Protecting Your Action Figures from Natural Disasters

[Sassafras]

Step one... Protect family....

Step two....re read step one.


Insurance is your answer.


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Yeah, and read your policy and find out the fine print; e.g. for collectibles, jewelry, musical instruments and other "specialty" stuff you might need a rider on the policy which doesn't cost that much, depending, but find out exactly what is covered and for how much. Photograph and keep records that are backed up.

 

[Pork Chop Express]

Word. Blizzards don't destroy houses.

I often forget just how far south the "Midwest" goes. So I guess what I meant was move to the Upper Midwest or "Great Lakes States." That's where it's at.

Yah, for me the mid-west was always S. Dakota (possibly N. Dakota as well) down to Tx., that's where some of my peoples are at.

When I was young it never made sense to me that MN, OH & IL were also considered to be the mid-west by others.

 

[Stryker2011]

Word. Blizzards don't destroy houses.

I often forget just how far south the "Midwest" goes. So I guess what I meant was move to the Upper Midwest or "Great Lakes States." That's where it's at.

Yep. I'm not far from you in Wisconsin. We occasionally get tornado warnings, but haven't seen one, yet, in my 51 years on this rock.

 

[Stryker2011]

Yeah, and read your policy and find out the fine print; e.g. for collectibles, jewelry, musical instruments and other "specialty" stuff you might need a rider on the policy which doesn't cost that much, depending, but find out exactly what is covered and for how much. Photograph and keep records that are backed up.

I have a laser-disc, DVD, Blu-Ray collection that reaches nearly 5000 titles, collected over 20 years. The insurance companies wouldn't allow me a rider, since they felt there was no way to determine the true replacement value (particularly for those titles that are out of print), even though I still have every receipt. Those f$&King insurance companies will always find a way to deny you the value of your stuff, irregardless of any riders. After Katrina, and those latest hurricanes, I'd be interested to know just what people have gotten, or will be getting, for their losses. I worked for an insurance company years ago that insured a lot of car dealerships, places where many of these companies were paying several MILLIONS in premiums, annually, and would occasionally file claims for amounts of $50,000, because a couple cars were damaged, generally totaled, from wind, etc, and my company would fight those people tooth and nail in an attempt not to pay out. Disgusting. About 16 years ago, I had a storage locker broken into, and my PlayStation 2, Nintendo 64, and tons of games (all of which were out of print), got stolen, and all I got from the sh&$y insurance company was a check for $800 bucks, not even half the value of what was stolen; after researching the cost to replace everything, I decided to cut my losses and just kept the money, since it would have cost me almost three times what I had originally paid (mostly for the games). If it makes people feel good to have special riders, have at, but be prepared to have the insurance company ultimately try, and generally succeed, to screw you over, anyway.

 

[potato]

I have a laser-disc, DVD, Blu-Ray collection that reaches nearly 5000 titles, collected over 20 years. The insurance companies wouldn't allow me a rider, since they felt there was no way to determine the true replacement value (particularly for those titles that are out of print), even though I still have every receipt. Those f$&King insurance companies will always find a way to deny you the value of your stuff, irregardless of any riders. After Katrina, and those latest hurricanes, I'd be interested to know just what people have gotten, or will be getting, for their losses. I worked for an insurance company years ago that insured a lot of car dealerships, places where many of these companies were paying several MILLIONS in premiums, annually, and would occasionally file claims for amounts of $50,000, because a couple cars were damaged, generally totaled, from wind, etc, and my company would fight those people tooth and nail in an attempt not to pay out. Disgusting. About 16 years ago, I had a storage locker broken into, and my PlayStation 2, Nintendo 64, and tons of games (all of which were out of print), got stolen, and all I got from the sh&$y insurance company was a check for $800 bucks, not even half the value of what was stolen; after researching the cost to replace everything, I decided to cut my losses and just kept the money, since it would have cost me almost three times what I had originally paid (mostly for the games). If it makes people feel good to have special riders, have at, but be prepared to have the insurance company ultimately try, and generally succeed, to screw you over, anyway.

i'm not really into collections but are there annual books that records down the market value of certain categories of collections? Like Comic Books, Movie Titles, Toys?

I know Retro Gamers have released few books for Nintendo, Sega & Playstation and have a list of all the titles & values and more detailed texts on some rare or big hit games. Can't remember they only focus on PAL or all regions.

 

[Sweet Rabbit]

I've seen a lot of people coming back with a lot of prints damaged after Harvey

 

[Khev]

Yep. I'm not far from you in Wisconsin. We occasionally get tornado warnings, but haven't seen one, yet, in my 51 years on this rock.

Preach it.

 

[Mr Walker]

I guess you can never rule out an asteroid hit though.

At that point I'm probably not too worried about my doll collection....

For all else... insurance.

I esp. enjoyed this bit.

Humidity degrades plastic over time

Well, yes, but your bones are likely to be dust at the point that becomes a problem, so I figure I won't be too concerned, due to the 3 options.

1) I'm in heaven and am so blissfully happy I won't care what happens to my toys, plus I would assume there will be many hitherto unreleased toys for me to play with. Plus playboy bunnies.

2) I'm in hell, getting hot pokers shoved into my nether regions, and have more on my mind than the fate of my toys.

3) I no longer exist, thus the care factor will be literally non-existent.

 

[OrangeCrush]

Thankfully this is one thing I really don't have to worry about. I live in one of the safest places on the planet in regards to natural disasters, southeastern Michigan. We get the occassioal tornado every now and then, but one has never hit in the area we live in, at least not for the last 100 years. Beyond that its one of the most boring places in the world in regards to natural disasters. No earthquakes, no flooding, no mudslides or avalanches, no hurricanes, no wild fires, etc.

We also have a place in La Fortuna, Costa Rica and natural disasters used to be a legitimate issue there as we have a great view of Arenal volcano right off of our back deck. Unfortunately, or in this case fortunately, it went dormant back in 2010 and volcanologists say its unlikely it will erupt again in our lifetime. I would actually prefer it remained active and take the risk with my collectibles that I own down there, which is about 1/10th of the collectibles I own in Michigan, as it used to be just a stunning spectacle. It was the most active volcano in the southern hemisphere and you could see lava flowing down the volcano pretty much every night. It also made it a lot of fun to hike up as the lava regularly flowed down one side, which made the other side pretty safe to climb. Not 100% safe as there have been instances where people were killed while hiking to the top, but safe enough to take the risk every now and again. I had a buddy who came down to visit one time and he really wanted to hike it. We got about 20 meters to the top and the whole volcano just shook like crazy and kicked up a huge cloud of ash. It was strong enough to knock both of us on our as*. That was a pretty scary instance. We immeditaly high tailed it down the mountain as fast as humanely possible. Both our hands were all cut up when we got to the bottom as many of the rocks on the volcano, which you have to climb over much of the time, have a razor sharp texture to them and their super light so they shft under your weight. We were in such a hurry to get down that we messed our hands up pretty bad, but we did make it down and that's all that matters in that story.

We do get some humid summers in Michigan, but I use silica gel packets and containers everywhere and we use central air pretty much all summer long so humidity is easy enough to handle. I literally have like 75 of Pelican's 1500D silica gel canisters. Those things are worth their weight in gold. They have an indicator right on the top that shows when they reach 100% saturation and all you have to do is pop them in the over for like 60-90 minutes and they are good to go again. They literally have no limit on the number of times they can be reused. Some of my Pelican 1500D canisters are over 15 years old and still work like the day I opened them up. I use them in my photography equipment cases, lighting cases, comic boxes, my Safeco flat file cabinets, in boxes with books and misc collectibles, etc. Finding those things in my house would be like an easter egg hunt. I literally have them everywhere. And I use bigger silica gel canisters in my safe's and in the cabinets that hold all my 4x5 photography negatives/transparencies. You just can't go wrong with silica gel.

I don't know how people who live down in hurricane country or in tornado alley handle it. Collecting in those regions would just be way too stressful. Every time there was a weather alert I would be trying to get as many collectibles as possible into the storm shelter, lol.