So, you've been working merrily away at acquiring stuff for your collection, and suddenly, you realize, you are surrounded by heaps, nay, small mountains, of confusion. Or worse, you catch yourself buying something you already had.

It's time to begin cataloguing your collection.

It was time to move on to something a little bit more efficient.

But first, a couple of tips I have found along the way.

Before you start cataloguing your collection, I recommend that you organize your photos before you begin cataloguing, and continue doing so as you add more items. I am in the habit of photographing each item from all angles, so I can reference it again if I need it. I would suggest (based on my own experience) organizing photos by type of item: Figure, Poster, Point of Sale, Press,  Bookmark, and so on. Naturally, some items will fit into several categories, so you will have to make your system of organization very consistent. For example, in my "Sideshow" folder, I put not only statues, but also Sideshow catalogues, postcards, and even a Sideshow keyring.

If you are starting a new catalogue, having your photos organized wll make things much faster to enter, too. For example, if you have one folder of photos of nothing but AOME figures, when you are read to catalogue these figures, you will (on most softwares) be able to copy the same information to the next item, and change only the name and photograph.

On my first attempt at cataloguing, I kept track of what I thought things were worth, not what I had actually paid for them. I could kick myself for that now. It would be alot more useful to know what I had paid, and posting what things are worth is a complete waste of time. The Pavement magazine that sold for $100 or more in 2002 is probably selling for a fraction of that now. Ditto for a Twilight Frodo. On the other hand, certain rare items have gained in value, so the executive movie logo cufflinks that I bought for a song five years ago might be worth quite a lot more than that now.

On the other hand, there is a certain virtue in not letting your significant other know how much money you have spent!

My first attempt at organizing myself found me buying a very inexpensive collectors software on Ebay for about twenty bucks. I really liked the layout, but unfortunately, it froze my computer each and every time I used it, and it was not returnable, and the seller provided no support. I would suggest avoiding Ebay sellers like the plague. There's too many well supported vendors available now, although I was not able to find one back in 2002.

So, my husband, who is an expert in such things, built me a very easy to use spreadsheet on Excel.

It was very simple. I had columns listing Movie (FOTR, TTT, ROTK), Source (New Line, Toybiz, Topps, etc), type of item, country of origin, language, characters, etc.  On an Excel spreadsheet you can add in columns for "cels". If you right click the Cel, you can add an internal hyperlink that will link to a photo stored elsewhere on your computer.

The Excel spreadsheet works very well, and is free to set up. You MUST copy it regularly. You can NOT change the location of your photos on your computer.

Adding an item is fast and extremely easy. Unfortunately, adding photographs is not, as adding the hyperlinks to the cels is very tedious and time consuming.   When viewing the images, you must also drill down into each individual photo, which can be laborious, if you have a lot of them stored.

The Excel spreadsheet is highly searchable (far more so than the most efficient commercial software), and, if you are fluent in such things, can be sorted, and re-sorted as items are added.

But, it is unappealing to look at, and if you are looking for a particular item, you have to drill down into interminable pictures til you find the item you wanted.