A Cautionary Tale – Getting your affairs in order before passing on

[ChiefBeef]

How will your survivor(s) even know where to begin and not get taken? Well, unfortunately it requires you to put in the work. This would hold true for yourself to protect against catastrophic loss as well.

About 10 yrs. ago I used a ready made software to post and record my collection. Received updated values by grade quarterly. Was easy and great product. They got swallowed up by Beckett. Looked and searched a long time. Never found another comprehensive product that wasn't simple and easy to use. Decided to use excel spreadsheet. By copying Beckett and with a few easy clicks in excel you have a very usable and informative database. Took a while and you have to upload any price updates manually but not hard. I am talking 150,000 cards +, from T206 thru present day. Call me crazy or what you want, but I got the insurance requirements and estate issues covered with some help. Not saying it solves either but serves as a base to work from. I have even incorporated and covered pins, pennants, auto balls, auto pictures and bats.

[Jewish-collector]

In the late 1980's, there was a DOS-based computer program to track your collection. You typed in the card info and it calculated the price from it's internal database. It was based on the grading conditions at the time (maybe ?) mint, vg-ex, f-g. It was advertised in SCD, baseball hobby news, Trader Speaks, etc,... and sold for about $100. Not sure if there is anything like that nowadays.

[GasHouseGang]

I think I bought that program back in the day. I believe it was called "The Trading Card Database", or something like that. I used it for awhile, but I gave up since you had to enter each card and assign it a grade (including commons). I assume it would have needed constant updating of it's internal database to remain accurate. It was a good idea, but it took too much work when you have thousands of cards to enter.

[molenick]

If you subscribe to VCP, you can track your cards and also check them against the latest prices. I never realized it before, but you can also download My Collection as a pdf or csv file...which I will now do and put in the folder with my will, which just says the collection is to be split between my two children.

VCP is only good for cards (and close relatives like checklisted pin sets, felts, etc.). Not great for books, uniforms, bats, generic cdvs, etc.