Help! Hot Toys

[Jungle_Hunter]

Hey all, moving my collection into a storage unit for about two months - and wanted to get some thoughts/feedback.

It’s a climate controlled storage unit, between 76-78*F, and I’ve got my figures back in their original boxes & shippers with the exception of a couple that I put in ziplock backs with foam sheets (Bane’s that I didn’t want to mess up their jackets, vest, etc.) - they all still had their factory silica packs in there, and I taped the boxes back up and I debated tossing some new silica packs in the large boxes that are housing the boxed figures.

Would these otherwise be okay? Do I need to open them back up and put fresh silica packs in them individually to be safe?

I’m probably being a little paranoid but I’m trying to ensure I don’t expose these expensive buggers to more risk than necessary lol

Thanks all!

 

[MyenShi]

Humidity is more of a factor than temperature, if we're not talking about excessively high temperature. Are you in an area with high humidity and does the climate control for the storage unit do a good enough job of mitigating it if so?

76 degrees in moderate humidity for a few months should be fine. You can throw in some silica packs in there if you want, but the figures sit in worse conditions sometimes on the way to stores and at stores.

 

[Gipetto0812]

Not sure if you're in the US or not (though I'm sure you can find something wherever you're located), but I use this moisture absorber bucket for my storage unit that lasts about 6 months. I have no idea what the brand is (the staff at the Public Storage facility sold me on it), but it collects nearly all the moisture in the air of your storage unit. Not really sure of the science behind it, but every 6 months, the bucket is full of liquid so I guess it works.

 

[potato]

Not sure if you're in the US or not (though I'm sure you can find something wherever you're located), but I use this moisture absorber bucket for my storage unit that lasts about 6 months. I have no idea what the brand is (the staff at the Public Storage facility sold me on it), but it collects nearly all the moisture in the air of your storage unit. Not really sure of the science behind it, but every 6 months, the bucket is full of liquid so I guess it works.

must be a big bucket, or your humidity is really low, at 50-60% my dehumidifier bucket will fill up in 2 months. There are refillable ones where you pour out the water and fill in new pellets.

or get a dehumidifier machine and run it once a while.

 

[Gipetto0812]

must be a big bucket, or your humidity is really low, at 50-60% my dehumidifier bucket will fill up in 2 months. There are refillable ones where you pour out the water and fill in new pellets.

or get a dehumidifier machine and run it once a while.

Not at all actually. At least not to me. It's probably about a gallon. However, my storage unit is climate controlled and underground so maybe that helps with low humidity. All I know is, whenever I go in there, nothing is damaged/ruined so something is working

 

[Centrocal]

Make sure all your boxes are sealed shut so bugs don't get into them. This is very common at storage facilities. Maybe spray with bug spray in advance.

Another important thing is to label every side of each box. List the contents in each box and number them. Sometimes when boxes are stacked the side with the label is covered and you don't know whats in it, so you have to take everything down just to check one box. And its never the box you wanted.

 

[Stryker2011]

My wife and I moved four years ago and had to store stuff at a TC facility for about 4 months. The temp was set at around 70 F, which was perfect since it was really freaking hot outside. Everything was fine. Anything I had in ziploc bags also had one of those silica packs in it. No problems whatsoever. It was also a newer facility, and well built, which meant bugs hadn’t had time to move in. It had really good camera and other security features, but the cost was high (about $400 a month). Shop around if you can to find a decent place. There were three facilities in our area (we only moved about 28 miles from our previous location), so we searched for the best we could find so our stuff was not only safe from damage, but also secure (as much as possible) from theft. It was also completed contained (ie, none of the storage lockers could be accessed from the outside, they were all contained within a secure building with key card access).

 

[darth dennis]

I stored my entire collection in a climate controlled facility for about a year and everything was a-ok. I had many HT figures and a ton of Sideshow figures and statues. Everyone's advise above is spot on, although I didn't worry as much about humidity as the air circulation to keep the temp around 72F seemed to eliminate high humidity issues. My biggest fear was the fully loaded 20 foot U-Haul trip to and from that had everything I'd amassed over a couple of decades. I was very careful driving and looking at every intersection for a potential T-Bone. That was scarier than the storage facility.

 

[Ropen]

No matter what you need silica gels, put them every where, sometimes believe it or not when you stack all those boxes rather than being hot at the very bottom of the stack, it’s super cold and that could affect materials prone to break faster such as plastic and rubber but still, inventory every box by taking pictures of everything inside and label the entire box overall, way easier to inventory everything when you need to look for something specific.

 

[potato]

if you are lazy to wrap individual box with bookwraps or big plastic use plastic wrappers. also those small pack not gonna do good, they can only absorb so much moisture, suggest get those bigger packs you can find, and make sure those do not turn jelly or wattery, despite them being better at absorbtion they aren't designed for long terms storage and may actually grow mold out of the water they gathered, those pebble like the ones from HT not great but better than the gels.