Catalog your gig poster collection

Slide a poster out of the flat file and look along the bottom edge. That strip holds the edition number in pencil, the artist's signature if there is one, and often the printer's chop. Cataloging a gig poster collection on ctlgs starts there.

The gigposters catalog holds 38,585 posters, with 30,101 subjects (the bands and events they were made for), 6,424 venues and 5,989 credits for the artists and printers who made them. One click adds any poster to your collection as a copy. The grade, the drawer it lives in and what you paid can wait until the poster is in front of you.

If you have never cataloged your posters before, start with the ten on top of the pile. Check the number on each, then find it in the catalog.

Find the print run you actually own

Every entry in the catalog is one print run. Chuck Sperry's poster for Luna at the Fillmore in 2015 was printed as a show edition of 125, a gold foil edition of 15, a blue opal edition of 25 and a parchment edition of 20. Each has its own entry, because a collector sorting a drawer wants to know which one is there. Add your copy to the run you are holding rather than the first result with the right band. The number on your poster usually settles it. 23/125 is the show edition and 7/15 is the foil.

Artist proofs work the same way. An AP run gets its own entry, linked to the show edition through the Variant of field, and the poster page lists every variant under it. A signature on your copy alone goes on your copy. Variants and limited editions goes through where that line falls.

The entry also says how the poster was printed. Frank Kozik's Kyuss and Melvins poster for Berlin in 1995 is an offset run of 1,475, and his page lists 608 more. Venues have pages too. Red Rocks has 198 posters, a quick way in when you remember the night but have forgotten the artist.

Record the copy

Adding a copy opens a small form you can skip and come back to. The fields are the ones a poster collector cares about:

• Condition, graded Mint, Near mint, Very good, Good, Fair or Poor. Condition grading explained says what each one means.
• Notes, for anything that belongs to your copy rather than the run: your edition number, a band signature, a tube curl that never flattened.
• Location, purchase price and date acquired. These three are always private, whatever privacy setting your collection has.

You can also add fields of your own to the gigposters catalog: a yes/no such as Framed, a line of text, or a list of choices such as Flat file against Tube. Only you see them.

Two copies are two records. If you bought one at the gig and a second later for trading, each gets its own grade and notes, and the poster page lists both in a row you can drag into whatever order you like.

Your wantlist

Beside the collection button is a wantlist button. It sits on the print run too, so your wantlist can say you have the show edition and still want the foil.

Your collection page

Your collection lives at one address, across every catalog. The posters in it show as a grid of images you can search, filter by condition or location, and sort by title, date added, date acquired or condition. It exports to CSV, with your private fields included when the collection is your own. Collections and wantlists covers the lists in full.

Shelves are separate from the collection. A shelf is a list you make and publish, in your own order, with a note on each entry, and it can hold posters you do not own: every print from one tour, or every show you saw at one venue. See shelves. To part with a copy, mark it for sale from the copy itself. Selling from your collection explains how.

When your poster is missing

The well-known runs from the big studios are mostly there. A local screen print, a European tour date or a new foil variant often is not. Handbills and flyers belong here too, and 1,723 of them are in already.

Anyone signed in can add a poster. Copy what the poster says about itself. Title it by headliner, city and year, the way the rest of the catalog does. Link the band as a subject, the artist and printer as credits, and the venue, adding any that are new. Then the show date, the type, the technique, the edition size and the dimensions. For a variant, pick the show edition in the Variant of field and name the variant. Where the facts came from goes in the notes.

The catalog came from Posterogs, and what happened to Posterogs tells that story. If you had a collection there, it can be attached to your new account. The reasoning behind all of this is in what you own, down to the copy.