You pull a Double Prism from a pack you've been chasing for two months. You know it's rare. What you don't know, without checking, is whether you already have it — and if so, from which part of the set.
The Taxonomy That Holds It Together
Trading card collections collapse under their own weight when the only organization system is a box. The catalog structure here separates cards by part (Part 1 through Part 6), card type, and number — which mirrors how actual sets are structured by publishers. A card isn't just a card; it's a specific position in a specific release.
Card type is the field collectors skip until it costs them. Commons, Prisms, Double Prisms, Platinum, Flash, 3D — these aren't just rarity labels. They're distinct inventory categories. A collection can be complete in Commons and still have zero Prisms from the same set. The N° of Commons and N° of Prisms fields track these separately, so completeness can be measured at the correct granularity.
The Own boolean is the simplest field and the one that gets used most. Every card in the catalog either belongs to the collection or marks a gap. That gap list is what you bring to a swap meet.
Building the Set Map
The Numbers included (from & to) field captures the range a particular part covers — say, cards 1–72 in Part 3. Combined with Number of cards, this lets you calculate what percentage of any part is cataloged. It's the difference between knowing you "have a lot of Part 4" and knowing you have 61 of 88 cards.
Photo support means the visual reference lives alongside the record. For high-value variants, that photo is the primary verification — the card number confirms identity, but the image confirms condition and variant type at a glance.
Publisher and year anchor each set historically. For collectors who span multiple publishers or decades of releases, these fields prevent the catalog from becoming a single undifferentiated pile. A 1999 set and a 2019 reprint share card numbers but nothing else.
Finding What You Need
The real test of any card catalog is retrieval speed. When someone offers a trade, you need to answer within seconds: do I have card 47, Prism variant, Part 2? A catalog sorted by number, filterable by card type and owned status, answers that before the conversation stalls.
Aggregation across N° of Prisms and N° of Commons fields gives collection-level counts — useful for valuation estimates, insurance records, or deciding whether a set is worth completing or selling as-is.