COLUMN: 'Game Mag Weaseling': The Storage Blues
July 19, 2009 12:00 AM |
['Game Mag Weaseling' is a weekly column by Kevin Gifford which documents the history of video game magazines, from their birth in the early '80s to the current day.]
Hey, magazine collectors! (Or, for that matter, any other kind of game-junk collector!) How are your storage solutions looking these days?
Myself, I am almost out of space. I'm not acquiring much old stuff the way I used to, but given that I subscribe to everything available in the US, magazines have a tendency to pile up over the months whether I want them to or not.
As a result, all the shelves in my ferret room/office/magazine library (above, left) are full up. No further admittance allowed. There's no more room for shelves, and I don't want to fill the entire room full of shelving like some university library, because (a) the ferrets would be annoyed and climb all over it (b) I still have a little (just a little) self-respect.
To cope with this, I've taken the magazines I use the least in my personal reading -- the thousand-ish Japanese volumes from the PlayStation era onward, and the most recent US/UK mags after I'm done reading and covering them in this column -- and put them into a spare, unfinished closet. The J-mags are stacked, while the modern English-language titles get neatly organized in banker boxes along the wall. Up on the shelves are doubles, and as you can see, I've got a lot of doubles accumulated. They'll find a loving home somewhere, I'm sure...but I've yet to figure out where.
It being a hot, sultry weekend in Houston and me finding myself waiting around for the AC repairman to arrive, I'd like to close up this week's column early and turn over this topic to you -- especially those of you with crazy collections. How do you store your stuff? Are you finding physical storage space becoming a problem? Have you ever wondered "Oh God, what am I gonna do with all this when I move?"
[Kevin Gifford breeds ferrets and runs Magweasel, a really cool weblog about games and Japan and "the industry" and things. In his spare time he does writing and translation for lots and lots of publishers and game companies.]
Categories: Column: Game Mag Weaseling
2 Comments
Eventually I gave up and had a huge clear out. You can't take it with you when you die, so why keep it around if it's stressing you out now? If I'd not used an item in the last 7 years out it went.
If you think items in your collection have genuine historic value look into donating them to a museum, in the UK we have The National Videogame Archive not sure if there is a US equivalent.
That said you're not at breaking point yet. I'm sure you could fit some floor to ceiling shelving in that closet whilst keeping the office looking respectable
Jules | July 20, 2009 7:51 AM
I have similar problems since I changed jobs and moved from an (extremely nice) three bedroomed house to a tiny flat in London. I'm trying to combine three approaches:
[1] getting rid of mags that I no longer wish to store/are willing to live with a digital copy;
[2] use my existing space more effectively; and
[3] sneak them into my parents house when I visit.
For the first approach, I'm sorting through the mags and assessing their personal value as a retro artefact. Is it enthusiastic about the topic? Does it provide some understanding of the time period? Does it cover a well-known or unusual title? Do I feel nostalgic when reading the mag (even though the mag is ebay-sourced and covers a machine I never owned and, as such I have no actual memories of the period to feel nostalgic about). Is it particularly well-written and presented? Is it a good magazine where I want to keep every issue? It's a fairly loose decision-making process, but it's helped me to recognise that I don't need some of the larger computing titles (Personal Computer World and Computer Shopper were around 300-500 pages per issue), tips magazines, type-in mags and a surprisingly large number of EDGE mags from the last 5 years.
I've tried to scan a few issues in my disposal pile, but it takes on average about 2 days to scan at 600dpi and tidy it up a bit for each issue. I thought about buying a sheet-feed scanner and debinding some of the mags in my disposal pile, but I've read bad things about the quality and would have to cut or fold super A4 pages to fit into the sheet feeder.
For storage, I've managed to lay my hands on several office supply cardboard boxes that were used to deliver A4 printing paper. The A4 magazines are stacked horizontally and 'Super A4' are held vertically. It doesn't help with space, but a set of neat boxes looks much better than a load of stacked mags. Each issue is packaged in a plastic wallet - 'new style 2000AD' comic wallets from Forbidden Planet are perfect for 'super A4' mags, such as Retro Gamer and EDGE and help to hide the smell of several ebay bought mags). The boxes can be stacked, though I worry about the horizontally-held mags being crushed and have stacked them only 2 boxes high.
Finally, to sneak mags into my parents house I use a mild sedative in their cof... Nah, only joking.
Gareth | July 25, 2009 3:54 PM