It needs to be climate controlled year round. Go for an indoor storage place. Otherwise you will be pulling out machines with rusted assemblies and planked playfields.

No matter what, If you store them a mile or ten miles away, you wont touch them. Once you get sick of the ever increasing storage fees, you will just bring them back home again after spending $1500 a year to store them.

I have more games than my house can store. I lent out 5 working games that I rotate around. Hopefully, as I get some of the projects fixed and lent out for a while, I'll be comfortable about selling a reliable game.

I bought a sea container and dropped it on my property for my overflow. It's cheaper in the long run than storage units.

Keep in mind that there are two kinds of climate controlled units. Units that are actually at a consistent set temperature, and units that have a large swing range from something like 50'F-80'F. Swing temperatures are not good for pins, especially during the weather transitions between seasons.

For any space, take advantage of as much vertical space as possible.

I found that these racks are a good fit for backboxes: https://www.lowes.com/pd/edsal-24-in-D-x-77-in-W-x-72-in-H-3-Tier-Steel-Freestanding-Shelving-Unit/3172913

That's why I mentioned to get an indoor storage place (Like the abandoned Mills slot machine factory on Fullerton in Chicago). They are maintained at 68° in the Winter and 75° in the Summer. At least in the Northern climate.

Around here, they play very loose with the "climate controlled" term, even with indoor units. You just really need to ask to what extent the unit is actually climate controlled.

Just remember... "group" storage units are a unnecessary evil. They get you in... expect that you won't get out... and start wratching up the rent almost immediately. They are gambling you won't want to move your crap to another competitor.

The best thing I did was buy a
Costco plastic "car" shed; build it off the ground one spring... and put my overflow there. The car shed paid for itself in like 8mths.

Friends and families houses make great storage spaces as well. I currently have several games at family members houses to keep them indoors in climate control because I don't want to sell them. Just waiting for my kids to all be out and off at college so I can fill their bedrooms with games.....

Above advise about getting a unit that is; indoors, climate controlled with few temperature swings is really good. Search https://www.sparefoot.com/Johns-Creek-GA-self-storage.html to find the best rates near you. Most storage companies give you a free first month. Zitt made a good point about them slowly raising your rates.

Sell a few games that you could more easily get back at a later date.
Or
Find a friend that can store games for you

Any friends with bars or barcades?
Might make a little money in meantime.

Once you are there more than a couple years they constantly raise the rates figuring you'll just keep paying. I have been trying to make more room at home so I can empty mine. My rate has almost tripled since I first got it. Without a doubt I would have I would have been better off either selling stuff or just not buying as much considering the thousands I have spent to store stuff.

you'll find most neighbors or friends would love to babysit a pinball in their basement.

family, friends, neighbors..in that order

When I was contemplating a storage unit, I realized it was time to let stuff go. You can always get stuff back. Whatever you think you can't get back easily or for what you sold it for, keep. This will eliminate your lack of space issue.

I have two pins (Time warp & who dunnit) in storage right now, and hate it every month when I pay the bill. They've been in there so long, I could have bought them again with the money I've paid for storage.

I moved everything from my basement to the storage unit to make room for pins. But we only use 3-4 boxes from the storage unit each year, which could easily be kept in a closet at the house.

We've been planning to get everything out of the unit for 2 years now, and just never really want to deal with it. Probably time for a yard sale, and to find a friend that wants to have a couple pins at their house.

there was some dude on here who bought his storage unit, I looked in my area and found a similar place.
No idea what it cost, but I'm sure it's not cheap.
https://www.luxurywarehousestorage.com/

Owns 36 pinball machines...

Scoffs at buying a Costco shed

Have you ever thought of buying a second house in your neighborhood, using it as a rental, and keeping the rental house garage to use as your storage?
I am serious.

Looking at your neighborhood it appears $120k will buy you a reasonable 3b/1ba ranch. Appears you could add a garage to most of the homes that dont have one. Also appears that you can get 1000-1300 in rent and your neighborhood looks to probably have a nice tenant base.

So basically, I would advise selling a few of your newer games to raise 20k in down payment capital (if you dont have it already on hand; guessing you likely do). Take that 20k, put in a little sweat equity over the winter and you have a positive cash flow investment already PLUS you get to use that rental garage as your overflow storage.

The numbers work out pretty easy on this one.

Why pay for storage, when you can get paid AND get free storage?

Neat Idea, I may have to think about that.

It works. There honestly is not much to it if you are even somewhat handy (i assume most on here are).

The biggest issue for most people seems to be finding the motivation to just do it! Once you get started, you will be surprised how easy it is.
Once you get the snowball rolling you will ask yourself why you did not do it years ago.

Once you get the first house paid off (hopefully soon for me) and you see an extra 10k on your annual salary then the snowball can really pick up steam.

My advice is to buy smart, never use a real estate agent (they eat into profits and for $600 you can hire a good real estate lawyer to handle things for you), and just buy good bones.

After that the operational side is my least favorite but once you get a system down for finding and retaining good tenants then it gets better.

I am looking at my 5th rental to possibly purchase later today. This one has a big enough garage that I could wall off the entire back half, add security and temperature control for a little money, and have enough storage to fit all my current overflow

I need to store some pins in a storage unit for a few months. Has anyone ever figured out how many pins folded up on end would fit in say a 10X15 storage unit?

If you figure about a 30" x 30" footprint per folded game, that could maybe give you a maximum of 24 games. Maybe less depending on the exact sizes of the games, how much gap space you loose between games, and the exact size of the space (ie, there aren't any support poles or floor plates in the way along the walls).

I know this might sound like an idea that you don't like, but if you consider how many games that you really play and work properly, perhaps there are some that don't get played as much or don't work as well as you would like. Maybe you could sell some that you like less and make more room without moving anything or renting storage. Just a thought...

I went down this road. While it can work. 4 times over 15 years the garage/basement was flooded by a tenant by mistake and made a mess.

Sounds good thanks for the ballpark!! I have 14 pins plus a few arcade games I need to move into one for a few months so sounds like it will work well. I have a TZ that's the only wide body. I also might sell a few. Just curious if they would fit in the that size space since the next size space up from that is a lot more money. I looked at the unit today wide open with a big door nothing in the way. I'm also getting a 15x10 gives me some width so it's not so deep.

I would sell in a second if I had to do long term storage for sure. I would never want to do that to pins leave them in a storage unit folded up for years. I just need to relocate them for a few months and I'm going to sell maybe one or two just for some breathing room. Drives me nuts when people have pins and arcade games jammed in a storage unit long term due to hoarding. Really makes no sense and its sad.

I've had for years, 10'x15', costs $600 a year when paid a year at a time. My gameroom and work area isn't accessible in the winter when there is snow on the ground unless I lug a game thru the house and down a staircase by myself. It's very convenient in winter to have a place to drop a project pin till spring. I always pull the BG and PF to my home, so I'm basically storing cabinets. I can then prep PF's and in spring move the accumulated projects home. I can easily fit a dozen games in it with plenty of room.

Befriend the owner/manager of the storage unit and talk them into putting you near an outlet and then bring an extension cord.

I use my storage unit as a 3rd gameroom for the games that need a deep clean and that I don’t want near my nice games! It’s nice to be able to work on them and play them in genuine peace and quiet! Get a unit with doors on both sides, it makes is sooooo much easier to get to what you want. At worst you only have to ever move half the stuff to get to everything! No more moving everything to get to one thing in the back.

Now that's just evil

Saving cardboard boxes seems a little bit extreme. Might be time to visit the recycling bin with those boxes. You can always get more boxes later. Maybe save one in the attic or some other place rarely visited.

Might effect your credit rating.

Many states require contents to be inventoried. Empty cardboard boxes won't lessen how much you still owe on the abandoned unit.

LTG : )

This storage place is brand new and not one outlet to be seen anywhere! I was shocked there is usually something in the hallway. The lights are led motion lights so no more unscrewing the light bulb and adding some outlets there. The nice part about this unit is it's 15 across by 10 so it's a big door and easy to maneuver the game around. Amazing how expensive climate controlled units have gotten. Hopefully they won't be in there too long. It is nice and quiet in there was hoping for an outlet within reach but I looked all over not one to be seen.

You can try asking, just say it’s to test some things before you put them away or pull them out? Some guys try to charge you but my guy hasn’t and he said “who cares this place makes tons of money as is. I don’t need to charge a fee for using the outlet for an hour” storage units are hell of a racket.

They usually have outlets SOMEWHERE sometimes hidden up in the ceiling to vacuum/use power tools for maintenance work.

Mine is the 15 across by 10 as well and it’s awesome. I have my shuffle bowler setup with 6 pins and a couch lol. I also got some hooks and strung up removable LEDs. My last step is to bring in a jukebox. Or a mini fridge

I’m paying about $800 a year for my climate-controlled 10x10. I can keep 2 big shelves of parts and 8 games in it. The vast majority of the pins I store are 80’s games that I’ve spent weeks or months restoring. The place didn’t raise my rate at all this year, which surprised me. You definitely have to be prepared to move every 2-3 years. One time I had my mom rent the unit next to mine, same size, for $100 less. I just moved my stuff with a hand truck, only took a few hours.

This place is brand new so I think they thought of every way to keep costs down. The ceiling is about 12 foot and I've looked around not an outlet in site. I actually walked around the entire place nothing. The storage units are 8 feet tall with heavy thick chicken wire between the 8 foot and 12 foot ceiling. I've rented in older places and they had outlets around and didn't mind if you plugged in but this place is just too new. LED motion lights in the units direct wired in. Other than pulling that out and adding a box with an outlet that's about it. They got smart! Either way at this point it's just for storage till I can buy a bigger house. Sucks this housing market is hot though.

Ya'll got some cheap units! My climate controlled 10x15 is $200 a month!

My old 10x15 unit was $230 a month when I moved out. It motivated me to downsize to a 10x10. I’m shocked that they didn’t raise my rate from $800 a year, after my first year.

I'm resurrecting this thread just to comment on it. It was one of the threads I was reading when my living situation changed a bit. I quickly didn't have space for the pins I owned. I didn't want to sell them, because some of them are classics, and those are very difficult to find in good shape now. I already had some games at friends houses, and nobody could take on as many as I needed to get out.

The most consistent advice (not just from this thread) was that it was a waste of money. Add to that the advice that you probably won't be doing much swapping out that seemed consistent as well.

With that in mind, I rented a storage unit. I was very fussy about the place. I intentionally went to tours on blisteringly hot days to get a sense of the climate control situation. The one I picked has excellent temperature and humidity control. I keep a temp and humidity sensor there, so if things go too wonky, I'll know it happened. I also put in a huge rack for the heads legs and bolts. I built platforms to keep the games off the concrete (2nd floor to get less temp variation).

What I'm finding is that I swap the "downstairs" games a lot. I can wheel them right out of the basement to my car in the garage. The drive is about 15 minutes each way, and then poof, that fresh game feeling.

Before doing this I was looking for a place I could rent to setup a game room off site. Unfortunately the costs of that were much too high, and I felt if they were setup elsewhere, I'd never go play them. If I'm going to play, I want the game here. But really, the cost made that option impossible.

Costs. I consider them very reasonable. My storage unit is all indoors, and you drive your car inside. The drive through is massively convenient. Because I put the game into the car in my garage, and I unload it inside, I don't worry about the weather. That does add costs, but a cheaper place wouldn't meet my need. And it's less than my cable bill. So overall, what they provide is totally worth the costs. And if they start raising costs quickly, I am totally prepared to rent a big truck and move all the games to a different place.

Doing this depends on a few things:

Do you keep your games in good shape? I'd never move a non-working game there. A game that gets moved there needs to be working 100%. Otherwise you will be annoyed as you not only just moved and setup a game, but now you need to fix it. Sometimes that will happen, like an EM that sat too long without getting played, but that is a quick thing to get running.

Do you have a vehicle that you can just toss a pin in? You don't want to have to arrange or rent something. You want to be able to just pull a game and swap it when you have time and when you feel like it.

Are you able to move games yourself? This goes with the one just above. If you have to arrange help, or anything, you probably won't swap games enough to make this work out.

Will you swap games? I do. And I love that when I move a game into storage, I know that 6 months later, it feels new to me. If I'm bored with a game, I sell it. But when I move it to storage, I know it has plenty of fun left to give me. But if YOU are not going to do swaps, don't get a storage unit. I think this is the most critical thing. If they all sit there dead, you really are just wasting money.

Is there a "real" climate controlled storage near you? As others said above, temperature fluctuations kill pins. Your backglasses will start to go south, you will get planking, and rusting, and generally bad things no pin should have. If a place looks good, but then you find it isn't, get your games out immediately.

Is the place actually secure? Pins are valuable. Insurance is great. I extended my homeowners for this. It had a small amount, and I added to cover things. But really, how can I replace my 4 Square? I can't. So make sure the security at the place you choose is real. If they have one driveway camera and that is it, don't bother. If the door of your unit isn't clearly visible on a camera they can show you (and check their retention policy for footage), again, don't. I realize these are high standards, but again, where am I going to find another 4 Square like mine? I can't.

Conclusion: For me, adding a storage unit fixed my space issue. I swap games often, and I seem to be giving more attention to games while they are here (I think just because I have less games in the house). I really like standing in the storage unit deciding which game to bring home. It actually allows me to also know that I don't want a game. Last night as I chose, one game that I hadn't played in 6 months was sitting there, and I had no urge to play it... so it will get sold soon. For me, this is working very well.