Seeking advice: Organizing your collection...

Thor_El

I've begun the process of transferring my remaining comic collection from long boxes to short, with the intent of alphabetizing them as I do so.

In everyone's opinion, what's the best way to go about doing this? When I was younger, I used to bring all my boxes down to the family living room and spread them out on the floor in series stacks so I could get them in the proper order and such. But of course, when I was a teenager I had quite a bit less than I do even now. I've considered spreading them out in that same manner on my garage floor and then transferring them to the now-empty new boxes once they're in order. But the volume seems... daunting.

I know many of you, especially the CGS guys proper as well as @wildpigcomics deal with this often, and any helpful advice and/or suggestions for expediting this process would be most welcome.

CaptShazam

Roughly how many boxes are you talking about?

Thor_El

Four long boxes and eleven short boxes.

Hex

I haven't organized my collection in well over a decade. I'm long overdue. Like @Thor_El, the process is more than daunting. I've tried to devise a plan that would avoid the whole "make it worse before it gets better" method of spreading out various piles, but I really don't think there is any way to avoid it. I just can't work out any other plan that is more efficient.

Hex

Also... good call on moving to short boxes. Long boxes are back breakers!

CaptShazam

if you have friends around who are into comics who could help, that could end up a fun time.

I am not sure of any way to make it happen without piles. Any organizational project usually results in a mess before things are sorted out.

zikaatlaw

It sort of depends on what, if any, order they are in to start with. I just did a smaller organization. Start with one box that is "A" and one that is "Z." (maybe some in the middle of the alphabet, so you can work in multiple directions; depends on how many empty boxes you have and/or how many comics are already in order). Then work with smaller stacks of 20-30. Alphabetize the smaller stacks, then add them to your A-Z boxes. That way, you aren't going back and forth between boxes for every single comic. If a box fills up, move about 1/4 to an empty box. With that many boxes, it's going to take several days, so you may not want to use the garage. Break it up by a small box a day or an hour a day, etc.

phansford

Short boxes are much better for a number of reasons. Its all I ever used.

I never did the alphabetic thing. It really doesn't make sense as you will continually be shifting books in and out of boxes. The more you pull them in and out of boxes the higher chance you have of damaging books. I just did either titles or characters in a box. So…. I had 2 or 3 short boxes of Batman. 2 or 3 of Detective. Westerns would be in one box, Indy titles in a box, and so on. If I had multiple characters in a box, once I had enough books of a single character, I would shift the other titles to a new box. The books were in numeric order in each box. I would label the end of the box for access purposes, but there were a ton of boxes I never go back into once they were filled.

In no uncertain terms or conditions would I ever do this task on a concrete garage floor.

batlaw

I knew I couldn't be the only one who didn't alphabetize. I group by character/title, company, format, etcetera.

mwhitt80

phansford said:

I never did the alphabetic thing. It really doesn't make sense as you will continually be shifting books in and out of boxes. The more you pull them in and out of boxes the higher chance you have of damaging books. I just did either titles or characters in a box. So…. I had 2 or 3 short boxes of Batman. 2 or 3 of Detective. Westerns would be in one box, Indy titles in a box, and so on. If I had multiple characters in a box, once I had enough books of a single character, I would shift the other titles to a new box. The books were in numeric order in each box. I would label the end of the box for access purposes, but there were a ton of boxes I never go back into once they were filled.

That's how I organize my book. It makes more sense to me doing it by genre/character.

I also never put floppies back

krustycook

mwhitt80 said:

phansford said:

I never did the alphabetic thing. It really doesn't make sense as you will continually be shifting books in and out of boxes. The more you pull them in and out of boxes the higher chance you have of damaging books. I just did either titles or characters in a box. So…. I had 2 or 3 short boxes of Batman. 2 or 3 of Detective. Westerns would be in one box, Indy titles in a box, and so on. If I had multiple characters in a box, once I had enough books of a single character, I would shift the other titles to a new box. The books were in numeric order in each box. I would label the end of the box for access purposes, but there were a ton of boxes I never go back into once they were filled.

That's how I organize my book. It makes more sense to me doing it by genre/character.

I also never put floppies back

I've never been able to manage the "by character" approach. It's not just team books, like the Avengers, but also all of the team-up books, what-ifs, and split stories (like Tales to Astonish/Tales of Suspense). I have over 10,000 books and it's very hard to find my books that way. The biggest issue I have when I want something is moving the boxes to get it. So, if I want to read a run of something, I prefer if the title is all in one place. Hence my collection is mostly in alphabetical order.

One compromise I've used sometimes is to give certain large titles their own box(es) (i.e. ASM, X-Men, etc) and put all the remaining titles together in alphabetical order. If you leave your boxes a little loose (shouldn't be a problem if they are all bagged and boarded), you should be able to add individual issues for quite a while before you have to do a major re-ordering. Plus, if, for example, I'm collecting a run of ASM from 1-250, I know exactly how much box space that will take up, now and when I have them all. And chances are they'd have their own boxes anyway, given the volume, so I can also keep the boxes in relative alpha order that way (the ASM might not be between 2001 and Astonishing Tales, but may be in the box right next to it). I do separate Marvel vs DC vs Independent as well.

Thor_El

Thanks for the advice, all. I agree that ultimately it's going to get worse before it gets better. My old method of series piles is going to have to be the way I do it.

Fortunately I still have some time before I can't procrastinate anymore since I still need to get more short boxes for the remaining 4 longboxes. :D

mwhitt80

Back 10 years ago my collection was at about 4000-4500 comics. I could reasonably tell you what I had and what I was missing from my collections. This is around the time podcasts were starting.
Guys like Bob Bretall and John Mayo kept saying at the 5k Mark you start not being able to keep up with your collection mentally. I shrugged it off, what was another 500 or 600 comics. I was keeping up with the 4000+ just fine (plus they were "old" and am a pretty smart guy).
Turns out they were right; now at 7500-8000 I can't tell you what I have in my collection outside of a handful of titles.

Hex

mwhitt80 said:

Guys like Bob Bretall and John Mayo kept saying at the 5k Mark you start not being able to keep up with your collection mentally.

I would disagree with that. My collection is well over 27,000 books and up until around the 20,000 mark, I'm sure I had a pretty good handle on what was in the boxes.
Although, as I mentioned before, I haven't organized my collection in over a decade, so I might be delusional.

krustycook

I guess it depends on what is meant by "a good handle." I collected through the mid-80s, then stopped for 25 years, and over the last 5 years have been "rediscovering" my collection.

I know there are certain things I have. For example, I know I have certain complete Bronze Age sets (Defenders, Spectacular Spider-Man, Star Wars, and What If come to mind) as well as mini-series (Miller's Wolverine, Dark Knight, Watchmen, etc). If you mention a key issue, I can tell you with 99% certainty if I have it. And for major titles (mostly Silver Age Marvel), I can tell you the specific issues I need, some from memory and some from consulting a spreadsheet I built of the items I wanted to complete first.

But, for a lot of bronze age titles that aren't complete, I can't tell you exactly. For example, if you asked me which issues of Swamp Thing I have, or Conan, or Astonishing Tales, or Brave and the Bold, I would have a hard time telling you outside of key issues. Ultimately, I need to get everything into a spreadsheet. I would say I have about 1/3 of it in a spreadsheet and the rest of it needs to be added. I've only avoided it because I know once I put it in a spreadsheet and realize what I am still missing, I'll only want to do more buying. And right now I'm focused on a handful of Silver age titles and nothing else.