Personal Coin Inventory - What Info Do You Track?

[astrostu]

I'm briefly working more on my coin inventory app. I'm trying to "finalize" what fields to keep track of. At the moment, I have:

 

Date

Mint Mark

Grade

Face Value

Market Value

Attributes (e.g., 42/43, Accented Hair, etc.)

Quantity

Date Added

Group (a hallmark of my program will be that you can add coins to groups, like songs to playlists in iTunes)

Certified (Y/N)

Grading Company

Serial Number

Coin Type (e.g., if you have a $1 from 1921, allows you to select Morgan or Peace)

Source of Market Value

Notes

Photograph

 

What other stuff do you keep track of? I ask because it's much easier to build the framework for all the options now than just a little at a time.

[physics-fan3.14]

I like what you have there, but you need to add a column for price paid and who you bought it from. I don't know if you are going to track coins which have been sold as well, if so you should add date and price sold. To me, collecting foreign coins are almost as important as US coins, so I need KM# (Krause- Mischler number) and country of origin. I also like to have a spot for a description of my coin, but this might be included in notes, I guess ( I have separate spaces).

[Dan Marinelli]

How about:

 

Price paid

Source (where you acquired)

Lot number (if applicable) allows you to trace to auction book, possibly

Date sold

Price received - could also include fees paid to sell (ebay/pp/credit card/shipping, etc)

 

You might want to track market value over time. I usually end up repricing infrequently because it can be a lot of work. But I don't keep track of market value on a more continuous basis because I use excel and don't want to bother with the extra tables.

 

I have trouble keeping track of groups of coins, like if I buy a dansco filled with some of the coins. I either have to grade and relist, or keep in the group. Messy,messy.

 

Dan

[rbrown4]

I have my own parameters that I track on my inventory, but that is by personal preference. The only thing I can perhaps suggest is on the "market value", as to what you use for that. You need to be careful, depending on one source is not good. I track the values (taking into consideration the source and retail vs. wholesale) values from Coin Values, Numismedia as well as other sources such as Heritage or other auction sites. And I document the date and other info. on the coin sold so that I can more accurately correlate mine to those. All of these various values will differ from one to another but it gives me a base from which to start from. Updating is at my discretion and yes it can be a daunting task.

 

Rey

[James_OldeTowne]

This is a great topic! My entire website is derived from a spreadsheet in which I track the fields of data necessary to recreate the entire site at the push of a button. Here are my tried and true data columns:

 

Catalog Number

Coin Cost

Overhead Cost

Sale Price

Date

Attribution

Type

Grade

Certification

Full Text Description

Date Sold

Sold To Name / Address

Net Profit

Purchased net cost

Purchase date

Purchased from

[jesbroken]

I like both Jason and James' approach, as I like to add a column for freight expenses and postage expenses, which James lists as Overhead cost. Instead of using Market Value, I just juse Numismedia Value, which I find makes for a realistic value. Trying to use more than one creates a cumbersome chore. I use two different programs-ProCoin and Excel(with each having its own peculiarities and abilities).

[Revenant]

I have some out of date excel spreadsheets that are probably going to give way to an Access database the next time I go home and have a chance to work on my collection.