Collection Organization Tips 7 7

[OrangeCrush]

59 minutes ago, the blob said:

And are these boxes not something that can be broken down an folded up, or is the issue the styrophome packing on the inside that fits the statute?

Yeah, its the styrofoam that is the issue. Its just one big a*s block of styrofoam and you can't break down styrofoam. And if your going to throw away the styrofoam, there is really no point in keeping the brown shipping box. The art boxes are worth keeping IMO and I definitely kept all of mine. Not sure what I will ever do with them, but since they look nice and they can be broken down flat, I decided to keep them. Here is what the styrofoam usually looks like with a Sideshow statue and remember your talking about boxes that are like 2 1/2 feet tall x 2 feet wide x 12-16" deep. So empty Sideshow boxes eat up space like Pac-man eats dots. Its starts adding up to significant amounts of space if you buy a lot of statues and I have purchased a LOT of statues the last 3-4 years. 

Actually, I found a better example of exactly what you get with most Sideshow Premium Format statues. The only thing not shown is the brown shipping box that the art box fits into.

So basically, your left with that big block of styrofoam, the art box and brown shipping box once your done putting your statue together. And Supergirl is actually one of the smaller Sideshow pieces in recent years, box wise. The recent Thanos Maquette had a box size of 25.00" H x 26.00" W x 28.00" L. So basically just over 2 feet x 2 feet x  2 feet. 

Edited February 22, 2018 by OrangeCrush

[shadroch]

I tend to throw away the outer boxes if it just for shipping. Art boxes are problematic as most buyer will want them.  I actually have a few Art boxes that the statues got broken in. Insurance paid for them. 

I wonder if there is a market for the box/Styrofoam.  The mounted Prince Valiant box is enormous.

[letsgrumble]

On 2/20/2018 at 4:44 PM, Shawnismaximus said:

On 2/20/2018 at 3:37 PM, 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. 

By filing the Marvel Premiere Dr. Strange and Iron Fist issues with the other issues belonging to the character, you'll be left with a sad batch of 3D-Man and Torpedo comics.

[FineCollector]

11 hours ago, letsgrumble said:

By filing the Marvel Premiere Dr. Strange and Iron Fist issues with the other issues belonging to the character, you'll be left with a sad batch of 3D-Man and Torpedo comics.

Agreed, I keep all of those Marvel titles together.  Your collection will be judged based on how many bronze M-Misc boxes you can fill, didn't you know that?

[the blob]

3 hours ago, FineCollector said:

Agreed, I keep all of those Marvel titles together.  Your collection will be judged based on how many bronze M-Misc boxes you can fill, didn't you know that?

There are a shockingly large number of them.  Thank goodness Marvel Team-up (for sure) and Marvel Two-In One (probably) will have their own boxes. Anyway, I hit my box with 75 copies of Thor 339 (having already found my 50 copies of Superman 204)...I need to give a Thor 339 away with every batch of comics I sell. After a few years I might get down to a more manageable 15 copies.

Should Marvel Tales be kept with Spiderman or in a "Marvel" box?  So many things to think about...

Edited February 22, 2018 by the blob

[spreads]

8 minutes ago, the blob said:

 Anyway, I hit my box with 75 copies of Thor 339 (having already found my 50 copies of Superman 204)...I need to give a Thor 339 away with every batch of comics I sell.

  Maybe you are a hoarder.....this thread might go beyond simple organization and delve into deeper psychoanalysis, kind of like that show 'money *mor*n and how some people are not JUST bad with money.

Edited February 22, 2018 by spreads

[the blob]

5 minutes ago, spreads said:

  Maybe you are a hoarder.....this thread might go beyond simple organization and delve into deeper psychoanalysis, kind of like that show 'money *mor*n and how some people are not JUST bad with money.

There is a story behind that... my old LCS had ordered like 500 copies of 339, hoping to capitalize on the success of 337. Well, 17 years later his shop was closing and he still had these left and just gave them to me. Same thing with the 50 or 75 copies of Thor 459 I have around here somewhere. He thought 1st Thunderstrike would be HUGE. He had bought a ton of those and just gave me what he had left before closing shop. The Superman 204 I bought for 75 cents each on ebay. I thought they might "come back." 

[spreads]

On ‎2018‎-‎02‎-‎22 at 12:16 PM, the blob said:

There is a story behind that... my old LCS had ordered like 500 copies of 339, hoping to capitalize on the success of 337. Well, 17 years later his shop was closing and he still had these left and just gave them to me. Same thing with the 50 or 75 copies of Thor 459 I have around here somewhere. He thought 1st Thunderstrike would be HUGE. He had bought a ton of those and just gave me what he had left before closing shop. The Superman 204 I bought for 75 cents each on ebay. I thought they might "come back." 

Wow.  I'm not expecting a LCS to do any kind of financial projections, but making these kind of business 'gut' decisions it's not surprising they closed. 

[Bird]

On 2/22/2018 at 12:16 PM, the blob said:

There is a story behind that... my old LCS had ordered like 500 copies of 339, hoping to capitalize on the success of 337. Well, 17 years later his shop was closing and he still had these left and just gave them to me. Same thing with the 50 or 75 copies of Thor 459 I have around here somewhere. He thought 1st Thunderstrike would be HUGE. He had bought a ton of those and just gave me what he had left before closing shop. The Superman 204 I bought for 75 cents each on ebay. I thought they might "come back." 

Why not try to move these quickly for space? Thor 339 is a $3 book on ebay apparently, so maybe throw up one listing of 5/$12 or 10/$20 with a few quantity available and hopefully clear out a third of a short box. There are a few sold for $5 even, you could up the price a bit and sit it in your store. Throw one of the do-it-yourself tabs on this box to mark it and sell those puppies. Same with the other large copy books. Move half just to get rid of them and the dribs and drabs of $ will add into your paypal nicely. One shorty at a time.

[Artboy99]

I keep all the packaging for all the statues I purchase. In case I ever move in the future I have the perfect package to put the delicate statues in.

I will say that due to the space the packages do take up I severely limit the quantity of statues I purchase.

[shadroch]

Just because you own two long boxes of a comic doesn't mean you should keep them.

[OrangeCrush]

2 hours ago, Artboy99 said:

I keep all the packaging for all the statues I purchase. In case I ever move in the future I have the perfect package to put the delicate statues in.

I will say that due to the space the packages do take up I severely limit the quantity of statues I purchase.

Yeah, its much easier to keep your packaging if you really limit the number of statues you purchase. Unfortunately, I went a bit crazy the last 3-4 years and am now past the 40 statue mark if you include Sideshow, Gaming Heads, Prime 1 and XM. And I am also a big collector of science fiction replica weapons. Between companies like WETA, Triforce, & Hollywood Collectibles Group I am quickly approaching the 20 pieces mark and some of those have bigger boxes than some of the statues I own. Mass Effect's M-8 Assault Rifle has a huge box. Same for WETA's 3 District 9 replica weapons.

Honestly, looking back I should have taken a picture of my basement when I still had all of my boxes and I should have taken more pictures at the recycling place I dropped them all off at when I was finally done tossing all of the boxes. I was so distressed over the idea of tossing them or not that taking pictures just never entered my mind. People would understand why I decided to throw them away to a much greater degree if I had taken pictures. 

Edited February 24, 2018 by OrangeCrush

[spreads]

19 hours ago, shadroch said:

Just because you own two long boxes of a comic doesn't mean you should keep them.

[spreads]

On ‎2018‎-‎02‎-‎24 at 9:20 AM, Bird said:

Why not try to move these quickly for space? Thor 339 is a $3 book on ebay apparently, so maybe throw up one listing of 5/$12 or 10/$20 with a few quantity available and hopefully clear out a third of a short box. There are a few sold for $5 even, you could up the price a bit and sit it in your store. Throw one of the do-it-yourself tabs on this box to mark it and sell those puppies. Same with the other large copy books. Move half just to get rid of them and the dribs and drabs of $ will add into your paypal nicely. One shorty at a time.

I don't know, how many buyers looking for five copies of this book are out there?  I think with instances like this, the only thing you can do is create piles of long-boxes and then hopefully if you have 15-20 longs to dump you can parcel these type of books out.  In failing that, dump most of these books in a recycling bin. 

[FineCollector]

4 hours ago, spreads said:

In failing that, dump most of these books in a recycling bin. 

[3319comics]

On the organizational front and collections, do people use any specific software program to track their collections? or just Excel spread sheets? Once everything is bagged,boarded,and sorted any recommendations of how lists are maintained?

[spreads]

13 minutes ago, 3319comics said:

On the organizational front and collections, do people use any specific software program to track their collections? or just Excel spread sheets? Once everything is bagged,boarded,and sorted any recommendations of how lists are maintained?

I think excel sheets, or some type of database software would be useful if you're a collector with many runs.  From a dealer standpoint, I don't see the value in doing this.  The on-going maintenance would be too time-consuming; if your collection is sorted properly it would be easy to just look for a book when prompted.

[Silver_Couch_Surfer]

14 minutes ago, 3319comics said:

On the organizational front and collections, do people use any specific software program to track their collections? or just Excel spread sheets? Once everything is bagged,boarded,and sorted any recommendations of how lists are maintained?

I use Comic Collector on my Windows PC and CLZ Comics on my Android. Works really well! 

 

https://www.collectorz.com/comic/comic-collector

[shadroch]

I use mycomicshops want list to list my books.  This has the added benefit of being able to tell in a second what obscure books they are looking for.

[the blob]

On 2/24/2018 at 9:11 AM, spreads said:

Wow.  I'm not expecting a LCS to do any kind of financial projections, but making these kind of business 'gut' decisions it's not surprising they closed. 

Keep in mind he closed in 2000 and the Thors were bought in 1983 and 1993. He didn't get stuck with a palette of Turok 1s and other Valiant/Image hype. He did alright on some other moves and generally lowballed every collection that came in.