Keeping track of your collection

I hope Im posting this in the right section.

I have a modest collection of about 600 video games, and I found it hard to organize my own collection due to the increasing amount of new games.

Like most people, I started with a modest TXT file, upgraded to an Excell spreadsheet and as the collection increased and eventually became more anal about my games I figured I needed a better solution.

One day I found this website from a collector where he made available for download a simple database which he used to keep track of his own collection.
I used his database as a starting point and heavily modified it to suit my needs and I still use it today and keep adding new features every other day.
Im "auditing" my own collection at the moment, I have accounted about 600 games so far, about 34% done.

Since these boards are frequented by lots of hardcore collectors I think It would be nice to know and share some ways of organizing and keeping track of our collections.

I cant imagine someone like Adol keeping track of his collection in a simple 2GB txt file

 

my collection is rather small and i have a good overview.
excel is enough for the time being.

 

Excel will have to do until I get an app that lets me search a database that I make. It's getting on the brink of annoying though, I wish there was a simpler way.

 

I also still use Excel, but would be interestet in some kind of database as my collection is going bigger. Would be nice if you could share your program or the link to the original.

 

I've tried allsorts of different methods in the past: simple text file, excel, online databases, even the Video Game Collector software. None of these really worked for me, as I wanted to see the actual games I owned wherever I was so I could make a split second decision whether to buy something or not.

So I made this:

http://ninjabearhug.webs.com/games.htm

It's still work in progress, but basically it's a list of all the games I own with a photograph of every single game on there. I still have loads more to add, DC and all my Sony games for a start, but I've kept this list more up to date than any other I've ever made. It works a treat though. Whenever I'm in a Game shop and I'm not sure if a game I have is complete or not, I just get my mobile out, connect to the site and check the photo :icon_bigg

 

For now I'm cool with an excel spreadsheet with details such as condition, manuals, box, quantity, color, serial no., model no., etc.

Last year I started making an online database with PHP & mySQL but never finished it as I don't need such thing right now because my collection is rather small.

 

I use spreadsheets as well (not that i have a lot of stuff anyway)

Wish someone could actually make a good program for it though.

 

I hacked together a quick PHP solution about three years ago (so the code is terrible, but it works). See: http://games.aypok.co.uk/. I released the source code, so others can run/modify it as they choose.</plug>

 

There is a program called Collectorz which has one for games - http://www.collectorz.com/game/

 

Sounds cool, gonna try that one 3do, if it works by scanning bar codes it would be great for people with very large collections.
I'll download the trial to take a look.

 

I have collectorz, it's the best offline one I've come across, but it's still missing LOADS of games, especially for the SMS which is one of my main collections. That's the only reason I never really used it properly TBH though. All the features of the software are great though and you can spend hours just messing around with some of them.

 

I did pick up in some store ages ago a programme for collectors, but never got around to using it

I know there are some on-line collectors site`s, but most of these are for the relatively normal, not some / most of the odd shit we all tend to have :nod:

Surely someone here can knock something up in a few hours ;-) , I am sure we would all contribute to the cause

 

I forgot to mention one of my favorite sites that I use to check the game's details is vgrebirth, and I also contribute whenever I have some unlisted title or missing detail. This site has an awesome database.

It would be great if with the info and suggestions in this thread we could build the ultimate app/database!

Some of the features and characteristics of my database:

For each title I have a:
ID (numerical value unique to each game)
Main title (CJK characters suported)
Alt. title (translated title or just used as keywords when searching a game by title)
Genre (List of game genres like action, shooter etc and HARDWARE if its a piece of hardware instead of a game)
System (Here I have a list of possible systems)
Publisher (Here I have a list of possible publishers)
Developer (Uses the same list of Publishers)
Condition (here I have another list, going from Terrible to Mint and Sealed)
Media (List with types of media like CD or cartridge)
Box, manual and spine checkboxes
Year (of release)
Number of players
Product code (the game code, most games have it, like the PSx titles SLES-12345)
Barcode
Vendor (list of places where I usually get my games, Private* for private purchases, and put any additional information about the seller in the Comments box)
Area code (J/U/E etc)
Comments (box to put any sort of additional info about the game)
Price (Price I PAID for the game, not the original retail price
Date of purchase (When I aquired the game)
Available (checkbox+text desription box, if a game is borrowed to someone or somehow missing this box gets unchecked and a small text description is added about what happened and when it happened)
Repeated and Repeated ID (if it's a repeated title I just mark this checkbox and fill in the ID from the "original" title
Audit date (date when the game was last audited, good to do periodic checks of your games to avoid missing or sold titles, can also be used to track the last time a battery-backed-up cart was power on)
Maintenance (checkbox for games that will need some maintenance, like boxes with glue residues and stickers, dirty carts etc)


As you can see some of these features are pretty commons, others are very "personal" and useful to me.

Some examples of what I can do with all this data:

Generate all sorts of game lists like complete lists of all systems, sorted by platform with total of titles per platform and grand total
Any of these lists can be easily exported to pdf, excel, html

I can search games by title or barcodes, get a list of audited titles and see which titles havent been audited in a long period of time.
I can also see how much games I got this month (or any period of time) or how much money I spent on games this month (or in any period of time), the grand total is always scary

These are only some examples of the lists and query's which I find most useful, since this is a simple MS access database I can easily make any query I want.
However my MS access skillz are very limited, there are some features, like adding pictures, that I would love to implement but still haven't figured out how.

 

And still you have not linked us to that website :110:

 

My collection is totally out of control. I have no idea really what I have scattered in several different places. Not the thousands of items that some of you guys have, but enough that when someone asks me if I have a particular game I have to think about it.

 

That was sort of my situation, but I started wondering what was the point off having and collecting all this stuff if I cant even remember what I have?

I wish I started doing this sooner, this is sort of how I started listing and organizing my games.

The best way to start organizing IMO is to get a sheet of paper and go to every shelf and start writing down every title you have on there.
Or even better, take some high res pics of your shelves

Then start inserting the titles on your list/database/app and you will get a rough list of what you have.

And then the toughest part is grabbing your games one by one and filling in the remaining details (condition, manual? box? barcode etc).
Things like release dates, publishers, etc can be obtained from sites like vgrebirth so you can fill these in whenever you want.

And my last step, when one of my games has all the data correctly inserted in my database I fill in the audit date, I put the respective game in a protective baggie and put a small sticker with its ID.
This helps distinguished whichs games have been listed and which ones haven't.

 

Great "guide". I have to re-check my stuff soon, and i'll follow those steps.

 

Excel does the job except you really need additional information for each game - I don't. My collection isn't that big anyways, I just prefer to keep it simple and Excel is exactly what I want: a simple solution to organize my games.

As for guys like Assembler I'd well say it's impossible to make a complete list without having a free month of holidays and Adol would rather make a list of what he does NOT own :lol:

 

For me Excel has always been good for small things. When You start having Alot of Columns and Rows and multiple everything and start making your excel spreadsheets bigger and bigger. Excel seems to slow down. Alot.