MichaelandChrissy.com

I need to decide which, if any, of my mint-in-box Transformers will come out of their packages. I don’t want to immediately run out of room in the new shelves, and loose figures take up a lot less space than boxed or carded figures.

Many of them were already out and on display at one point, but went back into the box during the move. Almost all of my Japanese figures were on display at one point, but Takara packages everything in boxes so the figures slide right back in. They’re still mint-in-box, only the box was opened for display.

Hasbro puts almost everything on cards with plastic bubbles, which don’t repackage well. Even if they’re in a box, they’re covered in twist-ties that you would never be able to replace. I have a lot of carded figures from the Energon and Cybertron lines that I might pull out to put on display. But again, once they’re out, they’re out.

As a reward for successfully removing the door trim and baseboards from the upstairs hall and bedrooms, Chrissy helped me inventory more of my massive Transformers collection.

We made a lot of progress, and the mint-in-box stuff is now completely done. The database is up to 462 entries. I had no idea how many RiD Spychangers I actually had… Hasbro just kept repackaging them, and for some reason I bought them. It’s a sickness, really.

I still need to take pictures of everything though. I’d like to do that as I put things into the cabinets, but I now have no room to walk in my office. The entire floor is covered with stacks of Transformers, three feet high in some places. And I haven’t even gotten into the loose ones yet…

The remodeling work in the basement is just about complete. We’ve finished two bedrooms, two closets and the hallway downstairs, and they look really good. Uncle Glenn did a great job. Perhaps too great? Chrissy liked the oak trim in the basement so much that she decided that we need it upstairs too.

So, work has begun in earnest to make the upstairs as pretty as the new downstairs. Glenn is installing all new oak trim in the three bedrooms, the hall, the hall closet and the bathroom. He put up the trim on three of the windows yesterday, which means that I need to start varnishing again. Wish me luck!

With Chrissy’s help, I’ve started to inventory my massive Transformer collection. We set up an Excel spreadsheet to list the details of each one, and started with just the ones that are still in the box. After three hours, we gave up at 242 records. There are still a lot of mint-in-boxes left in the closet, but we got tired. And we didn’t take any pictures yet…

It will be harder to inventory the ones that are loose (like almost all of my G1 and G2 collections) because you have to track down all the accessories, folded up boxes, instruction booklets, etc. Not to mention all the dusting, as some of these have been on a shelf for years. I’m going to try to get all this down by the end of the week.

Now that the new oak cabinet is complete in my downstairs office, I need to start populating it with Transformers. I’ve decided that to do this right, each one will need to be inventoried in a database, photographed and dusted before it goes onto the shelves. This could get ugly.

Currently, the entire office closet is full of Transformers, and this doesn’t include the several boxes that hold the ones that were on display upstairs. I only displayed a small fraction of my total collection in my upstairs office because it was so small. However, the new cabinet is twelve feet long, huge by comparison, so given enough time I should be able to jam my entire collection into the cabinet.