Collection Organization Tips 7 7

[Artboy99]

On ‎2018‎/‎02‎/‎15 at 4:27 AM, OrangeCrush said:

They absolutely do not bow. I'm 150 lbs and I can stand on empty Drawer Boxes and they are 100% stable. As Shadroch said, your clearly thinking of BCW's file boxes or one of the other knock off's and not Drawer Boxes. And the BoxLox clips that you can add SIGNIFICANTLY add to thier stability as it literally attaches each box to the boxes beside them. I can actually push into my stacks with significant force and they don't even budge. And mine are stacked 6 high and are over 5 years old and they are still in pristine condition. Not even the slightest bit of bowing taking place and most of my boxes are 100% full. 

The Collection Drawer even addresses this issue.

Competitor Failure Warranty

 

 

I actually just found a comic store by me called Back to the Past that actually sells them. The Collection Drawer has a stores section on their website that shows what stores in each state sell them. So for those looking to buy just 1 or 2 boxes, you should check that section and see if there is a store in your state that sells them. Here is the link:

http://collectiondrawer.com/store-list

This is what Back to the Past's website says about Drawer Boxes and they actually have a picture of someone standing on an empty box as well and that guy weighs 205 pounds, which is 55 pounds more than I weigh.  I was impressed that they were stable when I stood on top of them and I only weigh 150 pounds. The fact that a 205 pound guy can stand on them without them bowing of buckling under the pressure is just beyond impressive. These things are built like a tank 

http://gobacktothepast.com/comics-drawerboxes/

 

Thanks for this post.

I am a drawer box user, and I love mine. I like being able to pull out the bottom box and look through it and easily replace it. I HATE trying to get at the bottom box in a stack of longs.

[spreads]

4 hours ago, piper said:

I would personally thin out your collection e.g remove duplicates, lower grade copies, or low desirable titles to create some space.

Great advice.  I'm of the 'one comic' philosophy. 

[shadroch]

The key to keeping them from bowing is pretty simple. Don't go higher than wide. If you have four boxes on the floor, you can go four high.  You want to make cubes, not rectangles. 

Do that and use boxlox and you're golden.   I've seen stores that go six high, but only two, sometimes three wide.  That is not the way they are meant to be used.

[zuckuss2003]

Here is another tip if you are worried of bowing. I'm not, but I like to play it safe. If you are going 4 or 5 tall put strips of 1X3 cut to the length (in my case 6 wide) in between each stack of drawer boxes, it helps distribute the weight across rather than straight down.

Apologies for not reading the whole thread and noticing its about organizing rather than keeping boxes safes

Edited February 18, 2018 by zuckuss2003

[the blob]

On 2/17/2018 at 10:28 AM, piper said:

I would personally thin out your collection e.g remove duplicates, lower grade copies, or low desirable titles to create some space.

Sure, that's the idea, but right now i need to get this stuff sorted. Three days of flu resulted in no work being done.

[FineCollector]

150lbs... I don't think I've ever been 150lbs! 

The commonality I'm seeing in all the comic room pictures are chrome wire shelves.  What size do you find most efficient, and what size boxes are you putting on them?  I'd like to think mag boxes are ideal, because everyone is going to have a few boxes of G.A., magazines, or some combination thereof.  Even if you don't, that picture of the Brave and the Bold 28 in a Standard mylite 2 makes me itchy... all my gold and silver is in Silver/Gold mylite2 and fullback, which doesn't fit a standard comic box.

Edited February 19, 2018 by FineCollector

[oakman29]

4 hours ago, FineCollector said:

150lbs... I don't think I've ever been 150lbs! 

The commonality I'm seeing in all the comic room pictures are chrome wire shelves.  What size do you find most efficient, and what size boxes are you putting on them?  I'd like to think mag boxes are ideal, because everyone is going to have a few boxes of G.A., magazines, or some combination thereof.  Even if you don't, that picture of the Brave and the Bold 28 in a Standard mylite 2 makes me itchy... all my gold and silver is in Silver/Gold mylite2 and fullback, which doesn't fit a standard comic box.

Mind  BLOWN! 

Learn it, live it, love it!

 

 

 

[FineCollector]

1 hour ago, oakman29 said:

Mind  BLOWN! 

Learn it, live it, love it!

 

 

Looks nice, but not digging the books being exposed to light.  Also, each shelf holds about a long box worth of books?  I'd need much more space than that.

Edited February 19, 2018 by FineCollector

[ExNihilo]

11 minutes ago, FineCollector said:

Looks nice, but not digging the books being exposed to light.  Also, each shelf holds about a long box worth of books?  I'd need much more space than that.

If you don't like them being exposed to light, get a bookshelf with doors.  I bought the following from Ikea with Glass doors (because the space my books are in are already in a dark room with no direct sunlight), but you can also buy wood panel doors so no light gets in.

http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/20323805/#

 

But to OP's question, I organized my books by company (Marvel/DC/Image/Misc) > Period (Marvel: Pre Hickman, Hickman's entire Marvel run, Post Hickman; DC: pre-new 52, new 52, rebirth) > alphabetical order.  There are exceptions for crossover events.  In most cases I will have only subbed to a title or two in the crossover, but will have picked up all the other parts.  In those cases the full crossover run goes with whatever main title I was collecting (ie: Messiah Complex slides into my X-Men run)

[oakman29]

26 minutes ago, FineCollector said:

Looks nice, but not digging the books being exposed to light.  Also, each shelf holds about a long box worth of books?  I'd need much more space than that.

Light! just close the shades and it's all good.

[OrangeCrush]

3 hours ago, oakman29 said:

Mind  BLOWN! 

Learn it, live it, love it!

 

 

 

Holy Cow! While that storage method is definitely not for me (cat litter dust alone would cease me from going this route), this has to be one of the most organized collections I have ever seen. Impressive, most impressive. 

 

7 hours ago, FineCollector said:

150lbs... I don't think I've ever been 150lbs! 

The commonality I'm seeing in all the comic room pictures are chrome wire shelves.  What size do you find most efficient, and what size boxes are you putting on them?  I'd like to think mag boxes are ideal, because everyone is going to have a few boxes of G.A., magazines, or some combination thereof.  Even if you don't, that picture of the Brave and the Bold 28 in a Standard mylite 2 makes me itchy... all my gold and silver is in Silver/Gold mylite2 and fullback, which doesn't fit a standard comic box.

I highly recommend Seville Classics 5 Shelf Shelving System. We purchased 3 of these for our basement to store things like emergency food and just misc stuff in the basement. They are INCREDIBLY stable, super easy to put together (no tools needed), and you can set up the shelves any way you want in 1" intervals. So if you only want to use a few of the shelves as opposed to all 5, you can. You can also buy these thin plastic sheets cut specifically to fit on each shelf so there is more stability for the things your stacking on the shelf.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0007LQH7M/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o08_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

You can either use the shelves with wheels (which come with the shelves) or you can use pegs instead. It can hold up to 800 pounds per shelf an 4000 pounds total.

 

Here are those plastic sheets I was talking about that you can put on each shelf. 

https://www.amazon.com/Seville-Classics-Individual-Designed-Shelves/dp/B00EUBA55K/ref=pd_bxgy_201_img_2?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=B00EUBA55K&pd_rd_r=GPD52AMH3M3Z62A43H6Y&pd_rd_w=Ob5GG&pd_rd_wg=N1EO0&psc=1&refRID=GPD52AMH3M3Z62A43H6Y

 

Edited February 19, 2018 by OrangeCrush

[Alf Pogs]

[the blob]

I have hit the point where I dread hitting a box where I have like 100 unbagged/boarded moderns mixed in with other stuff. soooo many comics to sort and no way I'm finding another nyx 3 in there. This is what buying 15 - 60 comics a week for 13+ years from my local shop's cheap-o box is doing to me... 

I estimate I have triaged about 20% of my collection thus far.

I know, I should have taken pictures of the update

Right now I have individual boxes of big marvel characters I am sorting into .. spiderman/spider titles, wolverine, misc. x-men titles, captain america, thor, hulk, DD, surfer, fantastic four, defenders, avengers, titles that start with "marvel"...needless to say I have filled up multiple spider, avengers, and X boxes, and the others mentioned are almost full. I have some stacks that aren't big enough for a box yet..iron man, power man, conan, deadpool, star wars, .. a miscellaneous marvel odds and ends box and a few piles that are themsed ("cosmic" stuff like captain marvel, infinity gauntlet), a stack of ghost rider/dracula, and several others

DC is boxes of batman stuff (multiples filled thus far) and everything else, which was probably a mistake as I should have had superman and green lantern get their own boxes.

A box of undergrounds..deciding what is an actual underground vs. an indie is tough sometimes.

Boxes of magazine comics/mads, etc.

Boxes of misc smaller publishers - Image, Valiant, Dark Horse and indies (all mushed together for now)

Boxes of "misc old" -- basically anything from GA to early 80s that doesn't fit into the above.. Will eventually break down by charlton, gold key, dell, etc.

I am filling these boxes and getting them out of the room and lined up against the wall in the hallway best I can so that I can have breathing room in the sorting chamber. They are not organized out there, but I can see what theme is in each box at least.

Pulling some expensive books to the side and "ebay this now!" books so they don't get lost in the mess.

Nothing is sorted or indexed/databased within any of these boxes yet. That will take eons.

Preliminarily, I need to buy about 500-1000 bags and boards. All I have left are like 75 GA bags and boards.

Often I am torn about where I should go. For example, I have a Doctor Strange pile (which is shared with a few other characters like Warlock, etc..don't ask why)... but I am sticking his Marvel Premiere issues in the "Marvel box" for now, ditto red sonja (which is in the conan pile right now), but she had all those marvel feature books, marvel spotlight son of satan/ghost riders and on and on. Shouldn't all the GOTG books be together, including the Marvel Presents 70s series? And isn't Marvel COmics Presents really just a Wolverine title? Ultimately the Star Trek books from all publishers will be in the same place, doesn't that make sense? Ditto star wars and several others that span multiple publishers?

 

I also (importantly) have purged 50 or so boxes I had saved to use for potential shipping. They were taking up a lot of space and really upset my wife. I am so thrilled to get rid of that. There will always be more boxes the way my wife orders off Amazon Prime, I don't need to save them.

[OrangeCrush]

6 minutes ago, the blob said:

I have hit the point where I dread hitting a box where I have like 100 unbagged/boarded moderns mixed in with other stuff. soooo many comics to sort and no way I'm finding another nyx 3 in there. This is what buying 15 - 60 comics a week for 13+ years from my local shop's cheap-o box is doing to me... 

I estimate I have triaged about 20% of my collection thus far.

I know, I should have taken pictures of the update

Right now I have individual boxes of big marvel characters I am sorting into .. spiderman/spider titles, wolverine, misc. x-men titles, captain america, thor, hulk, DD, surfer, fantastic four, defenders, avengers, titles that start with "marvel"...needless to say I have filled up multiple spider, avengers, and X boxes, and the others mentioned are almost full. I have some stacks that aren't big enough for a box yet..iron man, power man, conan, deadpool, star wars, .. a miscellaneous marvel odds and ends box and a few piles that are themsed ("cosmic" stuff like captain marvel, infinity gauntlet), a stack of ghost rider/dracula, and several others

DC is boxes of batman stuff (multiples filled thus far) and everything else, which was probably a mistake as I should have had superman and green lantern get their own boxes.

A box of undergrounds..deciding what is an actual underground vs. an indie is tough sometimes.

Boxes of magazine comics/mads, etc.

Boxes of misc smaller publishers - Image, Valiant, Dark Horse and indies (all mushed together for now)

Boxes of "misc old" -- basically anything from GA to early 80s that doesn't fit into the above.. Will eventually break down by charlton, gold key, dell, etc.

I am filling these boxes and getting them out of the room and lined up against the wall in the hallway best I can so that I can have breathing room in the sorting chamber. They are not organized out there, but I can see what theme is in each box at least.

Pulling some expensive books to the side and "ebay this now!" books so they don't get lost in the mess.

Nothing is sorted or indexed/databased within any of these boxes yet. That will take eons.

Preliminarily, I need to buy about 500-1000 bags and boards. All I have left are like 75 GA bags and boards.

Often I am torn about where I should go. For example, I have a Doctor Strange pile (which is shared with a few other characters like Warlock, etc..don't ask why)... but I am sticking his Marvel Premiere issues in the "Marvel box" for now, ditto red sonja (which is in the conan pile right now), but she had all those marvel feature books, marvel spotlight son of satan/ghost riders and on and on. Shouldn't all the GOTG books be together, including the Marvel Presents 70s series? And isn't Marvel COmics Presents really just a Wolverine title? Ultimately the Star Trek books from all publishers will be in the same place, doesn't that make sense? Ditto star wars and several others that span multiple publishers?

 

I also (importantly) have purged 50 or so boxes I had saved to use for potential shipping. They were taking up a lot of space and really upset my wife. I am so thrilled to get rid of that. There will always be more boxes the way my wife orders off Amazon Prime, I don't need to save them.

I so need to do this with print boxes and print tubes. I have 3 roughly 6 foot stacks of print boxes. I just couldn't bring myself to throw them away as their quality print boxes and each box has 2-4 sheets of foam core and a print bag. And I have at least 75 print tubes. I did put the smaller tubes inside of the bigger tubes, so that helped a bit, but the boxes and tubes still wind up taking up a significant amount of space in my basement.

I did wind up throwing away 95% of my brown shipping boxes and styrofoam for my Sideshow statues, something most statue collectors deem me absolutely crazy for doing. They just took up WAY too much space. A single 1:4 Sideshow statue box is roughly 2 1/2 feet tall x 2 feet wide x 12-16" deep. Roughly 35 of those boxes can take up 20% of your basement. Throwing those out freed up a CRAPLOAD of space. I kept the art boxes and simply broke them down flat and keep them stored in the basement. As for all of the extra statue pieces like swap out portraits and such, I bought 5 - 18x24 print boxes from light impressions, filled the bottom of each print box with pick and pluck foam and stored them stacked on top of one another in an antique storage trunk we own. Access to those extras is now FAR easier than it used to be. 

[the blob]

The sad thing is I have a garage I organized with a buddy 6 or so years ago when his wife was on vacation with their kids and he was unemployed and it has now been filled to the brim. Garage cleaning organizing, however, needs a nice string of 3-4 rain free days though.

[OrangeCrush]

28 minutes ago, the blob said:

The sad thing is I have a garage I organized with a buddy 6 or so years ago when his wife was on vacation with their kids and he was unemployed and it has now been filled to the brim. Garage cleaning organizing, however, needs a nice string of 3-4 rain free days though.

I wish I was able to utilize my garage in regards to helping with various storage, but we just don't have the room. My wife and I are big outdoors people, as is our son to a somewhat lesser extent, and our garage is basically our storage bin for all of that cr*p. we have 4 mountain bikes, 3 road bikes, 3 kayaks, 4 sets of ski's, 2 snowboards (my son), 3 backpacks, etc. The walls of my garage look like you walked into an REI store. And I keep my 98 Supra stored in there most of the year as Michigan is just not the state to leave your cars out in the weather, at least not if you want them to last a long time. I actually think were going to go back to renting a climate controlled indoor 10" x 10" storage bin. That way we can clear out a lot of the stuff we don't use on a regular basis. 

Ah, 1st world problems lol.

Edited February 20, 2018 by OrangeCrush

[Shawnismaximus]

58 minutes ago, the blob said:

Often I am torn about where I should go. For example, I have a Doctor Strange pile (which is shared with a few other characters like Warlock, etc..don't ask why)... but I am sticking his Marvel Premiere issues in the "Marvel box" for now, ditto red sonja (which is in the conan pile right now), but she had all those marvel feature books, marvel spotlight son of satan/ghost riders and on and on. Shouldn't all the GOTG books be together, including the Marvel Presents 70s series? And isn't Marvel COmics Presents really just a Wolverine title? Ultimately the Star Trek books from all publishers will be in the same place, doesn't that make sense? Ditto star wars and several others that span multiple publishers?

Personally I would organize the Marvel Premiere books with the super hero, and not with the other Marvel books. I know your pain though, It can get tricky sometimes figuring out where to put stuff. 

I would start pulling the Superman and Green lantern books as you wish you had from the start. Would it take long to go through what you've already done and pull all the Super-man & Green Lantern stuff?

Another tip, I just organized my own fairly large collection and I made my own makeshift sorting tabs by taking a comic backing board, slapping a sticky-note to it so it pokes out the top, and writing down the character on it. If I have ten or more comics of a specific character I'll make the makeshift sorting tab, and stick it alphabetically among my other makeshift sorting tabs. If I have less then 10 comics, I just place it roughly alphabetically in my misc-DC or misc-Marvel boxes. 

[OrangeCrush]

11 minutes ago, Shawnismaximus said:

Personally I would organize the Marvel Premiere books with the super hero, and not with the other Marvel books. I know your pain though, It can get tricky sometimes figuring out where to put stuff. 

I would start pulling the Superman and Green lantern books as you wish you had from the start. Would it take long to go through what you've already done and pull all the Super-man & Green Lantern stuff?

Another tip, I just organized my own fairly large collection and I made my own makeshift sorting tabs by taking a comic backing board, slapping a sticky-note to it so it pokes out the top, and writing down the character on it. If I have ten or more comics of a specific character I'll make the makeshift sorting tab, and stick it alphabetically among my other makeshift sorting tabs. If I have less then 10 comics, I just place it roughly alphabetically in my misc-DC or misc-Marvel boxes. 

If your going to go the do it yourself route in regards to dividers/tabs, its best to just tape 2 comic boards together so one of the boards is roughly 1" higher than the top of the comics. Then just use scissors and cut the top of the board so it resembles a tab, just like you see with the plastic dividers from companies like BCW. That winds up being much more sturdy than post it notes, which I have also used in the past. I have pretty much tried every method possible in regards to homemade tabs/dividers and sticky notes just don't have the longevity that 2 comic boards have. 

[the blob]

54 minutes ago, OrangeCrush said:

I wish I was able to utilize my garage in regards to helping with various storage, but we just don't have the room. My wife and I are big outdoors people, as is our son to a somewhat lesser extent, and our garage is basically our storage bin for all of that cr*p. we have 4 mountain bikes, 3 road bikes, 3 kayaks, 4 sets of ski's, 2 snowboards (my son), 3 backpacks, etc. The walls of my garage look like you walked into an REI store. And I keep my 98 Supra stored in there most of the year as Michigan is just not the state to leave your cars out in the weather, at least not if you want them to last a long time. I actually think were going to go back to renting a climate controlled indoor 10" x 10" storage bin. That way we can clear out a lot of the stuff we don't use on a regular basis. 

Ah, 1st world problems lol.

I don't use the garage for a car. It would be very hard to maneuver anything larger than a smart car in there the way my neighbor has her deck right up on the property line. Yup, first world problems, it is a 20 X 20 house in the middle of NYC that I use to store stuff. I need to raise the roof and rent the upstairs to the Fonz.

[the blob]

36 minutes ago, Shawnismaximus said:

Personally I would organize the Marvel Premiere books with the super hero, and not with the other Marvel books. I know your pain though, It can get tricky sometimes figuring out where to put stuff. 

I would start pulling the Superman and Green lantern books as you wish you had from the start. Would it take long to go through what you've already done and pull all the Super-man & Green Lantern stuff?

Another tip, I just organized my own fairly large collection and I made my own makeshift sorting tabs by taking a comic backing board, slapping a sticky-note to it so it pokes out the top, and writing down the character on it. If I have ten or more comics of a specific character I'll make the makeshift sorting tab, and stick it alphabetically among my other makeshift sorting tabs. If I have less then 10 comics, I just place it roughly alphabetically in my misc-DC or misc-Marvel boxes. 

I think it will be alright. I am going to need to go through those DC boxes anyway, plus I already have at least one superman box and one green lantern box from the last time I tried to organize things decades ago. Need to focus on Marvel. While I like Green Lantern, I don't really even like Superman. Why I have so many Superman comics is beyond me.