Getting Things in Order

I am always amazed when I see other people's collections and I wonder how they manage to catalogue them in order to know exactly what they have got and what they have not. This doesn't just apply to pegs of course, I recently saw a television program about a guy collecting dice ... he had thousands and thousands and I cannot begin to imagine how he knows what he has or hasn't got in his collection.

I am a systematic kind of person and when my collection began to grow, I had to come up with a way of recording the pegs and this is what I do:

As soon as I receive a new peg I check to see if I already have it by comparing it to all my other pegs which are displayed on racks. With my cataloguing system, I only have to check it visually against half a dozen others.

Once I am sure it is a new one, I give it the next number that is available and attach a label to it with it's identifying number on it. The photo shows an example of each spring type.

I categorise them firstly by their spring design and these are the designs I have:-

CONVENTIONAL...................... see Peg No 1368
WIRE CLIP........................ see Peg No 1345
LEAF SPRING....................... see Peg No 48
BUTTERFLY SPRING................. see Peg No 436
SELF.............................. see Peg No 854
RING.............................. see Peg No 873
WIDE CLIP......................... see Peg No 187
COIL COMPRESS.................... see Peg No 478
COIL TENSION..................... see Peg No 293

By the way, I have no idea why I choose to call one of them a "butterfly" spring but there must have been a reason.

Anyway, I have already measured the new peg accurately using vernier callipers so I now enter into a database, the details of when and from where I acquired it, then the weight, cost and length of it.

The new peg is then clipped into it's correct spot (by length) in the rack holding those of its spring design.

The racks run down the entire length of my hall and there is plenty of room for more pegs, but I must say that I am rather pleased that I am not collecting dice!