How do you keep track of your growing herd?

evilbunnyfoofoo

evilbunnyfoofoo

My shoes are laced with irony
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Just curious as to how everyone keeps a tab or who they have and who they have not. I admit I buy almost any Pony I see and can afford, but I do sometimes show restraint and try to purchase just what I need.

Right now I'm using an Excel checklist I'm making as I buy, but it seems so unyielding. Anyone have a more simple approach to knowing what you have and what you need?
 
I take a picture and write their name underneath them on Microsoft Words
 
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I use a few different methods. My quick and basic method is the G1 (that is all I collect) Checklist that I printed off the Dream Valley website and keep in a binder readily available. I also just got the G1 Collector's Inventory book by Summer Hayes off of Amazon that is basically a more detailed checklist (allows me to keep track of my accessories that came with each pony). And finally I have a simple Microsoft word document where I keep a meticulously detailed description of every pony in my personal collection, I also keep a separate document to the same extent with my doubles that are for sale. This is extremely time consuming and my husband makes fun of me for my OCD tendencies lol but it helps keep me organized (my collection is getting pretty big now so I need to). :smilepony:
 
I'm one of those very sad individuals who spent time plotting a database out, building it and writing queries so I have an electronic checklist that generates which ponies I own, which I don't, and which I want most. ^^ Each pony has its own "ID Card" with a picture, the name, the set, the year, hair colours (as invariably I have to replace tails or rehair ponies when they arrive), pose, pony type and so on. On the ID card you can also check a box that says "I own this pony" or "I want this pony" so the queries can keep track.

My friend helped me to populate it with all the IDs, since she wanted to use it too for her G1s! We took it in turns when one of us got tired of entering info, and I think we were done within a week! It only really covers US and UK ponies though, as beyond a couple of Italian ponies, neither of us have expanded past those two countries. Mostly for financial reasons. Hehe.

It's also handy for us because we just ask each other "can you put your lists in dropbox?" and then we can focus our gift-buying on the priority ponies rather than buying doubles by accident. =)
 
I take stock photos that I find online and put them together in one enormous .jpg image using an editing program. First I try to make everything as close to the same size as possible, then I arrange the ponies by colour, then I put outlines around the ones that I'm still looking for and list numbers under the ones that I have doubles of. That way I can look at it and see exactly what I have and what I'm missing at a glance. If I have ponies on order, I group the ones coming from the same place/seller and colour code them differently. Then when I get the ones I'm currently after, I take off the lines, add new pictures and outline those again. It's getting a little too large now that I have 30 different ponies, another 14 or so doubles and over 20 still on my to buy list, though...

I'm going to have to change the format to an Excel spreadsheet or a Word document, especially since I also need to start taking note of exactly what I'm keeping MIB and what condition my loose ponies are in... For now I only collect G4s, and most of them are in excellent to mint condition, so I've had no need to keep track, but it'll be important when I finally start collecting G1s and G2s. Either way, I always need to have pictures, otherwise I don't get a feel for exactly how far I am with my collection. I have my ponies lying around in boxes at the moment because I don't have a place to display them yet, so I never actually get to see them. Being able to look at photos of everything I own in a diagram helps me feel a sense of accomplishment, and keeping pictures of the ponies I'm still looking for helps me to organize my priorities.

@hanamadoi, that database sounds fantastic. ^^ I'll have to tell my boyfriend about that one. He's in IT, and he's often busy trying to code his own apps to make things easier for himself.
 
@ladyofthenight, you should definitely ask your boyfriend to make you a G4 database! I'm a computing graduate and databases are my speciality, so I had to take a crack at it. =)
 
My own scatterbrained approach seems to be: maintain both a plain text list and an Excel spreadsheet, along with taking photos of obtained ponies. Thus, eventually, I'll know all of my ponies by heart by sheer force of repetition. The nephew clamoring to know the name of every pony he sees helps matters along. :tongue:

The database does sound like a lovely idea, but I wouldn't even know where to begin on that count.
 
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:surprisepony:Same as other people here, I keep a Word file with the pictures and names of the ponies I have, as well as ponies I'd like to get. By order of release, because I'm a chronology nut. :tongue:

That reminds me, I think the last time I updated it was like, over 9 months ago. :surprisepony: It's not like I've gotten those many ponies since then, but still!
 
Multiple Excel spreadsheets, linked to pics of my actual ponies.

But for most things I have no trouble remembering on my own. It's mostly babies and accessories I blank on.
 
I used to have multiple PowerPoint slideshows and would take a stock photo of say Twinkle Eyed ponies and put it on one slide. Then, the next slide would be a photo of MY personal twinkle eyes and I could add text of which ones I still needed. Let me tell you, those slide shows are enormous, take forever to load, aren't handy to print, etc.

I bought Summer's books a few years ago and they are basically what I was doing in my slideshows but the books are easy to transport and update as well as add notes next to the photos. I highly recommend them!
 
My main way of keeping track of ponies are picture-checklists I made myself, by gathering photos from ID sites online, then shrinking + pasting them onto a couple of .bmp grids. G1 MLPs are roughly organized by year and group, G3 MLPs by body colour. ^_^; Ones I have get a little checkmark in the corner box. :LOL:

I also print off those pages for a 'master list' copy I can refer to offline, and also an edited version of just the ones I'm missing (or looking to replace/upgrade) that I carry with me, so I can refer to it whenever I can find some in stores. :winkpony:
 
Ah, great ideas, my cleverest Pony pals! I am thinking on things to add to my checklists even now.

Right now the data I include is:
Pony Name/Generation/Release Year/Style/Colour/Type (Earth Pony, Pegasus, Unicorn...)

I'm definitely going to want to incorporate photos, it would help immensely.

Thanks everyone!
 
hanamadoi said:
I'm one of those very sad individuals who spent time plotting a database out, building it and writing queries so I have an electronic checklist that generates which ponies I own, which I don't, and which I want most. ^^ Each pony has its own "ID Card" with a picture, the name, the set, the year, hair colours (as invariably I have to replace tails or rehair ponies when they arrive), pose, pony type and so on. On the ID card you can also check a box that says "I own this pony" or "I want this pony" so the queries can keep track.
Click to expand...

This sounds awesome! I've been hoping someone would make an app but so far no such luck. I use Summer's book and I also have an app called Toy Boss, it's not great but it's handy for the fair or when you want a quick reference. You have to import all the data yourself though which is time consuming vs it already being there and just selecting what you need. Most of my collection though, I can still recall from memory and that's pretty good I guess since I'm pushing 400!
 
Wishlists! That is the answere :p

To get an accurate one though you need to do some pre-work ;)

Just like so many others here I first made my own personal check-lists in Word - one list for each generation as I collect them all and want them all XD. I used Dream Valley, My Little Wiki and Strawberry Reef to get as accurate lists as possible and just simply wrote the names of every pony down on these lists under the correct set and year. For example:

YEAR 5

Twinkle Eye Ponies
Mimic
Bright Eyes
Tic-Tac-Toe
Quackers
Locket

You get the idea.

Once I had completed the lists I printed them out and did an inventory - putting a mark next to the names of ponies I had (which is the usual and obvious way to work checklists :p ).

When that was done I went through all the lists and made a secondary list on my computer with names of every single pony I did not have along with pictures for quick IDs. I even copied it onto my webpage wishlist for even easier access. Link is in my signature if you wanna look and get an idea of what I mean :)
As soon as I get a pony I just remove it from the wishlists and mark it in my checklist.


That wish-list on my computer is what makes it so very easy for me to keep track of what I'm still missing. Whenever I spot a pony on Ebay I'm interested in I can just check that list or my own web-page to quickly see if it's a pony I'm missing or not.

By now though I have to admit I know those wishlists like the back of my hand and usually know without checking my lists if I have a pony or not XD
 
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DerbyGirl said:
My collection is still small enough I can go by memory only x3
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Same here :)

Also I have list in my mind what ponies I want to buy next. The list is for it, I do not buy too many ponies and not lose all my money pony frenzy :winkpony:
 
Desert_Rose said:
That wish-list on my computer is what makes it so very easy for me to keep track of what I'm still missing. Whenever I spot a pony on Ebay I'm interested in I can just check that list or my own web-page to quickly see if it's a pony I'm missing or not.

By now though I have to admit I know those wishlists like the back of my hand and usually know without checking my lists if I have a pony or not XD
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I also have the ones I'm missing on a wishlist, including prototypes and others that haven't been released yet. It's a lot easier to keep track of G4s, because unless you're collecting all the mane six variants, there aren't that many different ones to remember. I pretty much know offhand the ones I have and the next ones that I'm looking for. But then there are quite a large number of obscure pink ponies that aren't very different from each other, so I have those at the bottom of my list, and I tend to forget about them entirely...
 
I don't buy so ******* many ponies
 
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