Very nice, inspirational displays and collections guys. :thumbsup
I keep my suspension orders and medals in plastic sleeves, can anyone recommend non-PVC hard plastic sleeves?
The ones I bought were marked as "acid-free" but as a numismatist I know that it's PVC that's the real problem in plastic. It will leave residue on almost all metals, though copper is affected the fastest. In general, the harder the plastic the better it is for long-term storage. Any recommendations?
EricFG Wrote:Holy ****, those are awesome, dude!!!
Will you show us all the steps involved in making up a mounting system like that, please?
Agreed, those are outstanding displays. I'm curious about how you mounted them as well since I always run into the problem of figuring out how to get screwbacks together with pinback suspensions. I've tried many different ways and the only one I can seem to get to work are the shadow boxes that have enough space between the backing and the glass to create a raised surface to allow for the screw posts and plates to hold them in place.
Ultimately, they look best on the appropriate uniform whenever possible - IMO.
You may have seen the flooding in the state of Queensland, Australia on your local news. We have had the wettest spring on record with rain on 68 out of 73 days. Local dams that were virtually empty two years ago very nearly reached their breaching points - the main dam is designed to have 100% capacity for drinking water and then another 125% for flood mitigation - and kit ended up having to have water released. Rural areas started to flood and the river levels started to rise.
We started looking at the flood maps and found that the bottom of our road was the predicted flood contour for our area - caused us only mild concern as we are ~2 m higher than that point. A few hours later another map was produced which placed the contour at the back of our garden!
We decided to do what we could to the house and to self-evacuate. We moved everything from the ground floor upstairs - books are bloody heavy - and packed our most important stuff into the cars - family, photos, and my collection. Then warned be police to move so ended up getting the cars out just before the water blocked our escape route.
In the end we were lucky the water did not rise to the predicted levels such that we ended up with no damage.
I guess the take home message from this is that you should make your collection easily portable so that it can be quickly removed from your property if the need arises - probably preaching to the converted for those in areas at risk! However, we didn't think we were in any danger as we had done searches to see whether our block had gone under in previous floods - it hadn't. Then along comes a once in a 100 year rain event.......
It is quite surreal to walk a few minutes from your undamaged property and see houses that were totally inundated - water over the roof level. Now suffering from a bit of survivor guilt so have been volunteering for the last few days to help in the local cleanup.
Well of course I'm glad you and yours are safe and all is well at home (now). I also saw the flooding on TV and kept thinking, "I know somebody said they were Queensland on the forum..."
Anyway, being in a hurricane prone area where you don't know if the roof might just come off during the worst of the wind and rain, I made a small investment in the lockable and reasonably good-looking wooden set of drawers with felt linings. Pictures are in a thread somewhere around here and I'll try to find them. But the main thing is that it is in two sections with a latching lid and - most importantly - sturdy metal handles on the sides for ease of carrying (I didn't say "easy" because they are rather heavy now). Nonetheless, if I had to bug out, the hardest stuff to get out would be uniforms, banners/flags. It also helps to make use of Eric's binder idea for documents and even orders and medals. Those drawers are mostly for badges and other things that won't fit in binders like award boxes, etc.
Even if I just have to move everything from the room my collection is mostly in while the rain pours in through a hole in the roof, it shouldn't be too hard to relocate to another room or downstairs.
I hope clean up isn't too much of a drag because getting a tree out of your house or mud out of the rugs and baseboards sucks.
I have boxes and closets all over the house with the collectibles but in the bedroom is an old chiffarobe with at least a half a dozen sets of "the good stuff" in it. Household is instructed that, assuming it is safe, in case of fire toss the stuff in that piece of furniture out the window.
If they have a chance, toss "yuri" out also since he is usually wearing one of my favorite pieces at any given time (GPU transport overcoat in this picture).
Hope things are settling down in that part of the world. I just shipped an old clock to someone in queensland...presumably a dry part.
Beautiful stuff in the "piece of furniture" but my favorite is that incredible GPU greatcoat.:love I even like the cap because it is so different than the later designs.
It just occurred to me, but I think I am more fortunate than most because the complex I live in required sprinkler systems installed in all of the townhouses and I bought one on the end of a row so I only have to worry about internal fire and the one next door.
Cool wardrobe. :thumbsup
I like these cases myself. I actually have a mix of the shallow trays (MB) for coins / medals / suspension orders and the deeper trays (MBXL) for the screwbacks. They stack on top of each other, good stuff.
I am considering switching to an album system too, the medal sleeves fit nicely in a PVC-free trading card album like this one.
Cheers,
George
