By this point you will have figured out what your LEGO Star Wars angle is, what approach to collecting you’ll be adopting and where you’ll be doing your shopping – but how are you going to keep track of your growing collection?
Whether you have 10 sets or 100, at some point your pink 2 x 2 brick (that’s a BrickHeadz reference in case you didn’t catch it) will get overloaded trying to keep track of all the different pieces you have and those that you still need.
There’s one tried and true method that will always be around – the perennial list! When it comes to future-proofing there’s no better way to inventory your LEGO Star Wars than the good old checklist. Whether you’re using your own handwritten list or a curated printout from one of the multitudes of LEGO community websites, there is something very reassuring about a hardcopy. That said, they aren’t always convenient and at some time you’ll find yourself without your clipboard or computer, and struggling to remember if it was 7103 Jedi Duel or 7200 Final Duel I that you still need.
Luckily there are a number of modern resources that can fulfill your requirements.
First and foremost is a simple HTML website with a continually updated list. Despite this being one of oldest methods of collection cataloging – who remembers Geocities? – it’s still common enough. It does, however, require a small amount of coding skill and isn’t particularly flexible or responsive.
Alternatively, the cloud-based spreadsheet is a perfectly suitable option, with web-based productivity office suites like Google Docs, Evernote, Microsoft Onenote or iWork for iCloud for Apple/iOS users providing free services with largely unlimited storage options.
There are also a number of more advanced options available; ones that don’t require the user to have an initimate knowledge of what LEGO Star Wars products are available at a given time or constantly curate a list of collectibles.
Chief among these is Brickset’s own My Sets function. It takes advantage of the websites exhaustive database of LEGO sets to allow you to add records to a private database. Their tool not only allows you to track what you have and do not have (and presumably want), it lets you add notes to each set entry as well. A big tick in its favor is that it’s mobile friendly, but because Brickset primarily concentrates on LEGO products it has gaps – such as publications and multimedia merchandise – so doesn’t contain a full LEGO Star Wars catalog.
Alternatively, there is Bricklink’s Wanted List feature. While it’s not designed to manage collection it can be massaged into a useful – but cumbersome – tool. In essence, two lists are created: one that contains every LEGO Star Wars item (this is the Want list) and a second which acts as the Have list. By moving entries from the Want to the Have lists you can track your collection. It’s not ideal, nor is it responsive but Bricklink does have a very exhaustive LEGO Star Wars product database.
Outwith those services provided by LEGO community websites, there are a number of toy collection tracking tools like Coleka.com and Hobbydb.com. Neither are specifically designed for tracking LEGO collections but both have mobile apps – the former for both Android and iOS while the latter only has an iOS app (provided by an outside partner).
The niche LEGO Star Wars minifigure collectors have a more limited scope of tools available to them. While both Brickset and Bricklink can be used to track minifigures, there is currently only one dedicated LEGO Star Wars minifigure tracking app – LSW Collector is a mobile application available for iOS devices and is specifically designed for tracking every LEGO Star Wars minifigure and their variants. Created by The Holo-Brick Archives’ own Kevin Downard, it is designed by a collector for collectors, it provides detailed photos and descriptions of all the recognized minifigures and has a simple way of ticking off the ones you own and creating a wanted list of those you still need.
With your collection growing, you’ll want to find a way to keep them safe and still accessible – next week we cover storage options.
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