If you're a big patch collector, you may have more than a hundred different ones. With that many, it can become somewhat difficult to remember which ones you have. You might find yourself standing at a booth at a motorcycle rally looking at some really cool patches and thinking 'do I have this one'? You go back and forth for a bit, yes, no, yes, maybe. It looks a little bit familiar, but maybe I saw it once before and didn't buy it. In the end, you buy it, only to get home and discover that you've already got it. Or, worse, you don't buy it and then realize you don't have it, and then you can't find it again!
What can you do? Thanks to smart phones, keeping track of your patch collection is actually pretty simple. Almost all phones have cameras on them now, so you can just snap a few pictures of your patch collection and then, if you're uncertain, pull up the images and look through them. You can also create a spreadsheet or a list of different patches and keep it on your phone. While it's not quite as easy to check since you'll be going off a text description of the patch instead of a photo, it still works. You just have to be sure you can accurately describe all of your patches!
If you don't have a smart phone, you can always write down a list of all your patches and carry it with you in your pocket. While it's not high tech, it does certainly get the job done, and it will make sure you don't end up with duplicate patches.
