The Banana Label Catalog is the largest and most complete database of banana labels in the world. It contains everything that is known about banana labels in one place. It is a unique treasure for our hobby, bringing together collectors, labels, duplicates, variants and background information from all over the world. It gives collectors a place to document their labels, meet other collectors, discuss their hobby and trade with each other, while providing information that can be used for their own collections and research.

I’m always happy to see collectors keeping track of what they have, offering their duplicates for trade and uploading their latest finds here. This shows that the catalog is working as it should. Adding a label is certainly important, but it is only a small part of what makes the catalog work. Someone has to organize and maintain the catalog content, while the technical side of the platform also needs continuous administration. There is a lot of ongoing work behind it that takes considerable time and money. Over the years, this has meant around €12,000 in costs and an estimated 8,000 to 9,000 hours of work on programming, administration and adding and organizing labels in the catalog. This is already explained in detail elsewhere, so I won’t repeat it here.

What should actually be obvious is that I have much less time than most other collectors to spend on collecting and trading. Most of my hobby time goes into maintaining and developing the catalog. I simply cannot do both anymore, collecting and taking care of the catalog. I don’t want to spend even more time sorting duplicates and actively organizing trades myself, so I depend on the collecting community for new labels. Otherwise, I hardly get any new labels for my own collection, and at some point this would make the whole thing pointless for me.

There is also a second reason why I need the community’s help. I think it is unrealistic to expect me to invest so much of my hobby time and money into this project without receiving at least some personal benefit in return. The catalog may be a community project, but the time, effort and costs behind it should not be carried by me alone. For me, that personal benefit is receiving labels that are still missing from my collection. 

The best way to help is simple: the catalog shows you when one of your duplicates is still missing from my collection. Please put these labels aside for me and send them to me from time to time. You can do this without having to be reminded by me personally. What you send doesn’t have to be rare or numerous.

I think it is time for the community to support the person who keeps it all running. There is no membership or usage fee. But if this catalog, with all the known banana labels collected in one place, is important to our hobby and useful to you, I think it is only fair that you give something back. If my work is helping you in your hobby, you can also help me in return. The exchange has to work both ways.

Michael