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Hi John & forum members,

I am having a bit of a dilemma on my hands in regards to organizing my collection. I currently have about 12,000 comics / graphic novels. I am curious how John and others on the forum manage large collections.

I used to sort alphabetical but, now I just have each long box sorted alphabetically as they fill up. My collection is digitally organized in collectorz but, I'm looking to see discussion or a possible podcast topic on how to keep thing organized.

Thank you!

James

My collection is somewhere over 60,000 comics and grows by around 50 comics a week. I have no idea how many trades, hardcovers and graphic novels I have.

Organizing a large collection is challenging and time consuming.

I've got the majority of my collection sorted in alphabetical order by title and numerically within title. But a sizeable part of my collection is essentially chronologically sorted by the order I put them in the boxes they are in. (Which is a nice way of saying that part of my collection isn't particularly organized.)

I track everything in Excel and all new purchases starting about a few weeks before the launch of the New 52 are also in Comic Collector from Collectorz. My main Excel inventory has 57,092 item in it with another 3,526 items waiting to be added to that file. Of those, 13,667 of the items are also in my Comic Collector from Collectorz database. At some point I'll add some of my older comics to the Comic Collector database but even with a barcode scanner, entering in a box of comics can take an hour or more.

My standpoint is tracking what is in my the collection is more important than knowing exactly where it is in my collection. I track the location but since that can change over time as I pull things out for Back Issue Spotlights or for other reasons, my inventory isn't 100% accurate at the moment on where everything is. Eventually I'll get it to that point again but doing so will take some serious effort.

I'm debating where to make that cutoff to organize my collection now. I may just take the 32 long boxes I have and organize those into drawerboxes. It sounds like this is what you may have done at one point. I am thinking then about waiting until I fill up 10 - 15 longboxes before ogranizing that small group into the larger collection. It's a very daunting task.

I workout at a crossfit gym regularly... taking that into consideration, moving my collection was a huge workout yesterday. My wife told me she wanted all my comics out of the home office

The last time I organized my collection, it filled over 160 Drawer Boxes. Since then, I haven't been able to keep it sorted an organized.

Same problem I'm having... I'm going to have to just pick a month and go and add in read items into the organized backlog. I love my comics but, keeping up is a chore

From a retailer perspective, we always are sorting and storing books. Naturally folks want to make sure they can come in and browse by title, then volume, then number. So that naturally bleeds into my home.

We have bought many collections sorted as I outlined above, and just as many that are "sorted" by release date. From a buying perspective it makes it easier to see everything sequentially to look for key issues - but we don't mind either way.

compsolut wrote:From a retailer perspective, we always are sorting and storing books. Naturally folks want to make sure they can come in and browse by title, then volume, then number. So that naturally bleeds into my home.

We have bought many collections sorted as I outlined above, and just as many that are "sorted" by release date. From a buying perspective it makes it easier to see everything sequentially to look for key issues - but we don't mind either way.

All of the makes sense to me. Had I the time, I'd like my collection to be properly sorted byb title, volume, title addendum (Annual, Special, King Size, etc) and then by number (and, on the rare cases it is needed, by variant).

When you all physically sort your comics, have you found an efficient way to do it?

Last time I did a massive sorting, I set up a bunch of short box tops and collection bins and sorted a box of comics by the first letter of the title and then sorted each group by title and issue. It worked out well except for a few letters like S which has a lot more titles starting with it than some other letters.

Fyi, I renamed the topic to be a little clearer it was about organizing a collection.

I have 22 long boxes and one short box. I have kept my long boxes in alphabetical order for the whole time I have been collecting. After I read the new stuff, I put them in the short box and then once that is full, I sort them into their designated spots in the long boxes. The problem with this is that the long boxes become tight after a while. Then I add a new long box. But the way I keep them in alphabetical order is to take a little out of the back of box 1 and put that into the front of box 2, take some out of the back of box 2 and put it into box 3, and so on. When doing this, I am making some space in each box and all that builds up to fill the new long box. Needless to say, it involves a lot of lifting of some pretty heavy long boxes.
My dad was nice and built me a large shelving unit years ago that holds 20 long boxes. But I am overflowing that and setting some boxes on the sides.
Because of the growing size of my collection, I have started moving some of my purchases to digital to save space. Anything I think may be collectible I purchase physically (I still can't quite kick the collectability hope).

That ripple effect of moving things from box to box to make space is time consuming and can be a bit exhausting. I tried to plan for that when I first filled my Drawer Boxes based on what titles were where and if they were ongoing or not. I'm sure you all can guess how well that worked out...

Whether sorting my personal collection, or one at the shop, the best way that I have found for me is to take it in measurable chunks. I will set out a couple of short or long boxes, and start sorting. I generally take one long box at a time, and sort them alphabetically into the empty boxes. Then the next one, and so on. It does make you stop and do some filing as you sift through the issue numbers, but it beats making a pile of S's that tip over, and are out of order that you then need to file.

As far as storing books, if you need to go outside of the home to store your books, build a nice watertight and pseudo temperature controlled shed if you can (insert garage here). We have had horror story after horror story of people bringing in comic collections from storage units that are waterlogged. This, of course, is mitigated if you have multi level storage facilities where you live, and you can be up a floor or two from the ground.

For myself, I built a wooden shelving system in my basement in a room that holds long boxes two high per half, three shelves tall, while being about 18" off the concrete. I determined that having my boxes alphabetically was not going to work, and I find myself wanting to find things by publisher. So I have alphabetically stored my books by publisher (DC, Image, Marvel, and Other) to suite my needs.

One question that has been bouncing around my head recently is what would be the ideal storage situation for my comic book collection. Eventually I'll move out of my current house and I've been giving idle thought as to the storage requirements for my collection.

A watertight and pseudo temperature controlled place is crucial.

In my current house, the "comic book vault" is one the ground floor. The comic book room in my previous house was on the second floor. The collection was much smaller back then as it was 15 or 20 years ago. These days, I'd bee a little concerned putting my collection of 60,000+ comics on a second story. I don't know if houses are typically built for that sort weight.

If/when I eventually move, there is a decent chance I'd have a custom house built which means it could be built to handle the weight if standard home construction isn't sufficient.

Obviously having easy access to all of the comics is important. Having room for both the then current size of the collection and the eventual end size of the collection is needed. Dedicated space handle the influx of new comics and sort the existing collection is needed.

Comics are clearly a major hobby for me and the storage room for them would probably reflect that. I'm just not sure how it might reflect it.

I'm curious what you all think an ideal comic book room for me might be like. I'm not looking for an "unlimited budget" version with full automation of moving boxes and the like. Unless there is a practical and affordable way to do those kind of things. I'm more interested in something that could actually get built and be usable if/when I eventually retire.

Like I said, I've had some ideas but I've been struggling to articulate the requirements for the comic book room and come up with a viable design for it.

There is also the chance that if/when I retire I might have the time and energy to start doing videos of some sort in addition to the current Comic Book Page audio podcast. so having something that could double as a studio of some sort is also in the back of my mind.

Any thoughts?

I'd love to have a dedicated comics room with built-in, solid wood drawer boxes. And while we're at it, I'd like an artist's easel / architect's style desk with an articulating lamp & magnifying glass lamp for looking closely at the details of some books. And I also think this custom room should have a very comfortable easy chair along with an associated lap table (for heavy omnibus) with an adjustable lamp beside it.

A man can dream can't he?

I've been thinking long the lines of the solid wood Drawer Boxes.

The examination table is a brilliant idea that hadn't occurred to me. I need to give that some thought. I love the idea. In addition to what you suggest, I'd add a document camera with a magnifying lens.

In addition to the comfortable reading chair, lap table and adjustable lamp I think two other things are essential for a reading area. The first is a table for things like a tablet and phone and the other is shelving for the reading material next on the reading list.

While the all wood option is awfully tempting and eye catching, for the size and scope of what John has, it might prove to be financially hard to swallow. I know for my own collection the next step for me is designing something like our back issue bins that allow for quick and easy movement from one bin to the next as the collection grows/shrinks and titles adjust.

I have mocked an example up in my mind that had a "top" that would sit over the bin rows for both protection, as well as to act like a table surface for sorting, bagging/boarding, etc.

The other thing many shops have used that I have seen are the long medical filing cabinets with bins on top. The cabinets allow you to store a number of issues in each drawer, and the drawers are designed for heavy weight.

John, I guess a big question is if you want to move away from drawer boxes, or find an easier layout for them?