Organization is key!

I've had several people ask me how I keep track of my bobbleheads.  A few months ago I touched on this, read that here.  At first I started with a simple excel spreadsheet.  Then my passion grew into something a bit more than me just being "passionate" or so says my wife.  A small obsession perhaps?  Well, at that point I knew this excel spreadsheet wasn't going to cut it.  I looked at a few different options but eventually settled on something I was familiar with - Microsoft Access.  Simply put this is a database management system and exactly what I needed to keep track of my bobbleheads.

Below is a screenshot of my access database.  You'll see I have plenty of columns, for each bobblehead.  I try to get as much data as I possibly can.  If I learn something down the road, I fill it in on my database.  It includes both bobbleheads I have and those that I'm looking for.  It's not a perfect database yet, but hopefully some day, it will be!

How to keep track of all these bobbleheads

This is a bit of a different blog post.  For the longest time I'd just try to remember the bobbleheads I have and the ones I'm most interested in acquiring.  Then I started a couple different excel spreadsheets.  My problem was continuing to update the spreadsheets as I ran across more bobbleheads.  I wasn't sure what  I should do.  I knew whatever it was that I'd end up picking, I wanted it to work for a long time but I didn't want it to be online.  I came to one conclusion...Microsoft Access.  It's a database tool, so really it should be perfect for me.  It's a huge time commitment tho, and that's my problem right now.  I update it when I have time and over the next couple of months, it should be complete - at least with the bobbleheads I own and some of the ones I'd like to own.  If you are looking for something to track you bobbleheads...depending on what you are comfortable with, Excel or Access should work for you!