So my bookshelves are breaking.
I think I spoke a couple of months ago about how one of the shelves on one of my three bookshelves full of tabletop roleplaying games had broken, and in doing so, severely damaged the back of the bookshelf itself. Well, the same thing is currently happening to two more shelves on another of my bookshelves, and the only reason it hasn’t collapsed is because it is being anchored between the other two.
In short, my collection is killing my bookshelves.
Now this isn’t really surprising, to be honest. I do have over 300 games in my collection, many of them with multiple supplemental books, collected over nearly 50 years in the hobby. The problem is, they just don’t make bookshelves like they used to. Where they were once made of actual wood, now they are just press board with cardboard backs, and cheap plastic pins keeping those shelves in place. Over time, the weight just takes its toll.
Looks like I have three bookshelves that need replaced, sooner than later… but where to find replacements?
My first thought was Amazon. It would be the cheapest source (price is a major factor in this search), but also the lowest quality overall. Then I thought about looking at thrift stores, where maybe I could find some good deals on some stout older bookshelves. But thrift stores aren’t nearly as inexpensive as they once were, and it would mean going in public… where the people are…
Of course going to an actual furniture store is completely out of the question. People, high prices, and questionable quality all add up to a big-ass NO on my part.
Now all of that said, I did find a nice option on Amazon that I think might work. They are effectively wooden cubes, built to stack up on each other, and I happen to know that they work. How? We actually own a few of them already, which we inherited from some friends a few years back. The ones we have are already in use, and we don’t have enough of them for my collection, anyway, so I’d have to buy some new ones regardless. But they would work, or at least they should, so I’m really considering them.
The problem is, I need to wait until I get some more money on-hand, and at least one of the three is about to lose at least one shelf very soon. So either I take all of the books off of the shelves, stack them on the floor, and keep things relatively safe, or I hope that the press board is tougher than it looks.
Anyone want to take bets on how long they last? I have the over/under on another shelf breaking by the end of March.
