Keeping a game collection alive in a hot, dry climate

Most collection advice is written for damp countries, where the enemy is mildew and the answer is airflow. Listeners in the desert Southwest write in with the opposite problem. Their boxes do not go soft; they go brittle, fade and warp, and then once a year the sky opens and everything they learned about dry storage stops applying.

Heat is the slow killer

Cardboard, glue and shrink-wrap all age faster in heat. A garage that reaches fifty degrees in July will loosen the corner tape on a box lid within a couple of summers, and the glue holding a rulebook spine lets go soon after. Keep the collection in the conditioned part of the house, even if that means fewer shelves than the garage would give you.

Resin and plastic miniatures suffer as well. Thin spears and banners creep out of true under sustained heat, and a model that spent a summer in a car boot often never stands straight again.

Sun is the fast one

Direct light bleaches box art in a single season, and the spine facing the window goes first. Shelve away from glass, or fit a blind and keep it drawn during the afternoon.

The storm that undoes everything

Dry climates still get water, just all at once. The summer monsoon can drop an inch of rain in under an hour, and roofs built for sun do not always cope. Water comes through a ceiling light fitting, runs down an inside wall or pushes under a back door, and the games shelf happens to be in its path. Move what you can save, photograph the rest for the insurer, and leave the room itself to people with pumps and moisture meters. Players around Arizona have told us that getting a Tucson flood cleanup crew in on the first day mattered more than anything they did with towels, because plasterboard soaked overnight stays wet for weeks in a closed house.

Saving what got wet

Separate the components straight away. Boards and box lids dry flat under light weight, with paper towels between layers changed every few hours. Cards fan out on a rack and should never be stacked while damp. Rulebooks stand upright with their pages slightly open in front of a fan, and can go into a freezer if you cannot deal with them the same day.

Shelving that helps

Use metal or sealed shelving with the bottom shelf a hand's width off the floor, and keep the most valuable games at chest height. Store boxes upright like books rather than in towers, so the weight never crushes the bottom one. Put a cheap hygrometer on the top shelf: in a dry climate you want to see it above twenty per cent, and a reading that jumps after a storm tells you the room needs attention before the games do.