CATALOGING A COLLECTION

In September, a friend of mine who collects Ian Fleming/James Bond memorabilia stopped by to view my collection in Denver. So you know, he is a major Fleming/Bond collector as I am with Cussler. The difference is that with what he has in his collection it could easily fill a small airport whereas mine could only occupy an average-sized house. My collection may be worth in the six figures but his is in the millions. The point is to demonstrate the caliber of his collection. Anyway, upon seeing my collection he was impressed with how it was displayed and asked if I had everything inventoried. To his surprise, I answered, “no.” But then he confessed to me that neither had he. That, and an incident that occurred earlier this year got me thinking about cataloguing my collection. One of the more prominent Cussler collectors passed away earlier this year in Arizona. The family contacted Bruce Kenfield and myself and asked if we would assist in liquidating the collection on their behalf. We agreed to do this. To our knowledge, the collector hadn’t inventoried anything. However, the family hired someone to inventory nearly 650 books. Believe me, that inventory list helped us tremendously. Obviously there are many reasons to inventory a collection and estate matters are one concern. Other reasons include: estimating a collections value, for insurance, weeding out duplicates, planning to sell it, etc. If you’re going to start an inventory, I suggest your get going on it now as it’s never too late to begin. My Cussler bibliography is a good resource to what exists but you really don’t need it to get started. Right now, what you have is more important than what you don’t. There are many basic Cussler bibliographies on the Internet. For now an inventory list doesn’t need to be fancy—just the book’s title, format, publisher and year are enough to get started. Later you can fine-tune it according to condition, edition, dust jacket, ISBN and even include photographs of the book. One thing though, I think the collection should be grouped by book title. And you start anywhere: the titles you have the fewest of or the most—it doesn’t matter. The most important thing is to get something down on paper or in a computer file (or book collecting program). As a result of my encounter with the Fleming/Bond collector, I started (a fairly lame effort I might add) to inventory my collection. To me, it seems like a daunting task that may take years. But for all of you, at least start a notebook of what you’ve got; the earlier the better. Don’t wait like I did.