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Do you check your stash before bidding on or buying a book?
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48 posts in this topic

5 minutes ago, Randall Dowling said:

FWIW, when I first read this thread title, I was thinking of a different kind of stash...  :)

Same here, as I was thinking you would have to see if you have the shall we say "balls" to bid high enough to snag the book in question.  :bigsmile:

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On 11/20/2020 at 6:01 PM, 707comics said:

Build yourself a spreadsheet (Excel, Google sheets, whatever works for you). You will not have these issues and you can use that space in your brain for other good stuff (like remembering anniversaries and family/friends birthdays)!

I normally record:

  • Title
  • Issue number
  • Condition
  • Purchase price
  • Purchase date
  • Whom I purchased it from (and possibly where)
  • Notes (I normally record any major things with the book here .... whether it be related to condition, author, or other features)

FWIW, I also have another "tab" in my spreadsheet for books I want and another tab in which I record any sales I make. If something sells it migrates from the "inventory" tab to the "sold" tab.

I always bring a copy of my "inventory" and "want" sheets with me to shows just in case there is crappy internet access :)

Hope that helps! 

Yeah, I had always done this until about 6 or 7 years ago, then my PC died and I lost everything, my back up was 3 years out of date :facepalm: so lost all the info of what I had bought in that time.

When I have a chance I go through a title and colour it on the excel sheet, so I know that it has been checked but I will never complete this as just too much work.

I now have at least 3 back ups its a pita but I dont buy anywhere near the amount of books I used to

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Well into my twenties, I used to know every single book I had and where I got it, whether it was a newsstand purchase or from one of the handful of the local stores that sold back issues, or a local comic show as they started to appear locally. Strangely, I can still recall many of them (even though events from last month escape me). For instance, Son of Satan #5 with Mind-Star I bought off the spinner rack at Merl Drugs (now defunct) along with so many others. Budny's in Brandywine, 7-11, B.J.'s Country Corner... plus ones I bought at a liquor store near Brown's Lake in Wisconsin there my family would vacation when I was a kid. As a teenager, I had a handful of favorite dealers at shows like Bob Myers and I can still point to random books I bought from him over forty years ago (think various issues of Looney Tunes in the 100's or something a bit cooler like Vic Jordan 1). He used little round price stickers on poly bags and I still run across a book in my boxes that hasn't been re-bagged since then (egads!). 

When I finally lost track of exactly what I had was only recently, and that fact owes less to memory decline and more to the fact that I look at images of comics all the time, If you see an image of a certain book in your watch list on the Bay for years, it's not surprising you may come to think you have it. Same goes for browsing things like Mike's Amazing World and viewing The Newsstand over and over. So while this leads more often to me thinking I have a book than buying doubles, it has in general undercut my ability to recall whether I have that specific Son of Tomahawk or a 15c cover price Rawhide Kid.  :whistle:

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I sometimes forget what I have, but generally only with lower value books, luckily.  If I drop more than $20 on a book I generally remember that I've got it.

Oddly enough, I'm more likely to screw up with NEW books.  I'll see a book on the shelf at the store and think I missed it (I've never had a store that's 100% with their pull lists, but they all try hard), only to figure out I grabbed the other cover a week or three before.  That's partly my fault for letting a few months of a title pile up before I sit down and read it.

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I was doing some collection organizing today for the first time in at least 5 years. I actually think some of my books have mated and had offspring! I was finding books I didn’t know I had. Again, these were magazines but still, a 9.4 Savage Sword of Conan #1, a 9.2 Vampirella #6 & 7 slabbed too!!!:banana: Actually said when I pulled these out of a box, “where the hell did you come from?” (:

Edited by Jayman
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In this day and age of computers, scanners, and external hard drives there is no excuse to not know what you have.  I personally don't like spreadsheets, but I record date of purchase, amount, grade, and where purchased on a piece of tape that I stick to the back of the bag or mylite.  I also scan all my books and put them in photo files on my external hard drive.  I started doing that in 2014.  It's easy to check a file and see if a book is there or not, and as soon as a new book arrives it gets scanned and filed.  But...maybe I'm just too organized...(shrug)

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9 minutes ago, Tri-ColorBrian said:

In this day and age of computers, scanners, and external hard drives there is no excuse to not know what you have.  I personally don't like spreadsheets, but I record date of purchase, amount, grade, and where purchased on a piece of tape that I stick to the back of the bag or mylite.  I also scan all my books and put them in photo files on my external hard drive.  I started doing that in 2014.  It's easy to check a file and see if a book is there or not, and as soon as a new book arrives it gets scanned and filed.  But...maybe I'm just too organized...(shrug)

Easy to do if you have the space and time and organisation, I did it until maybe 2013 when I had to have the radiators in my rooms worked on, not wanting any engineers to see what I had, i moved what I could around and covered a lot over, they stayed like that for a few years due to ill health and then I lost all my spreadsheets.

I have been writing details like you on every comic for around 30 years but everything is way to far gone now to get back to where I was, at the moment I cant even find certain titles never mind certain books.

It will be for someone else to sort out when I am gone :insane:

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45 minutes ago, Kevin.J said:

Easy to do if you have the space and time

 

I think "time" is the key word.  I've spent 6 years off and on scanning my collection.  All I have left to scan are some "no value" Copper books and the Cochran EC reprints from the 90s.  I'll get to those when I feel like it...I also uploaded everything to my flickr albums too, so if my external hard drive crashes I have a back-up in addition to the "Cloud".  Flickr makes it so easy to organize stuff it isn't funny...

But, as I told Sqeggs the other day during his rare visit here, you need to label your scans so they will fall into order within the files, otherwise it's still a nightmare.  A simple system is publisher 1st, title, and number...ie DC-Action52.jpeg.  You can add a grade if you want and even more info.

Edited by Tri-ColorBrian
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just for an example of how memory can work ... when i was in my 20's and went golfing with a foursome i could remember every shot that all four people took over 18 holes ...

now in my 50's after i finish an 18 hole round i have a hard time remembering all the shots that just i myself took that round much less anyone else..

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Just now, 1950's war comics said:

just for an example of how memory can work ... when i was in my 20's and went golfing with a foursome i could remember every shot that all four people took over 18 holes ...

now in my 50's after i finish an 18 hole round i have a hard time remembering all the shots that just i myself took that round much less anyone else..

I have a hard time remembering what I ate yesterday...it's called CRS...lol

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21 minutes ago, Tri-ColorBrian said:

I think "time" is the key word.  I've spent 6 years off and on scanning my collection.  All I have left to scan are some "no value" Copper books and the Cochran EC reprints from the 90s.  I'll get to those when I feel like it...I also uploaded everything to my flickr albums too, so if my external hard drive crashes I have a back-up in addition to the "Cloud".  Flickr makes it so easy to organize stuff it isn't funny...

But, as I told Sqeggs the other day during his rare visit here, you need to label your scans so they will fall into order within the files, otherwise it's still a nightmare.  A simple system is publisher 1st, title, and number...ie DC-Action52.jpeg.  You can add a grade if you want and even more info.

I have the time tbh, I just dont have the health, fitness or stamina.........and I suppose the desire to do it all anymore, just wish it was done lol

99% of my Marvel stuff is in order as I have been mostly complete for a long time.

DC from around mid 1950s onwards is similar, its just everything else is scattered, mixed up, buried in boxes and in all different places, any gaps I had to fill are not in my collection and that how I have bought multiple copies at times

I would love to sell my house and buy something smaller but I cant even show it for sale as just too much clutter to even try.

I have a lot of stuff scanned already and I scan everything as I get it, I just have my scans in folders with the main title, then the scan has the number of the book

 

Screenshot_5.png.ec98b04773e82ff7bc78e82de7048486.pngScreenshot_6.png.a48b1a3b5bf5a889374cc7bea284342b.pngScreenshot_3.thumb.png.6fa25562de08dd93765d1aa8ab518769.png

 

 

 

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10 minutes ago, Kevin.J said:

I have the time tbh, I just dont have the health, fitness or stamina.........and I suppose the desire to do it all anymore, just wish it was done lol

99% of my Marvel stuff is in order as I have been mostly complete for a long time.

DC from around mid 1950s onwards is similar, its just everything else is scattered, mixed up, buried in boxes and in all different places, any gaps I had to fill are not in my collection and that how I have bought multiple copies at times

I would love to sell my house and buy something smaller but I cant even show it for sale as just too much clutter to even try.

I have a lot of stuff scanned already and I scan everything as I get it, I just have my scans in folders with the main title, then the scan has the number of the book

 

Screenshot_5.png.ec98b04773e82ff7bc78e82de7048486.pngScreenshot_6.png.a48b1a3b5bf5a889374cc7bea284342b.pngScreenshot_3.thumb.png.6fa25562de08dd93765d1aa8ab518769.png

 

 

 

Let's see your 1950s DC...hm

Oh, and I don't know how you did that screenshot of a photo file...I can't do that...unless that's from a photo hosting site...

Edited by Tri-ColorBrian
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12 hours ago, Tri-ColorBrian said:

Let's see your 1950s DC...hm

Oh, and I don't know how you did that screenshot of a photo file...I can't do that...unless that's from a photo hosting site...

Sorry I meant my DC was mainly in order rather than I had everything scanned, I do have some scanned, the stuff I have been complete a long time anyway.

The screenshot is just a great little downloaded program called lightshot, it grabs anything highlighted and then you can save it.

Screenshot_1.thumb.png.7ee4b17e8b0d1c1bfaaa0806c6720ea3.pngScreenshot_2.png.a9db5ef6df0a2ced721024896de1974f.png

 

Screenshot_3.thumb.png.30c19fc279a6d2d6f941155d180a40e5.png

 

 

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5 hours ago, Kevin.J said:

Sorry I meant my DC was mainly in order rather than I had everything scanned, I do have some scanned, the stuff I have been complete a long time anyway.

The screenshot is just a great little downloaded program called lightshot, it grabs anything highlighted and then you can save it.

Screenshot_1.thumb.png.7ee4b17e8b0d1c1bfaaa0806c6720ea3.pngScreenshot_2.png.a9db5ef6df0a2ced721024896de1974f.png

 

Screenshot_3.thumb.png.30c19fc279a6d2d6f941155d180a40e5.png

 

 

Thanks for the info on Lightshot.  Your Jimmy collection reminds me of how I screwed up in the 60s by not getting all the early issues.  Now I have to wait for deals on ebay or at comic shops.  That's another sad story from the Tricolor files...:pullhair:

Edited by Tri-ColorBrian
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