Can anyone recommend a good, inexpensive business card book? I'm thinking of the A4-size books which have pockets to hold 200 business cards or so. Ideally I'd like to keep the cost of it below £15.

you can get little business card scanners - very useful

yes I've seen those and would love one although my budget is only around £15 to keep things organised

Is this real or am I still pizzed from last night?Get a fookin life man.

What do you propose I do instead, just throw the 400+ useful business cards I've collected over the years into a pile on the floor?

But what are you asking for? You know what you want just get your secretary to order it.Or are you hoping for some detailed reviews of the latest technology in bloody business card holders?!Glad you have time to ponder over such rubbish issues.I wonder which spoon I should use for my yoghurt, hmmm, it must have a diam.....snore, snore, snore.

So you have collected over 400 business cards, and yet have a budget of £15 for some means of storing/collating them - suggest money is an issue; my advice - stop thinking about how to store them and start doing something with these contacts to make some money -then you can afford all the scanners you want.

Mars you make a very good point. The problem is, I can't figure out what to do with the info to start making some more money! Around half the contacts are suppliers, the other half are from client organisations but I don't know how to get anywhere with them other than cold-calling which is unlikely to be too successful

What line of business are you in? Incidentally the start of a business relationship is usually to ask 'what can I do for you?' not 'what can you do for me?' - so ask yourself this question and then call some people...

dh dh dh,absolutely loving your work.

No problem, I came back as 'getting pretty angry' because I just couldn't handle this guy. Now I'm revisiting a few days later and am in absolute utter disbelief at what sort of moron this chap is.I hope his mother loves him, that's all I can say!

Fool. If you've nothing positive to contribute, keep your trap shut.

Seems a legitimate question to me. Some of those business card books cost a small fortune for what they are.

I pity the fool who does not have a good, inexpensive business card book! I pity the fool!

I'm assuming you have a PDA, or at least a mobile phone?Either of these can store the info for you, so that it is automatically organised to your preference (alphabetised, numerical, regional, whatever), electronically searchable and portable.Carrying an A4 book of business cards around is not what I'd recommend. And if you leave it back at the office, what good is it?I'm with Mars on this one ...

Back to base principles then... you have 400+ cards you have collected 'over the years'. So how many of these are still current? So you can lose a few which are out of date. How many of them are for people with whom you could do business at all? Lose a few more. How many of these people would actually return a call if you made one to them (ie gave you the card in an manner other than good manners)? Lose some more. What you are left with will be a handful of cards from people you can do business with. If you have not spoken to someone whose card you have 6 monts after you received it, shred it. Now you don't need a card holder - you just need to sit down, make a few calls/send a few emails, and arrange to meet for a drink, chat whatever. Should take you a morning at most to get all the leads and new business you can from these cards.

thanks mars, good ideas there. do you have any suggestions for 'ice breakers', i.e. what i should actually say in the e-mail (assuming these are people i haven't reached out to for a long time)?

Personnally I dont use 'icebreakers' if the contact has gone cold - treat it as such as approach it as a cold approach; yu might get lucky and they remember you, more likely they wont. Presuming you understand what THEY do, tell them WHAT you do, and WHY you though there could be some mileage in talking.