The Point Where a Shoebox Stops Working
Model horse collecting at the hobbyist scale is manageable with rough mental notes and a photo album. At the competitive scale — where you're tracking artists, running proxy shows, buying on Timepay, commissioning custom paint work, and trying to figure out whether a particular piece has appreciated enough to list — the mental model collapses under its own weight.
The specific problem isn't remembering what you own. It's knowing what each piece actually cost you across every input, what it's worth now after commission paint work, and what you need to list it for to clear a PayPal fee and still net the number you have in mind. These are not questions you can answer correctly from memory on the morning you decide to sell something.
The Three Financial Fields That Most Collectors Ignore
Purchase Price is the starting point, but in the model horse market it's rarely the final cost of owning a piece. Shipping, Prepping, and Other Costs compound on top of the base price, and Commission Price — the cost of custom artist paint work added to a factory piece — is often larger than the original acquisition cost for high-end custom work.
The Total Cost calculated field (Cost + Shipping + Prepping + Other Costs) gives you a single number that represents what the piece actually cost you to get in hand. That number then anchors Total Value (Total Cost + Commission Price), which is the realistic floor for what the piece is worth if you've invested in custom work.
Most collectors who sell have a vague sense that they "need to cover what they put into it." This template makes that number exact and immediate, rather than something you reconstruct from email receipts at the moment you're negotiating.
The PayPal Fees calculated field — Total Value × 0.039 — builds the transaction cost directly into the pricing logic. For Sale Amount adds PayPal Fees and the PayPal Fee Charge field on top of Total Value, which is the number you post publicly if you want to net your actual costs rather than quietly absorbing fees. Collectors who have done this math manually on a dozen transactions know how quickly 3.9% erodes margin on a $400 sale.
Status Flags as a Triage System
Seven boolean status fields — Sold, Owned, Timepay, In Hand, Proxy Showing, For Sale, Not Received — map the full lifecycle and operational state of a piece through acquisition, display, competition, and sale.
Timepay is the field that serves the specific economy of the model horse market, where payment installment plans between private collectors are routine. A piece marked Timepay and Not Received is in a defined limbo state: you've committed funds but don't physically have the piece yet. Filtering for Not Received gives you an instant accounting of outstanding acquisitions — pieces you're owed, money already committed, timing you're tracking. Without this flag, that information lives in email threads and memory.
Proxy Showing status marks pieces entered in shows through a proxy handler rather than being physically transported by the owner. This is a logistical state with real implications: the piece is at someone else's location, being shown on your behalf, and needs to be tracked separately from pieces in hand.
Show History as Performance Record
Results 1, Results 2, Results 3, and Show Name give each piece a competition history in free text, which is the right format for show results that vary in structure across different organizations and event types.
A piece with a documented show record — particularly at recognized events in the NAMHSA circuit — carries provable competitive history that affects its resale value to buyers who care about provenance. Three result fields captures enough history to establish a performance pattern without overcomplicating entry. The key is that it's attached to the piece record rather than sitting in a separate show log that gets cross-referenced manually.
Maker, Artist, Breed Type, and Color together form the collecting identity of the piece — the combination that determines its market segment, its audience, and its comparables. Filtering by Artist across a large collection gives you an instant view of how much work you hold from a particular sculptor, which informs buying decisions when a new piece from the same artist comes to market.