Moving your collection - any disaster stories?

[Alder | 243]

I'm creating this thread to share my story, but I'd love to hear if anyone has a story of their own to share. Thankfully, nothing went wrong with my move, but I wanted to talk about the stress involved.

Last month I closed on my first home AND got married. With the pandemic going on, it's been pretty stressful.. but I own a mortgage now, hooray

Our home is 45 minutes from our old apartment. The highway passes over a couple of ridges which are abundant in Pennsylvania: several winding turns and occasionally steep. The month leading up to the move, I carefully packed my games into totes so that everything would be prepared and ready to go. Most of my collection is games, there were no arcade cabinets or anything like that. But for context, I filled about 30 19-gallon totes and about 10 smaller totes for things like handhelds. Most were DVD-style cases as opposed to cardboard, so I wasn't too worried about things getting damaged. But I had a literal ton of stuff to move.

We rented a U-haul for the move day; I had my dad and brother to help. 9AM rolls around and my dad arrives in an old '98 GMC pickup truck he recently bought. My car was unavailable for the day, so I ride with him to the U-haul center and drive his truck back to the apartment while he drives the U-haul. The ride back was interesting - the truck needed a bit of encouragement to start up. During the ride, I couldn't get the passenger window to go up all the way and a couple of concerning lights were lit up on the dash. The truck in general just felt a bit rattly.

We get back to the apartment and he backs the U-haul up to the garage door. We start loading it up, furniture first. All the big things to the front, boxes and totes to fill the remaining space in the back. That was the plan, at least. Cue the thunderstorm and massive downpour. It was hot as hell out for being early morning but it wouldn't stop raining. We waited about 90 minutes for it to ease up then decided to continue loading in the light rain. We get about half an hour of work in before a convoy of construction vehicles occupies the entire road in front of the driveway. They make us move the truck back and start digging up the pavement. Excellent.

Meanwhile, we filled the U-haul with as much as we could, but there were still totes left. They were all games. In the interest of time, we decided to put them in my dad's pickup truck, since it has a cap and they'll stack two high. Somehow, the bed of his truck was soaked. I know it just rained, but it was like someone had hosed it down inside. The tote lids lock sufficiently, so I wasn't too worried, but man... now my totes are all wet and dirty. Anyway, we fill the truck and close the tailgate. It didn't latch. It stayed in place but fell when slightly pulled. After a few attempts, we achieve what feels like a loose but solid latch.. but now the cap won't latch. There's wires and stuff hanging from the ceiling and the knob is loose. After a couple minutes we got it closed with an equally unconvincing latch.

By some miracle, the construction crew had dissolved and we were able to get out. My dad drove the U-haul over the mountain and I drove the pickup in what may have been my most stressful voyage to date. Going uphill, downhill, every pot hole I hit, every bump in the road... I couldn't shake the thought of that tailgate failing and having my collection littered across a major highway in the rain. What would I do if that happened? Would I pull over and go back for them? Would the totes withstand the impact? Literal wincing at every bump I hit going uphill. I checked my mirrors several hundred times, leaning to get a better view to make sure everything was okay. Every loud noise was cause for concern.

And, before I knew it, I was home safe. We unloaded everything and returned the U-haul, and that was the end of it. It could've gone a LOT worse, all things considered. But, if I ever move within the area again, I may just chauffeur my collection in a couple of trips to play it safe.

 

 

[Reed Rothchild | 9,523]

I always chauffeur my collection.  Never dared put anything in a UHaul or someone else's hands.

[Tabonga | 2,317]

All of my SNES games disappeared when we last moved in 2003.  It was a big move that occurred over the space of a couple of months (we did not need to be out of the old house on any tight timeframe),   We had a lot of help that would work for a few days and then someone else would help.  We color coded all of the incoming boxes for what room they were supposed to go in and we had a bunch of stuff that was going to live in the garage for final sorting.  All of the video game stuff was supposed to go to the basement.

When I got to setting the baement up there was not an SNES game in sight.  (I have always stored my SNES games, their manuals, boxes and any maps/posters separately - I had everything but the games.  Needless to say I panicked (not that that did any good) and ran all sorts of negative scenarios through my head,  A couple of months later I was starting to deal with the garage and got access to a stack of fruit crates  that had been misdirected in the moving process - and there were the nintendo cabinets/drawers that held all of the SNES games, 

 

[RH | 4,903]

Dude, look for the Super Derick channel on YouTube and go back in his videos about a year ago. He moved from Seattle area to Kansas (where he was originally from.) He got raked over the coals by a really crappy moving company.

[Magus | 169]

Glad to hear it got there safe. We just listed our condo yesterday, are having showings all this weekend, and will likely be moving in the next 60 days and i am not looking forward to it. 

I always transport stuff on my own, in my own vehicle or 2 and have someone i trust drive, even if it means multiple trips. I don't have too much, but what i have is on the expensive side and delicate. Neon signs, displays, CIB cardboard games, statues, PVM's, etc. It's honestly a nightmare. Last time i did this was 2 years ago, and everything made it except my chrono trigger statue which somehow got a broken tree branch. Nobody wants to fess up how it happened lol 

[Tabonga | 2,317]

29 minutes ago, Magus said:

 Last time i did this was 2 years ago, and everything made it except my chrono trigger statue which somehow got a broken tree branch. Nobody wants to fess up how it happened lol 

It was likely mugged by this guy:

[bowser | 598]

Not really a disaster but I moved from India to the US last year. Packed up my collection and put it on a ship. It took 3 months to arrive and it was very nerve wracking. I had read all sorts of horror stories by others about stuff getting stolen but to my surprise everything arrived pristine and untouched. I left about 30% of it back home which was my most valuable stuff figuring that I would carry it over in parts whenever I or someone visits. But now because of Corona I probably won't see it for the foreseeable future  

[ThePhleo | 2,184]

The worst thing that happened to me was due to my own idiocy and not buying adequate protection.

When I moved from Utah to back to NJ I made the mistake of throwing my “Big Rare Taitos” in one box with no protection. Those ones are Jetsons, Panic Restaurant, Little Samson, Power Blade 2, Bubble Bobble 2, and Dinosaur Peak into a cardboard box with no box protectors.

The Samson, and Power Blade 2 would have easily graded as 9.0’s or higher if WATA existed back then, while the others were 5’s and 6’s with Dino Peak maybe being a 7....when I opened the box up though, The Samson and the Power Blade 2 suffered corner dings.

Luckily I wasn’t a condition freak and still am not but it was still painful. A really expensive Lesson learned there.

[fcgamer | 4,723]

In 2016 I moved from a backwater outskirts "town" to city centre, about an hour away. Living abroad, I didn't have a car to aid me.

Initially I took several boxes up to the new place, on the bus, just one by one to lessen the load. I was pumped about the new place, as it had shelves with glass doors, I was excited to display parts of my collection in the living room like that.

Then I paid a moving service here in Taiwan, and my girlfriend and I took a large majority of items, including many boxes of games, to the new place. I'll never forget the day we carried fifty boxes of items up four flights of stairs, I swear I felt like I was going to have a heart attack.

For the remaining stuff, a good friend took his van and helped me move it. It sucked moving a collection when I didn't have even a car, but in the end everything made it fine, no damage.

Three months later my girlfriend cheated on me, then left me, then started using drugs , after being together for five years , and having been discussing getting marriage. Suddenly the place I was living was "tainted" and I wanted to move elsewhere, but after that moving experience, I couldn't be assed.

Edited July 11, 2020 by fcgamer

[Code Monkey | 2,006]

Would that truck even pass inspection?

[fcgamer | 4,723]

2 hours ago, Code Monkey said:

Would that truck even pass inspection?

If in Taiwan, surely

[Magus | 169]

32 minutes ago, ChickenTendas said:

What do you use to store CIB games in? I have maybe 3 or 4 CIB snes and n64 games that are in really nice condition. None of them are really worth anything but it'd still be a bummer if they got crushed or banged up. We'll probably move in the next 2 weeks.

My cardboard based games are put in acrylic box protectors, and then i put them in cardboard shipping boxes as strategically as possible, like tetris. 

And then i put these in a car with me either on the floor or on the seat. And i handle them very carefully and move them either first or last into the house and into their room. 

For big money games $250 and up, i have VGA hard acrylic cases and pack the same way. I only have about 50 games between SNES and GBA this way, but they are all $100+ titles with many $250 and up. 

[Tekdrudge | 126]

I haven't had any disasters, but I have had games go missing. The most recent was four years ago with my last move. For some reason my copy of Super Mario Sunshine disappeared. I have everything else however. Also, when I was a kid my Sega Genesis and all Genesis games disappeared when I moved halfway across the country. I still had all my NES stuff though. My mom insisted she packed it.

[goldenpp72 | 1,234]

No disasters but the scale of moving them all safely was horrifying to say the least. I bought tons of super durable totes and used packing material I had amassed over years then removed the art inserts, etc that could be damaged due to temp/humidity changes. It was over 7000 games and associated furniture, equipment, etc. Actually i'd guess that if you were to put the entire contents of it into one Uhaul, it would fill their 27 foot ones to the brim. I was so relieved to find nothing was damaged since it was a 1000 mile trip.