Getting My Zines Organized....Kind Of

While I've been accused of being a(n).....associate, no.......crony, maybe...of Erik's, truth be told I don't always drink the Kool-Aid, but that's probably more due to me be lazy. What I'm getting at is that my participation with the Tavern is generally limited to my Sunday postings and an annual Whisky testing at NTXRPG Con. I do, however, occasionally tune in to Tavern Chat on YouTube. 

This week I did tune in for a whole five minutes or so and while it was a bit of an aside, Bad Mike was talking about zines and zine storage. Jump forward to this weekend and I'm trying, a bit in vain, to go through my hugs stack of loose adventures, unbagged comics, and a fairly decent stack of zines. While it may seem a bit anally retentive I HAVE to bag, sort, and store these things or I will undoubtedly break, lose, or worse off......re-purchase stuff I already have.

I pretty much hate not being able to find crap I own, but not nearly as much as I hate throwing money away on needless duplicates. For example I have a small stack of duplicate Judge's Guild stuff that Bad Mike was more than happy to sell to me....

Comics are super easy to sort, bag, and store as there is an entire industry of collectors. That same industry does also make magazine bags & boards, as long as you remember to get the two main sizes of magazine bags 'cause if you have a thicker adventure.....you'll need that larger bag.

Unfortunately for me Zines come in all shapes & sizes....part of the charm. Most of mine come in at 6" x 9" and while the company I got my other supplies from doesn't carry bags in this size, others do. Backer boards have been a bit of a let-down. An hour of searching and I can definitely find "boards" that are 6" x 9", but they are expensive and probably too thick. I ended up just getting me some slightly oversized Sheet Music Backer Boards that I can basically cut in half to make them the right size.....

.....no to figure out how the hell to put these things on my shelf so they aren't wasting space. Bagging and boarding Zines aren't that big of a deal, but being able to access what I want, when I want is. 

Finding something workable so far has been problematic. There is a $5 DTRPG product, Tomb of Zines, that I can pick up to make my own boxes. Great...another assembly project. It would be cost effective...but that's going to be my Plan B (no, not that Plan B!). I'm still looking for boxes and I may have found a relatively cheap alternative at Harbor Freight, of all places. They have a .30 cal ammo box with an interior dimension of  9.5" x 6" x 4.25". These boxes can nest on top of each other and with a width of over 4" I think for $4-$6 a box I can get a bit more protection than a cardboard box and while it is a bit more expensive...if I factor in the time and frustration of making boxes....they might work out.

If it works, I'll come in and edit this post, but in the meantime if there are any suggestions, please....by all means, post it in the comments. 

EDIT: I realized I had a little more than an hour before Harbor Freight closed, so I went ahead and picked some up because they were on sale for $4. They don't have the big logo on the side (like the pic) and they work just fine for most of my Zines.