I agree that a spreadsheet is the only way to keep track of a valve collection, in my case a mere 2,600. Physical storage is in drawers, trays or shallow cardboard boxes, no single one holding more than 30 or 40 valves. The majority are sorted by some physical attribute, which does make it much quicker when searching for a valve that my spreadsheet tells me is there!
In the workshop I have a wooden chest of drawers and a 'tallboy'. There is a drawer for metal Octal valves, a couple of drawers for pre-war valves with B4, B5 or B7 bases, a drawer for unboxed Octal valves, one for red Mullard Octals, one for gold Mullard B5 and B7s, one for grey Mazda Octals, one for B8A based valves, a tin full of 1.4 volt B7G battery valves of the Dx9x series, and so on. Then there are several drawers plus four shallow trays that hang from the ceiling holding what I call 'modern valves', mostly B9A based. A small cabinet holds B7G valves, and there's one drawer holding faulty valves from which I might rob the odd top cap or base to fix something else. Finally, in the garage there's the overflow section, again in shallow boxes, this time sorted roughly into "who gave them to me" or "when I acquired them" order. I reckon that I have tested about 40% of the total, but gave up for the reasons others have stated, and I now only test valves on an as-and-when-needed basis.
When I started writing this post, it seemed like a good system, but now I'm not so sure...
