Every table has them

Someone who designs mahjong pieces and puts them out under her own name. Nearly all are small — one person, or a few. Not a question of size or how long they have been going: it is whether there is somebody there.

No. An Etsy shop is a maker, and so is someone selling on Amazon under her own name — one of them reached this catalog that way, listed from her own shop.

What is missing is the other kind of listing: invented brand names that change every few months, no shop, no story. No verdict on the tiles — there is just no maker there to catalog.

Usually because the maker stopped listing it. We read what makers are selling now, so a piece that sold out two Christmases ago falls through, even from a maker we carry. Several have since been recovered from archived copies of their old pages, so tell me — it is the most useful thing you can send.

It stays — in the catalog, and in your collection. Nothing is removed for going out of sale.

We only say “no longer made” once the maker’s link has been checked and found dead. Otherwise we say nothing rather than call a piece gone: the first time we checked sixty-two of them, thirteen were still perfectly buyable.

One field. The name, color, size and photograph all come off the maker’s page, so there is nothing to type wrong — and the piece is in your collection the moment you press add, whatever follows.

• Already in the catalog

  It arrives complete. Nothing to wait for.

• A piece that comes in several colors

  We show you ours, you point at yours.

• A maker we carry, a piece we missed

  Usually caught within a day — we read that shop every morning — and your row then becomes the real piece on its own.

• A maker new to us

  Slower: this is a decision about taking a maker on. Requests are ranked by how many collectors asked for the same thing.

Send it. Most turn out to be makers we already carry behind an unfamiliar address — it has happened three times — so we work out who the seller is first. If she has a shop of her own, we catalog her from that instead: better photographs, the real price, and a page we can check daily.

If she sells only on the marketplace, that is the one case we cannot do automatically yet. Either way the piece stays in your collection, and you will see the reason on it rather than silence.

For a piece with no page anywhere — inherited, vintage, made for you. Two things go in:

• A name

• Mat, rack, or tile set

Deliberately all. Everything else you can record — how many, when it came to you and how, whether you have it or are waiting on it, a private note — is about you and the piece rather than a description of it, and works on any piece.

A piece added by hand is fully yours. The two things it cannot do are be tagged in a gallery photograph and find another collector who owns the same one; both need a cataloged piece at the other end. If it reaches the catalog later, tell me and I will join them up, keeping your dates and notes where they are.

By color, warm through cool — pinks and reds, then yellows, greens, blues, purples, then the neutrals. Within a color, the piece you have had longest comes first. Anything not yet classified goes last as a group rather than breaking the run.

No — not what you paid, not what it is worth. A collection is a portrait of what you own, and a figure beside each piece turns it into a ledger. The catalog is where a price belongs.

You. Your collection page says where this stands in full. Nothing you write about a piece reaches a maker.

No — what you send is what appears, squared off and nothing else. The catalog is full of studio photography and that is not the bar here. A table you actually played on is the point.

Yes — the line under it and the pieces you tagged, from the same place you would take it down.

No, and we hold no stock. Some links earn a commission and some makers offer collectors a code, which is what keeps this free. How that works. Nobody buys their way in.

Three notes, and each stops on its own.

• A morning note

  What makers have added and what is back in stock. Once a day, and nothing at all on a quiet morning.

• A wishlist note

  When a piece you chose comes back into stock, or costs less than it did.

• Now and then, a note about the site

  What we have built or changed, and sometimes an offer or a membership. A few times a year.

Your account turns each one off separately. Your address is never passed on.