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I've dispensed with different collections to track my collecting. It became very tedious to separate items the way I wanted, and since I trade quite a bit the transfer of cards became too time consuming. The idea I had was to keep track of everything within a collection, but the TCDB system doesn't work my way. For example, when I set up my Astros collection I would go through it and mark my Haves, list my Wants, but when a trade went through regardless of where the Want was, they all got stuffed into Main Collection. It wasn't as easy to transfer cards in trades to my Astros collection because I also had set up an All-Star, Subset, Insert, and Small Sets Collection, so sometimes Astros would belong there. So basically I just got tired of trying to match my physical collection with our system by transferring cards electronically.

Some of my trading colleagues prefer the system the way it is, whle I envisioned it helping my organization by simply keeping cards where they were wanted since throughout the trading system they were there, but once a trade is marked received, all was abandoned and they went to Main Collection. For me that's useless, for others not. And that's okay. Apparently I'm in the minority because I submitted a New Feature Proposal that didn't get much support. It's not the first time in life that I've wanted something my way and didn't get it.

Now I say "sort of" in the Subject of this post because I intend to use the collections as a way to track my completed ventures - which was my original thought before jumping onto the separate collections bandwagon - but it will be as a duplication because I cannot remove, for example, my completed team sets from Main Collection because I'll run into duplication in trades (which I don't want). I don't care about the numbers shown for my collection because I'll use the Goals to help keep me on task. Once a team set, or other set is completed, then I'll just duplicate those same entries into my "Complete" collections. I think that'll work for me.

I played with different collections for a short bit but quickly decided it wasn't for me and went back to one collection. 

I understand your frustration with the fact that cards received in trade automatically get dropped in the Main Collection and not where the want came from.  I too wish it would go into the collection to where it was wanted.  I have learned to lvie with it but understanding how you wished to use the Collections feature, I can see that it would be difficult to use.  Maybe with time, Admin will fidn a way to alter the program so that it does it the way we would like.  I am not a computer programmer so I am not sure what it wold take to do.

I'm over 200 collections now, and I wouldn't trade it for the world. But I completely how it is when cards go to the Main collection. But, that's part of the enjoyment *I* get out of it - I go through my newly acquired cards, move them 1 by 1 (maybe a couple at once if I've gotten a couple that go to the same collection) and I can ensure I received the card and I can ensure the right collection was updated. I also have one collection that is a temporary stop anyway, so any that fall in that one, usually move along to others. It's complicated, but it's okay.

But that's the beauty of the database - I can have 200+ collections, and you can have 1, and we can both be very happy in that! Looks like Admin hit a HR on that one.

One problem with putting the card in the collection the want was from - and this is a real life sceanrio - what do we do when someone gets 1 card from their want list, but they had the card in more than 1 want list?

Example - pretend I'm really on top of adding my want lists and I add 2020 Topps flagship. I want the whole base set (minus SPs) for my "Baseball Sets" collection. I also want 1 of each Phillies card for my "Phillies" collection. So card #220 (J.T.) is on 2 want lists. I make a trade and I get one. - Which list does it go to?

Simple answer. If it worked to where it would send it to whichever collection the Want came from, that's where it'd go regardless. It's inanimate and programmed. It's an 0101010 or 101010 to it.

But see I don't think you understood my problem with the tedium. I did all that sorting on the front end  before a trade. Why go to all that trouble only to do it again? Also, I don't understand the point that has been brought up before about wanting to confirm an item has been received. That's done within the transaction before you mark received. As I go through the transaction and confirm receipt, I also would separate them to their physical location. So what I was having to do was to clean up what was messed up by the abandonment of how the system worked up until clicking package received. It made no sense to me to have a Want List associated with Collection A, when it went to In Transaction, it would be in Collection A; it moved to In Transit, still in Collection A, then when it was received and marked as Package Received it get moved to Main Collection.

Don't take it as me trashing Admin, because that's as far from the truth as can be. I'm stating facts of how things work, and it didn't work as I wanted it to. I don't know what programming would be needed, or if it is possible, but logic tells me that if it travels a route why not finish it there, too. 

I'm not one that doesn't appreciate Admin. I posted something yesterday giving him props for fixing a glitch in the matrix. And I've been on his side when others have questioned how he runs the site in general. 

I thought of that as well as I am one who wants two cards of the stars and HoF I collect, one for my set collection andone formy PC.  So I may have two wants of the same card in two different collections.  I would just have to live with that and move it to the priority location myself.  But I suspect I may be one of the few who does that.

Believe me, I am not complaining.  I do enjoy the multiple collections feature and happy it is here to stay.

I tried the multiples thing too but reverted to one. For me, it's easy enough to sort/search the info I want out of one collection that really there didn't seem to be any point at all in trying to maintain multiple collections. Yes I have several different physical collections at home, but there's no need to list them separately here for me. There's a few reports I can't run accurately anymore but o don't collect reports :) 

I have to say that I'm with Joshua here. I never set up multiple collections here b/c it seemed too complicated for how I want to track my collection OR my traders. The search options inside the Collection feature here are fantastic and I don't see a need to have multiple collections mostly for that reason. I would basically need to have an empty Main Collection to keep up with where each card should go after I acquire it in ANY way. And then move it from there to the correct collection. With ONLY having a Main Collection, everything goes where it should or is removed from there too. No extra steps involved!

To counter my own point, I am also a member of Beckett. I have MANY folders in my "Organize" over there. They are split by sports and PC's for each sport. I have team folders for my STL Cardinals MLB cards and one for each of my 3 NFL teams and a NASCAR folder. Half of them have subfolders. My Cardinals folder has one subfolder each for Ozzie Smith, Stan Musial and Yadier Molina. But it also has a subfolder for 1999 or older cards and one for 2000-present cards. My NASCAR folder has a BUNCH of subfolders for 6 different drivers and then one for all other PC drivers combined and then one for Complete Sets and then another one for all trader cards in the sport. My MLB traders have their own folder with subfolders for years or year ranges (ex. 1992 is alone and so is 1993, but other years are grouped together like 1989-91 and 2014-present). I group them based on the amount of cards in the collection. But I also have a Recently Added Folder and a Recently Traded Folder. Recently traded works with their trade feature and moves all "Trader" cards traded on their site to that folder. I simply move the ones I traded away to the Trash OR remove it from that folder so that it only remains in the folder it came from before the trade happened (which now has the updated stat of how many copies I own). The ones I received go into the Recently Added folder. I also add any cards I'm adding from trades or purchases on other sites to that folder. Once I put them in the albums or boxes where they belong physically, I move them where they belong digitally. It's tedious enough to do it on ONE site, I don't want to do it twice. Most of my Beckett trades are the same team or person, so it's easy to find all my cards on here with a few clicks and then remove those cards. The main difference b/t here and Beckett is that I have very few WANTS listed there b/c that is a much more tedious process than adding Wants on this site!!!

Using TCDB and Beckett in tandem has REALLY helped me fill wantlists for others on my 3rd site that is just a forum for NASCAR cards. They can check what I have here by driver/owner/TV personality, etc. and I can do the same by name to get what they need pulled and easily removed/modified for both sites at the same time. YES, Beckett costs money... but I've invested too much time there in the past 17 years to ignore how it does benefit me with the size of my collection. Having my Beckett Organize does not help me on TCDB for knowing my wants or what I have, but it helps me with other sites. Making trades on Beckett has actually become a more cumbersome process than making them on TCDB. But it would be worse there if I didn't have those folders and sub-folders in my Organize. TCDB's Wantlist is BY FAR superior to Beckett!

Multiple collections has worked great for me. I've got my main collection, which is my actual collection. I've got college cards set up in their own collection...since they can't be combined with my actual collection due to so many of them being improperly tagged to NBA teams. Each error type has it's own collection although I never finished entering them, and don't remember what I did enter, so those need some work to correct. Finally, I have a collection for my tradelist. At the time I created it, adding cards to tradelist was difficult and time consuming. So I determined it was easier to check them into my collection and then transfer all to tradelist. Then admin made it possible to do one click tradelist additions but I've got too much work into it to abandon it now...plus it tells me how many cards I have available to trade when I click the Collections page.