The tools to write it down yourself.

What it is

Six documents. Fifty-three pages. You print them at your own desk and fill them in by hand.

• The collection register. One numbered line per card — set, number, grader, grade, certificate, what you paid and when. It is the spine: every other sheet refers back to a number on this one.
• A record for each card. Two pages per card. What it is and where it sits in the market on the first; on the second, ruled and blank, the questions no database holds — where it came from, what it cost and how that felt, who you told, why this one.
• The Heirloom Letter. A letter to whoever opens the box. Ruled leaves, and before them the short list of things a family should not do in the first week — beginning with doing nothing at all for a little while.
• The photograph guide. How to shoot a slab so the certificate reads and the surface is honest. Written for a phone on a kitchen table, not for a studio.
• The contact sheet. Who should be called, in what order, and what each of them is for. Filled in by you, because only you know.
• The certificate log. Every cert number in one place, so a grader’s record can be pulled without handling a single card.

What it is not

It is not an appraisal, and there are no valuations in it. We do not tell you what your cards are worth — we give you the pages on which to set down what you know.

Nor is it a book about collecting. There is almost no prose in it, on purpose. It is a set of forms, and the writing in it is yours.

How it works

• You buy it, and tell us the name. One field at checkout: the name to print on the bookplate. It is asked for rather than taken from your card, because this is often bought for someone else.
• It arrives, made for that name. A PDF, personalized to the name you gave and numbered in sequence. Each one is prepared by hand, so it comes within a day rather than the same second.
• You print it and begin. On whatever paper you have. Start with the register and the five cards you would least like to be guessed at.

$75

About what it costs to have a single card graded.

And it is credited in full against a Record commissioned through August 2027. If you begin here and later decide you would rather we did the work, the seventy-five dollars comes off — so starting yourself costs you nothing but the trying.

Secure checkout by Stripe. You will be asked for the name to print. Delivered as a PDF within one working day.

Who it suits

Five to twenty-five cards is where it works best — enough that it cannot be held in your head, few enough that an evening or two finishes it. Fewer than five and you may only want a single card documented properly. Many more than twenty-five, and you will want the register sheets run again, which the files let you do.

And if what you actually want is for someone else to do this — because the collection is large, or because it is already an estate and nobody left knows what is in it — then that is the work we do, and this is not the right thing to buy.