Do You Catalog Your Buck Collection? If So, How?

pjsjr

pjsjr

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I have wanted to catalog my knives for a long time. I thought that Excel/Libre spread sheet would do, but, that way is a PIA...just takes to long to put in the info I want.

Is there a program that allows a person to input data(easily/quickly) and retrieve it?
 
Old school. Folders in folders, with Word. docxs. jpgs of the knife. Also printouts of the word.docx descriptions and receipt in manila envelope, with a good hint as to where the dang thing is. Takes awhile but isn't that part of collecting?
 
tongueriver said:
Old school. Folders in folders, with Word. docxs. jpgs of the knife. Also printouts of the word.docx descriptions and receipt in manila envelope, with a good hint as to where the dang thing is. Takes awhile but isn't that part of collecting?
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I will do this as a last resort. I'm trying to live in the digital/tech world with old school wants and desires 😁
 
I use a spreadsheet—separate spreadsheets for each model. I sort the information by year so the oldest knife is at the top. I've attached part of the 102 spreadsheet with the cost and seller deleted. I try to do this as soon as the knife arrives. Later I do a write-up for each knife, with photos included. I'm afraid I'm a little lax about including steel information unless it's something special. I attach the ID# on the knife, sheet, and box, and store the knife separately.

Bert
inventory example.png
 
I almost started an Excel list awhile back when my knives were stored in boxes and not easily visible. Now the whole collection is stored in sliding drawers of a large tool chest, making them easy to see and keep track of. I don't feel the need to catalog them now.
 
This is a far from perfect way but works for me. I take photos of knife and store in Microsoft Pictures. I title each picture with brief description. They are all stored in "Buck Knives" folder. I then store the knives in various cabinents and custom display cabinents. I catalog their locaton in a Microsoft Word document. They are listed in their location with brief description. They are stored in 'Buck Knives location' folder I then can search on my computer with brief description/name and location and picture will pop up. My system is flawed for the fact that Microsoft continues to upgrade their programs. They have made Microsoft Word a subscription based program and Microsoft Pictures changes every time they come out with new operating system. Fortanetly I have a computer nerd friend who has made work around solutions to keep my system working.
 
I don't have a collection per se, just a nice set of users across brands with the count of Bucks soon to be at 27. For all of my knives, I uses a single Google Sheets page with the rows grouped by brand with one row of data per knife. Within a brand grouping, I would often have the rows for a single model, 110, 112, etc. together. But, Buck is the only brand I have with enough of more than one model to make that effective. Of the other brands I have, only a single model has two of that one. All other models in the other brands are one each. As I only buy to use and never to just collect, I don't track a lot of data about each and, so far, have only purchased new. Below is a capture of the first few rows to show the type of data I have so far. Since I started, I have sold or given away quite a few. For those, I just move that row to the bottom of the sheet to keep the record of the history. For the notes column, most rows are empty, especially for brands other than Buck. Others, such as for the 532 (2023 LE), may have multiple lines of notes. (The actual column width is 5-6 times wider than what is shown in the capture and has the text wrapping to show everything at once.)

1767030558165.png
 
Chilebrown said:
I have a computer nerd friend who has made work around solutions to keep my system working.
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Everyone needs a friend like that if not a computer nerd themself! :thumbsup:
I had a photo imaging program, forget what it was called. I could arrange photos by knife model and I liked that. At the time I had a lot fewer knives. That program went away and I have been using Imgur. I don't know if Imgur's premium subscription will do that. I do have Microsoft but not a subscription.

I like your idea but am not a computer nerd, far from it! I need simple/real simple!
 
pjsjr said:
Thanks, I will check it out.
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In your other message, you mentioned images. I don't track images for my knives with my spreadsheet, though that is possible if you make a column/row large enough and shrink the image to fit that area after pasting it in. I only use my spreadsheet for text data. I have Microsoft Excel for local files, but I like Google Sheets because it is both free (my data is the payment) and I can access it from both my computer (web browser) and from a mobile device app. When I receive a knife, I would likely take a photo with my iPhone and add it to a 'Knives' album. I may also upload an image to Flickr for posting here. My Knives iPhone album is automatically backed up with my Apple One subscription. If you wanted to keep a set of images for each knife on a computer, you could add an 'Image Folder' column to the spreadsheet with the name of that knife. You could then put all related images in that folder. If you use a file sharing service like Dropbox, Apple iCloud, Google Drive, etc. there would be a backup of that in the cloud server in case anything happened to your local device (unless you specifically delete it). For folder naming, with modern file systems, you can use longer more descriptive names such as "Buck 532 2023 LE" or, if you want delimiters other than a space character, maybe "Buck_532_2023_LE". If you have any questions about doing this, just ask and I will try to answer.
 
pjsjr said:
Everyone needs a friend like that if not a computer nerd themself! :thumbsup:
I had a photo imaging program, forget what it was called. I could arrange photos by knife model and I liked that. At the time I had a lot fewer knives. That program went away and I have been using Imgur. I don't know if Imgur's premium subscription will do that. I do have Microsoft but not a subscription.

I like your idea but am not a computer nerd, far from it! I need simple/real simple!
Click to expand...
I am not a fan of Imgur. I still use the free program to post here on the Forum. The problem with storing photos on Imgur is they can go out of business and they can raise their premium plan price whenever they feel like. Everybody was using photobucket for awhile and all those photos are gone/hidden.
 
I created an ongoing email to myself which I update periodically. I photograph and price/describe each knife I buy in a separate/individual email.

005 Gen 5 Skinner (5)
2008 (2008)-Rosewood-154CM
2008 (nobx)-Rosewood-154CM
2010 (wdbx)-Virginia Wildlife 2010-CSTM
2022 (2022)-Charcoal-Nickel-12C27
2022 (2022)-Charcoal-Brass-12C27

015 Lux
2012 (2012)-Avid-13C26

040 Onset
2023 (1123)-Black G10-S45VN
2023 (0623)-Black G10-S45VN

055 The 55
2017 (nobx)-Ebony(DMW)-Brass
2019 (nobx)-Elk-NS

101 Fixed Hunter
2016 (2016)-Brass-Charcoal-5160-FLPSH-Copper+Clad-#043
 
A digital folder for each year containing a subfolder for each month and a sub-subfolder for each knife purchased that month containing pictures, receipt, etc. An excel spread sheet is contained in each annual folder in order of purchase.. I occasionally combine each annual excel sheet for a master listing organized by model number. I'm falling a bit behind and I guess 70% of my collection has not been photographed.
 
DeSotoSky said:
A digital folder for each year containing a subfolder for each month and a sub-subfolder for each knife purchased that month containing pictures, receipt, etc. An excel spread sheet is contained in each annual folder in order of purchase.. I occasionally combine each annual excel sheet for a master listing organized by model number. I'm falling a bit behind and I guess 70% of my collection has not been photographed.
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You must own a very large number of knives, Roger 😀
 
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