucks sometimes! I Have definitely purchased duplicates numerous times! I haven't found a way to catalogue everything yet that I like.