If you hope to keep your comics in some form of organization, you’re going to need comic-deigned boxes. Many people will use boxes not designed for them, and while they may protect better from the elements, unless a box is completely flat on all inner sides, you chance bending comics over time.

Short boxes, long boxes, and drawer boxes (a recent creation) are going to be the three most-common storage options supplied by your local comic book store (due to being relatively-large pieces of cardboard, you’re unlikely to find great prices on these online, especially with shipping, and then you don’t even know if they’ll survive delivery).

There are pros and cons to each.

• Short Boxes
  • Easily moved (filled with comics that have been bagged and boarded will roughly be 30 lbs).
  • Small footprint (therefore, you can fit them greater places).
• Long Boxes
  • Can hold more books.
  • Exactly the same as a short box in form and function.
  • Potential for the middle to “fall out” (it’s never happened for me, but it’s not hard to imagine).
• Drawer Boxes
  • Holds less comics than a standard long box, but more than a short box.
  • Brilliant concept, flawed execution (stacking drawer boxes will end up pressing weight on lower ones, leading to drawers not exactly working)
  • Back 20-or-so comics are generally unreachable due to the drawer being designed to not come all the way out. You can use a bit of “padding” in the back to make it so comic books aren’t inaccessible, but then you lose even more space.
  • Weight is heavily unbalanced when fully expanded.
  • Two/three times more expensive, depending on location purchased.
  • Shipping is more prohibitive due to their larger size, formed or not (extra cardboard is require to make this more rugged).

Guess which one of these I bought a ton of and now regret?

So, as of 2015, I am converting to the smaller size. While they don’t offer a significant discount over the larger boxes for carrying roughly half the amount of books, I’ve found short boxes to be ideal for goals:

• easy organization
• easy filing
• shelf-ready

They’re not too deep to be prohibit for many shelving situations. I prefer the HDX 5-Shelf, which you may know as “The Cheap-Enough, Reliable-Enough Home Depot Shelf”. It’s plastic and lightweight enough that it’s not any trouble putting in a small car, you can assemble it in minutes, you can actually disassemble it if you need to move, it’s not wood with all its faults (wood shelves can hold moisture, which is bad for protecting), and with a little wiggle-room, each shelf can fit three short boxes rather comfortably.