Primarily Petroliana Shop Talk Forums Shop Talk Petroliana Forums General Petroliana Discussion What's the best way to organize my collection on my computer?

I am looking for a good way to get my collection of petrol stuff organized on my computer. I have Word, Excel, & Power Point, which is a step up from shoe boxes, 3 ring binders and cigar boxes. But have not come up with a good template to combine pictures and info together. I have them organized into folders but would like to find a program that combines it all.
I see there are software programs for Coin Collectors, Stamp Collectors, Etc; but have not been able to find one suited for Petrol items...
What system do you use?

Chuck

Gaspedler, I see your from my home state Indiana!
I use some software I bought off ebay called Advertising collector and it's from silkdevelopment.com which works great. It uses pictures and can make categories like globes, signs, pumps and etc. and you can put what you paid and what the value is. I will try to take a picture of my screen and show you tonight when I get back from a church meeting.

I use Excel and digital camera. The column labels are: Description, Category, Pic #, Qty, Cost, Date, and Notes. Heres and example for Husky Oil can: Description = Husky Qt Can (Yellow, Empty), Category = Can, Pic = image 201, Qty = 1, Cost = 50.00, Total = 50.00, Date = 8/5/03, Notes = Bought from Johnny Petrol at 2003 Iowa Gas…

I broke my collection into categories for sorting reasons: Globes, Signs, Cans, Maps, Pumps, Misc. The Total field fills automatically by multiplying Qty x Cost formula. This only helps when I buy say a case of oil on a farm auction and want to break it down for price per can. Notes column is important to me because it gives me clues of where I was and the people I have met. The most important part of my process is the digital image in the folder which is noted in my spreadsheet. At the Bottom of the Total column I have several rows dedicated for Totals by Year and Grand Total which lets me see a running total for not only the year but my entire collection.
The spreadsheet and pics are all in one folder labeled "Gas & Oil" so I can easily burn a CD for offsite backup and insurance documentation.

This may all seem overkill for most people but it really is fast once you have the spreadsheet setup. You could simplify it to basically be only “amount spent” and “image” of item. My wife just likes the idea of having basic information available to her if something would happen to me… Also, a warning should be noted here for you guys who don’t want your spouse to see how much you have spent…may want to consider using a password to lock the spreadsheet. It only cost me a Cocktail Ring! LOL

Regards,Kim

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Be very careful when using a program to inventory your collection. A friend of mine did that and got up from the computer without exiting the program. His wife sat down at the computer and saw how much money he had spent on globes. An unpleasant discussion insued.

Thanks for the help. It's given me some good ideas. J.J got me steered toward a good software program on the net. I hope to use that for my personal collection. And I like the idea of the Excel program also SuperAmerica Man mentioned. I could use that to seperate the extras I pick up that I want to sell or trade later on. Password protecting is a good idea also. My wife hates using a computer, but if something happened to me she would want to know what things were worth. Just to be safe, I think I will give my son the password...lol.