The Destruction of Box Mountain

[phantomfish]

Okay I am one of those crazy collectors who keeps all the boxes and packaging (even down to the tiny plastic bands!) that comes with all of my TF's. But I am running so short of room I am going to have to start downsizing and the only way to do that is to ditch packaging.

With a lot of my carded figures I will probably just ditch the bubble and keep the backing but I can't decide what to do with all the boxes. Removing all the contents and flat packing them is possibly an option or I was thinking of just keeping the ones I like, mainly Japanese, rare ones and all the movie figures, and ditching the rest.

So has anyone else come up against this problem and if so how did they solve it? I really don't want to ditch the packaging but I really need the room to display some more figures especially with Sky Lynx on the way!

[Caken Lagann]

The only answer I can offer is to ask yourself;

Did you purchase your collection as something for your pleasure?

OR

Did you buy them as a future investment?

If its the first answer keep what appeals the most plus tech-specs or card backs etc.
If it's the second answer, you're screwed for space! LOL

Good luck.

[phantomfish]

Good answer. I'm definitely not an investment guy I'm just a fan who loves the figs so I guess it's time to start shifting some boxes!

[Phill]

I keep packaging for limited and Japanese figures, but clip tech-specs and so on for domestic and UK figures.

[Transformers At The Moon]

We use to through them all out, then ketp everything now just keep the boxed figures. We tend to put a lot of the paper work together, try to put boxes into other boxes, but we've field up most of the loft, so are now putting boxes inside of suitcases.

[phantomfish]

Thanks for the advice guys. I think I am going to try and remove all the bubbles from cards other than the movie line and remove all internal packagin from boxes and flatpack them, with the exception of rare items that I like.

Now all I need to do is to wait for Easter for the time to do it and to buy some cheap shelving!

[sonny]

I have a postage stamp sized apartment but i dont have a huge collection either (still working ym way to 100) but i keep everything as well. Like you i keep the cable ties, the elastic bits of plastic, all the cardboard...everything. So your not alone mate. I do have a spare bedroom though so i keep all my boxes piled up in a tidy little heap in there. Id never get rid of them no matter how little space i have and i only collect for pleasure too. To me the box is just as important as the toy so thats why id never get rid of them. Sometimes i even display the toy infront of the box if i can find a space. This is usually only a temp thing though. When i buy something that i really like i display the toy infront of the box on my shelf, then after a few months i put the box away finally. lol.

[Starscreams Ghost]

I used to do something similar where I'd buy 2 of every star wars figure and have one opened on a shelf in front of the carded ones

space soon deteriorated for that idea though

[phantomfish]

My major problem is I'm rapidly approaching 1000 TF's and I'd say about 60% of them I have boxes or cards for. Which is taking up as much space as the figures. I've finally reached crisis point as I literally have no more room for any figures and some of them are just in piles on the floor at the moment (which I hate!)

[Moonbug]

Boxes take up more space then the toys, as Phantom says. I can't work out how anyone can have a large collection of boxed figures, and keep them. It's hard enough with them loose.

[phantomfish]

My box destruction took me days! I took 3 car loads of box interiors and plastic bubbles from carded figures to the local tip. I got some weird looks off the guy who tells you where to take your particular types of rubbish when my car was loaded with plastic bubbles. But luckily my collection looks much better now. I'm just still short of space though as I didn't think I was going to collect animated figures but I've started already!