I have finally found a free second to disclose a sad story to all my fellow Collecticons – this past weekend my basement was victim of sewer back-up and a giant flood in my basement due to a 12-hour torrential downpour that affected the entire Chicago-land area. Anyone that knows me in town is aware that I have done a lot of work to my basement and taken multiple precautions for a situation like this but at some point, the water will always win. Luckily for me, my plastic crack appears to be blessed and it has survived completely unscathed by the treacherous waves. The bulk of my collection is housed within 6 Detolf Ikea cabinets. The water reached the cabinets, but did not breach the 1-inch tall baseboard.
The real pain in the ass came in the form of having to quickly re-locate the figures so we could begin the long clean-up. Over the past 6 years of living in my Chicago condo, my collection has ballooned to what currently feels like 400+ loose figures. I don’t necessarily think that quantity is a major factor in collecting, especially now that I’ve had to begrudgingly move all of them to the upstairs and other various locations. I am seriously considering selling big groups of my collection. I could always cut it down to ONLY Starscreams, which are the corner stone of my collection. It’s just so hard to get rid of figures I feel like I’ve worked so hard to acquire…
So for now, most of my figures have been carefully placed in cardboard boxes which are artfully hidden behind my upstairs couch. The display shown above consists of some of my masterpiece figures and those that I had in beanie baby cases that I’ve bought one by one from The Container Store. I love those little cases because they fit a lot of G1 figures and deluxe class figures perfectly. I took a poorly lit photograph of the current state of the collection and I’ll do my best to give little updates on the flood aftermath as the months go by.
***BONUS! Video of me trying to return to Chicago amidst the Elmhurt flooding area