The story behind First Finder.
There's something magical about discovering your first rare or collectible book. It's more than finding an old volume on a shelf—it's stepping into a world filled with history, craftsmanship, and stories that have survived generations. Every collector remembers that first find.
As your collection grows, so does the challenge of keeping track of it. What starts as a simple spreadsheet slowly turns into a maze of formulas, colors, and tabs. Eventually, you look for a better solution, only to find software that's clunky, confusing, or built without collectors in mind.
That's why we created First Finder.
First Finder is designed to help you catalog and care for your collection—from your very first find to your next great discovery. Whether you're browsing your favorite used bookstore, exploring a rare book fair, or uncovering a hidden gem online, you can quickly record your purchase, photograph its condition, save receipts, and keep everything in one place. And while we started with rare books, First Finder is equally at home with comics, manuscripts, and other cherished collectibles.
To us, collecting is about more than ownership. It's about preserving art, protecting knowledge, and ensuring that remarkable stories continue to be passed from one generation to the next. That happens because of collectors—people who care enough to seek, preserve, and share these pieces of history.
First Finder was built for you.
The Collector. The Seeker. The First Finder.
We're constantly improving the app and would love to hear your ideas. Thank you for being part of the journey.
The collector with forty books, not the shop with four thousand. FirstFinder is built for people who collect because they love it — who know the story of how each piece was found, and who want that story kept somewhere better than a spreadsheet.
- The hobbyist whose collection outgrew a spreadsheet
- Anyone who wants receipts, condition, and provenance kept together
- Collectors who need a record their insurer or family could actually use
- People who collect across categories — books, cards, comics, memorabilia
- Booksellers and dealers running stock
- Anyone who needs invoicing, consignment, or point of sale
- Multi-user teams with shared accounts and permissions
- Marketplace sellers looking for listing automation
Every line of FirstFinder is public — free to read, run, fork, and improve. If something here is missing or broken, you don't have to wait for me to get to it. The Contribute page lists what's open right now, including the issues tagged for a first-time contributor.
FirstFinder is free, and always will be. It's a passion project I built and pay for out of my own pocket to help fellow collectors keep track of what they love. Running it — hosting, storage, the database, all of it — costs real time and money as more people use it. If you've gotten value out of FirstFinder and want to help keep it free for everyone, any donation is genuinely appreciated.
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