Do you sign and date the back of your last puzzle piece? 🧩
Have you ever signed and dated the last piece of a puzzle before completing it? I remembered reading about this on a blog or forum somewhere, and thought it was such a cool idea. Imagine the surprise of the person who picks up the puzzle years later and sees your signature and date on the final piece!
Well, it looks like someone named Jane is already ahead of the game. A post on the subreddit r/JigsawPuzzles showed a thrift store puzzle that had been signed and dated by Jane before being donated. If you're wondering where your puzzles end up after you donate them, Jane, it looks like one of yours ended up in a thrift store! And bonus points to Jane for separately bagging the edge pieces - that's some serious puzzle dedication.
I have a little puzzle tradition of my own. After completing a puzzle, I write the completion date and number of missing pieces (usually 0) on the outside of the box. I picked up this habit from someone else - I saw it on a puzzle once and thought it was such a helpful idea, especially for making thrift store purchase decisions.
I like writing the completion date because I think it helps people to more reliably choose puzzles. For example, a puzzle completed last month with no missing pieces probably still doesn't have any missing pieces. But a puzzle last completed 7 years ago that didn't have any missing pieces then, might have missing pieces today.
If you're not writing completion dates, I'd encourage you to start. You definitely don't have to, but I think it's really cool, especially if you're going to donate or sell your finished puzzles.
If you're a puzzle enthusiast like me, you know the feeling of finally completing a puzzle and wanting to show off your accomplishment. That's why I love the idea of signing and dating the final piece of a puzzle before placing it. Not only does it add a personal touch, but it also makes the puzzle unique and one-of-a-kind. Plus, it would be cool to see where your puzzle ends up years later and who else gets to enjoy it.
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Have you ever signed and dated your puzzles before donating them? Do you have any other puzzle-solving tips or tricks to share? Let's discuss in the comments!
4 comments
I don’t do this, but I mark the area where the piece is missing on the box with a sharpie.
I saw Karen Puzzles do something similar in one of her recent videos. Her friend Tammy gifted her a puzzle and signed the last piece, so Karen followed suit and signed a piece as well. It wasn’t the same last puzzle piece funnily enough.
I started doing this after reading about it on Reddit! (Not Jane though- sorry to disappoint!). I only do it for puzzles that I plan to keep for myself, not those that I intend to donate. I date and initial the final piece as a personal record and a treasured keepsake. ❤️ There was one puzzle that I worked on during the time my dad was undergoing a quadruple bypass surgery. It was a Pixar puzzle featuring the Toy Story aliens dressed up as other characters. I still remember doing that puzzle while waiting for my dad to recover. He’s doing well now, although the 48 piece sloth puzzle I gave him to do a few days after his surgery was a bit too challenging for him while he was on meds. 😂
I think signing and dating the final piece of a puzzle is a really cool idea. Even if you do the same puzzle multiple times, you would likely never place the same piece twice, which adds a sort of provenance to the puzzle down the road.
I also have a puzzle trick of my own – I use blue painter’s tape to label missing pieces or even verify all pieces are accounted for before donating the puzzle. I haven’t ever bothered to track when I complete a puzzle other than posting a finished image online, but all of my finished puzzles go into ziploc bags, especially the ones that I’m keeping. With all the moving I’ve done, I just want to make sure I don’t lose any pieces along the way.
I don’t do really large puzzles, so I haven’t felt the need to separate the sections into bags, but it makes sense to me that you would do that for a 2000 piece puzzle. It seems like a nice gesture and gives the next puzzle solver a choice in how they want to proceed. I also don’t bag edge pieces separately – it seems like a huge investment in another bag for the piece counts I usually do, and it isn’t really that challenging to separate them out in most puzzles.
We do differ in one aspect though – if I get a duplicate piece, I just let it free-wheel around in the box. I’m not too concerned about it getting lost, but I don’t want it to be a part of the puzzle bag.