An enjoyable article to read Bob!
Although, this was making me pretty nervous as I started to read it:
Then, there was an incident he refers to as "The Great Pepsi Tragedy of '99."
Bob had Pepsi cans with the Star Wars theme on them. He later read a warning online that some cans were leaking, thus destroying collections.
Sure enough, his cans had started to leak, too -- soaking about an inch-thick pile of Star Wars newspaper clippings, many of them older and irreplaceable.
From then on, he started to poke pin holes in the bottom of cans he saved in order to preserve the rest of his collection.
Those newspaper articles must have been tough to lose. Glad to hear you didn't lose anymore items though!