The Sorting. The Fucking Sorting.

[jjreason]

Palettes are a good idea. I just don't have a source for them. I had the boxes up on 1" plywood which absolutely saved the bottom tiers of boxes - no way would they have survived if they it had soaked through the bottom. My boxes that were damaged all got hit with water from the ceiling

[vynsane]

okay, yeah, the plywood was a good call, but then get some 2x4s (like one cut to 4' every 24" or so) and put the plywood on top.

sorry, cut to 3.2 litres and placed 100 decagrams apart. i think i got the conversion right...

shit! why was water pouring in from the ceiling???

[jjreason]

It was a pipe that burst between the floors - there is an exercise place in the upstairs above the part of the storage where our unit was located. We were all the way down at the one end, I walked all the way through & not one other person was there running around - I didn't even see any problem until I got to our "side street" and looked left - huge puddle literally coming out of our unit & the one next to it, and the ones directly across from ours. It felt like someone planned an attack on my comics. ><

[Tom Foolery]

All the comics in my parents basement are up on industrial work tables.
The boxes in the storage are either on pallets or dismantled plastic shelves to keep them off the floor.

If and when I ever get a house/mancave, I want to devise a sturdy shelf unit with the bottom layer keeping the comics off the floor, but also serving as a storage space for flotsam like supplies or empty boxes. It'll take some investment in lumber, but I think it'll be worth it. Also I'm thinking two Drawer boxes on the bottom and two regular boxes on top per stack. That'll make everything easy to get to. I dont know if it'd be worth it to rig an extra layer of shelving in there. Or to also rig something on top like a layer of plywood.

[jjreason]

Jodi found a bunch of ideas on pinterest - the one I like is the shelves meant for bakeries to put their trays on.

[Tom Foolery]

I wonder, did he make like color copies of covers and cut the titles off to make his "name tags" for each box. (Which is kinda cool idea)
Or did he just carve up extra issues he had. (Which deserves a punch in the ol dickeroo)

I'm assuming the former.

[Diabolical]

Well, nobody is slicing up Amazing Fantasy #15.

[Tom Foolery]

Yeah, but there's been plenty of reprints of that issue that aren't worth much. I think I even have one that's printed on newsprint. Like they didn't even bother with gloss for the cover.

[Tom Foolery]

So, originally I was gonna file Clone Conspiracy/Dead No More in the 'S' box with all other Spidey related stuff, but now I'm thinking it should go in 'A' with Amazing simply because it's basically the main series, and Amazing has become the ancillary tie in in series for the duration of the Event.

[jjreason]

That's how I do it - "Events" at the front of the boxes, regardless of spelling, followed by the related books. Since it's time for a new box at my house, Clone Conspiracy will be the first event in this year's Marvel U box, while X vs Inhumans will be the start of my new Xbox. Ha! Xbox!

[Tom Foolery]

A few quandaries to run past you.

1. I found an issue I was missing today, but it was in a batch of comics that had that "musty" smell. Not the good kind, but the kind where they had left their old collection out in the garage and it had water damage at some point. The issue had a very small amount of curling on it, but nothing a few months in a bag and board, pressed in a long box wouldn't cure. And I looked thru each page for obvious signs of mold and there weren't any. It just has that scent to it and that slightly "chalky" feel to it when you pick it up.
I'm just wondering if I should consider the issue "found" and cross it off my list, or keep my eye out for a better one down the road.

2. I found a Dark Shadows/Vampirella five issue mini. I'm debating whether to file it correctly under "D" or just put it with my sporadic Vampirella collection in the V's.

3. Same goes for a few Dejah Thoris issues I found. Technically, it's called Warlord of Mars:Dejah Thoris as it's a spinoff of that series. So, D's or W's?

[anarky]

I'd keep the Dejah Thoris issues with WoM.

[jjreason]

I have a few Alpha Flight issues from a batch I bought in similar circumstances - in pretty good shape but hadn't been stored perfectly well. I filed them away with other healthy books in hopes they'd press out. I have changed the bags & boards on them a couple of times, and have found both times the boards have been discolored, and the bags just never quite as air tight as you'd think they should be - almost like the book is letting off some weird gas that prevents it from getting properly air tight. I still include them in my collection, but I would snap up better copies if I saw them cheap.

[Tom Foolery]

Brief history here, I moved back from CA back in 2010 and was living in my parents house because I couldn't afford my own place. Child support + shitty job, etc etc. Eventually I got a decent job and moved in with my GF a few years ago. But my accumulation of shit stayed in my former bedroom. Last month, my mom decided she wanted my room back to make as a guest room. Which is fine, so I've been boxing up my stuff in preparation to move most of my stuff into storage.

Anyway, all the random DC comics I've been buying since the 2011 relaunch and not reading have been getting put in random boxes. And now I'm just getting around to sorting them. I've already filled up close to six Drawer Boxes and estimated I will need at least two more. Yeesh.

Also, my storage unit might not be enough to handle ALL the long boxes I've acquired in the past seven years. It's well over 60 boxes of sorted comics and and probably another dozen I have to sort, organize, log and put on cbdb first before I can store them as well. Which means I'll have to go over to the storage unit and spend some time moving boxes around to try to maximize the space efficiency of the unit.

I am a fucking hoarder.

[jjreason]

I'm mad that your 72 long boxes have cost you less than half of my 30.

Make a square of 4 that are sorted & read, then stack then next 4 in at 90 degrees to those, on top. You can safely do about 4, maybe 5 layers before you see the boxes looking like they're not happy. That's 16 or 20 boxes taking up the footprint of 4. 4 squares like that & Bob's your uncle in a very small storage lock. Accessing the box you want, however, will be a very sharp pain the balls.