You Know You're A Collector When... Part II

This week, I now bare your collection and help you face it, for what it really is, your collection of really neat stuff that happens to have some monetary value. I ended last weeks column with the question:

HOW MUCH IS YOUR COLLECTION WORTH?

The answer to this question is more difficult than you might imagine.

Any collection has 2 values, personal and actual. Of the 2, the personal value is the highest. Usually, the personal value of a collection includes the emotional value of any items. I have an autographed Lone Ranger comic that has the most value of any item that I have, it was my first 'autographed' item that I ever received. Book value-$75, emotional value-priceless. Amongst the 'priceless' list I include autographed Philip Jose Farmer novels, Fran Striker Jr autographed Lone Ranger novels, Tom Gill original artwork, signed Paul S Neuman comic strips, and my Dale Evans video/snapshots. Real value to any other collector-far less than I would value them at.

So, when we evaluate our collections, the first step is cataloguing. The difficult part of cataloguing our goods is taking an objective look at what we have. We don't have a 'comic that we could never bear to part with', we have Batman #21, in Very Good condition with spine tears and rusty staple. Value, $395. But, that aside, to properly catalogue your goodies, you must decide exactly what criteria and categories you will use. I have catalogued my collection, and what I used follows:

1. Movies-Number, Actor, Title, Year of Production, start/stop time, Pre-record (Yes/No), Value at Purchase, and Genre

2. Books-Title, Author, Copyright Date, Print, Dust Jacket (Yes/No), Value at Purchase, Genre, and Notes

3. Comic Books-Title, Number, Date of Publication, Condition, Artist, Value, and Notes

4. Toys-Character, Type of Toy, Year of Toy, Condition, Notes, Value, Picture (Yes/No)

5. Autographed Pictures-Actor, Colour/B-W, Autographed, Source, Value, Notes

Some other criteria that you can use are Type of material, Identifying marks, Where purchased, when purchased, Value at time of purchase, value now, % increase, where you have the item, photographs available (Yes/No). The range of information you can list is quite enormous, and dependent upon the collectible you have.

There are several easily available tools that you can use to catalogue your items. I used the Microsoft Works spreadsheet program, you can use Excel if you so choose, or Word if you like. The result is the same. You end up with a list that reduces your passion to a stream of data, which is how your spouse or friends may see your collection. But the end result is a value that you can take to your insurance company for their robbing you blind on extra insurance.

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