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Card collection spreadsheet vs an inventory app
Almost every collector starts with a spreadsheet, and a spreadsheet is genuinely good at this — until the collection outgrows the willingness to type. That's the real problem we set out to solve.
What a spreadsheet gets right
It's free, it's yours, it does exactly what you tell it, and nobody can take it away or change it under you. If you have sixty cards and a steady hand, a spreadsheet is a perfectly good answer and you don't need us. We mean that.
Where it stops working
Not in the columns — in the typing. Every spreadsheet depends on you sitting down after a purchase and entering it, and that's the step that quietly stops happening. What follows is familiar:
- Cost basis drifts.The item price gets typed in; shipping, fees and tax don't. Months later the sheet says you paid $40 for something that cost you $52, and every profit figure built on it is wrong.
- A backlog forms. Twenty receipts sitting in an inbox waiting for a rainy Sunday is a backlog that never gets cleared, and the sheet stops being a description of what you own.
- Sales go unrecorded.Buying is exciting enough to log. Selling usually isn't, so the sold column lags and realised profit is guesswork.
- Naming drifts.“2023 Topps Chrome”, “23 Chrome”, “Topps Chrome 2023” — three names for one set, and now nothing groups properly.
What we do differently
We didn't try to build a better grid. We tried to remove the typing. You already get a receipt for every card you buy — it has the card, the price, the shipping, the fees and the tax on it. Forward it to your private address and we read it and file the cards for you. Set up a rule in your own email and even the forwarding stops being something you do.
The point isn't automation for its own sake. It's that an inventory only stays accurate if keeping it accurate costs nothing.
| Spreadsheet | My Card Inventory | |
|---|---|---|
| Getting a purchase in | You type it | Forward the receipt; we read it |
| Shipping, fees, tax | Only if you add them | Split across the cards automatically |
| Sales | You remember to update it | Read from the payout email |
| Where a card physically is | Another column to maintain | Built in — boxes, slots, pick lists |
| Photos | Awkward at best | Unlimited, on every card |
| Cost | Free | Free to start, and free to stay |
Yes, there's a free plan
Not a trial that expires — a free plan you can stay on. It covers basic inventory tracking: your cards, unlimited photos, storage locations, manual entry and export, plus a handful of free receipt reads so you can see the automatic part work on your own emails before deciding it's worth paying for. Plenty of people will never need more than that, and that's a fine outcome.
Moving across
You don't retype anything. Import the spreadsheet you already have, then start forwarding receipts from that point on — the old collection comes over as history and the new stuff arrives on its own.