The Contacts database is stored in a single SQLite3 database. You can find yours here…

~/Library/Application\ Support/Address\ Book/Sources/<source-ID>/AddressBook-v22.abcddb

This can be exported using

sqlite3 AddressBook-v22.abcddb .dump > ~/Desktop/export

Since the result is a single file and created/modified dates are not stored in the database, the only way to sort by date is by comparing various versions of the file.

You can use Time Machine to grab older versions of the file and FileMerge (a developer tool) or other comparison tool such as Kaleidoscope to compare the result.

If you want to look through your iOS database, either jailbreak or sync your contacts to your Mac.

The Contacts database is stored in a single SQLite3 database. You can find yours here…

~/Library/Application\ Support/AddressBook/Sources/<source-ID>/AddressBook-v22.abcddb

This can be exported using

sqlite3 AddressBook-v22.abcddb .dump > ~/Desktop/export

Since the result is a single file and created/modified dates don't appear to be stored in my database, the only way to sort by date is by comparing various versions of the file.

You can use Time Machine to grab older versions of the file and FileMerge (a developer tool) or other comparison tool such as Kaleidoscope to compare the result.

If you want to look through your iOS database, either jailbreak or sync your contacts to your Mac.