The Story

Despite these problems, the actual models seem to have made it 2,000 highway miles with minimal damage.  I think the key is the manner in which I packed each box.  First the plastic boxes were lined on the bottom with bubble wrap, usually the small bubble kind, but certain heavy items got the large bubbles.

Then each vehicle, building, or other item was placed carefully on the bubble wrap.  Then the box was slightly over filled with biodegradable packing peanuts.  The lid was snapped onto the box and I used plastic film near both ends of the box to keep the lid on.  I overfilled the peanuts so that they would create enough tension to prevent the contents from moving around or shifting in transit.

I used the plastic film to insure the box lids stayed on, despite the tension from the packing peanuts.  I used over 300 cubic feet of packing peanuts.  Not a single box popped open during loading, transit, or unloading!  I got my supplies from a place called Serv-all, in Santa Ana, California.


https://serv-allpackaging.com/contact/

The Story

We spent a long time looking for movers.  Eventually we found a small moving company that used two 26 foot long trucks to move our stuff.  They had the same crew load, ship, and unload the goods.  I liked this because it meant great accountability for the collection.  The unloading guys could not pass blame off on the driver or loading crew for any damage.

I also liked the idea of having the collection in two separate trucks. If one of them drove off a bridge into the Mississippi River, it's unlikely the other truck would also do that.  That provided better protection for the collection.  Even though the shipment was insured, money would not have been enough to replace the lost collection.

I briefed the movers on the importance of loading the collection carefully to avoid crushing the boxes and of keeping the underbed storage boxes level.  Still, at least 20 boxes were crushed, and at least three were loaded vertically and much of the load rattled down to one end of the box!

The Story

After about 30 days we sold the house I have lived in for over 30 years.  I began packing the hobby collection over six months before we put the house up for sale.  Ten years ago, I transitioned the collection from mostly cardboard boxes to all plastic boxes.

I got over 300 plastic underbed storage boxes.  I got over 100 other specialty plastic boxes, some quite large.  The GI Joe vehicles take very large boxes.  I moved from cardboard to plastic because I had issues with cardboard storage.

My water heater broke and flooded out a number of boxes that simple disintegrated.  The cardboard were not well sealed and so they had a lot of insects and spiders inside them.  The spiders included the poisonous black widow.  The spider waste was difficult to remove from the models.  Moving to plastic, while expensive, was cheaper in the long run since the plastic boxes lasted longer and did not have the other issues of cardboard.

The Story

Eventually we looked at Kentucky, my dad grew up on a farm not far from Tompkinsville, Kentucky.  He joined the US Army and left to defend the Eastern Seaboard from Nazi invasion.  Eventually the war ended and after several adventures, he moved to California.  As a young man he used to plow fields, using a mule to pull the plow.  As a middle aged man, he worked on the Saturn V rockets that took the Apollo astronauts to the Moon.

I was born in Southern California and at age three I got my first army men, MPC ring hand figures.  I still have two of them in my collection.  Unlike many young men, I never gave up collecting toy soldiers, and when I went to college, I lived at home so my mom could not toss them out.  When I went to the Army, I was living with my wife and she knew better than to toss them out!

After over 55 years of buying, making, and collecting my armies, they were taking up a lot of space. It filled a two car garage and three on-site storage sheds.  I knew retirement would require either a massive downsizing, or a massive new location.  My plan was to be able to store the whole collection under one climate controlled roof.

The Story

So two years ago, MRS Bunkermeister and I realized it was getting close to retirement time.  We also realized we would not have much money in retirement.  We spent over a year looking for places that were less expensive than Southern California.  That ruled out Tokyo, Manhattan, and Hawaii.

We did Internet searches for weather, cost of living, home prices and many other things.  I have the giant wargame and toy soldier collection, so I wanted a large room or separate building for the troops.  For the last 40 years I have been a firearms instructor so I do have a few guns and would like to be able to keep them.

We visited Prescott, Arizona.  Nice place, they even still have cowboys there.  Still, they have had a bit of a housing boom and home prices were a bit high.  We then visited Missoula, Montana.  A great place and not too much snow.  It's in a bowl formed by mountains and the snow gets dropped on the outside.  However, the government built some big laboratories and created a housing boom, too expensive.