How to catalog
your brick collection.

Why catalog at all?

For five sets you don't. The trouble starts the year you lose count — when sealed boxes are stacked in a closet, built sets line three shelves, and you genuinely can't remember whether you already own the big one you saw on sale. A catalog isn't about looking like a serious collector. It's about answering the small, real questions a growing pile keeps asking you.

• Do I already have this one? The question every collector asks in the toy aisle, phone in hand. A list you can check beats buying a duplicate because the box looked unfamiliar.
• Is it sealed or built? A new-in-box set and the same set opened and displayed are two different things to you, your shelf space, and anyone you'd ever sell to. The catalog has to know the difference.
• Which small figures came with it? Half the reason you bought it, and the first thing that wanders off into a drawer. Worth recording before one walks.
• What did I actually pay, and is it retired? A set's number, the price you paid, and whether it's been retired from production. The facts that tell you what you're sitting on.

A catalog answers these in a few seconds instead of a closet dig. That's the whole case for keeping one.

What to record for each set.

You don't need all of this on day one. Start with the set number — almost everything else can be looked up from it — and let the rest fill in as you go. Over time, a good entry holds:

• The identity. Set number and name, the theme, the year, and the piece count. The set number is the one fact that makes a set this set.
• The state. Sealed, built and displayed, built and stored, or parted out. Plus the box and instructions: kept, recycled, or never had them. This is the field generic trackers skip and collectors care about most.
• The figures. The small figures that shipped with it, any you've added or pulled, and the ones that drove the price. A photo of the lineup saves a lot of squinting later.
• The history. Purchase date and price, where it came from, and whether it's retired or still on shelves. For a parted-out set, where the bricks went.
• The pictures. The built model, the box, the figs, the instruction booklet. A few photos do more for a future sale than any field of text.

That last point matters more than people expect. Years later, a clear photo of the built set and the sealed box is what makes a sale easy and a "wait, which one was that?" disappear.

Cloud catalog or spreadsheet?

Building brick collecting is one of the few hobbies with serious, mature catalog tools already built for it. So the honest answer here isn't "use Hoblio" — it's "it depends what you're doing." Here's the real version of each.

A dedicated brick database is the right place if you buy and sell, track parts, follow market values, or want a deep reference catalog. Those tools are built around sets, parts, and prices, and some collectors should absolutely use them.

A spreadsheet is free, it's yours, and it does exactly what you tell it. Plenty of careful collectors run their whole collection in one. The cost is friction: you build every column by hand, the figure list becomes a mess of comma-separated text, photos live somewhere else, and pulling it up on your phone in the aisle is a small ordeal. If you love spreadsheets you already know this and you're probably set. If you don't, you'll start one, add a dozen sets, and never open it again.

Where each one falls short for a shelf.

Specialized databases are excellent at what they're for — selling, pricing, parts, and building. What most of them are not built for is the plain question of what's on my shelf and what's still in the closet, kept somewhere quick and personal. They want a login. They sort by part and price, not by "the sealed set I'm saving" versus "the one the kids built." And they often keep your inventory on their servers, which is fine until you'd rather it didn't.

A spreadsheet has none of that overhead but all of the setup. Hoblio sits in the gap: a tidy shelf of sets, sealed-or-built front and center, small figures and photos on each card, in your pocket and on your phone — no account, no part database to wrestle. It won't price your collection. If pricing is the point, you're already in the right place above.

Hoblio is not for you if…

Worth saying plainly, because brick collectors already have good tools and Hoblio isn't trying to replace all of them.

• You mainly want market values. Hoblio doesn't price sets and never will — no live valuations, no price history, no "what's it worth today." For that, use a dedicated price guide.
• You want to buy or sell. Hoblio isn't a marketplace. If parting out and trading is the hobby, use a marketplace.
• You catalog at the part level. If you want to know what else your bricks can build, use a purpose-built parts database. Hoblio isn't one.

Hoblio is for the other thing: a private, personal record of the sets you own and the small figures that came with them, kept where you keep your phone.

What a set costs to own.

Add what a set cost, and Hoblio shows the daily cost — the price spread across the days you've owned it. A grail you've had on the shelf for two years settles into a small number on its own, just from time. A box you bought last month sits higher for now. It's not a verdict on resale and it isn't tied to how often you build; it's only the price divided by the days, there when you're curious. If you like, there's a separate Use tally you can tap when you actually rebuild or play with a set — a plain count of times and a last-used date, kept apart from the cost. No reminders to do it, and nothing happens if you don't.

A wishlist, kept honest.

The display build you're waiting to go on sale. The retiring set you want before it's gone. The grail build you'll get to one day. Keep wanted sets apart from the ones you own, so a want stays a want — and the closet only grows when you mean it to.

Yours, and only yours.

Your collection lives on your phone. No account. No cloud. No tracking. Exporting, sharing, feedback, and purchase restore only happen when you choose them. No subscription, either — Hoblio Pro is one price, paid once. And no streaks, no reminders. A brick doesn't expire; the app doesn't need to nag you about it.