Wow. That's kind of a fascinating logistical problem and project. Just for practicality, I'd recommend rethinking things a little bit. It's kind of late in the game, but maybe some more investment of time and money up front can avoid shipping tons of scrap paper later.
I looked at the eevblog and Docmove project links, and I see how the story unfolds, and how complicated it is. It seems your main motivation is adding to your collection of technical documents to preserve them for the future. A noble cause, but I wonder about the practicality in this case. If you got this lot more or less sight unseen, then it's a (very) large random assortment of manuals. Looking at the pictures and descriptions, and doing some counting and mental math, I'd guess there may be four to seven thousand individual bound documents in the pile, and who knows how many loose pages. But, you should consider the statistics of the situation. Ideally, they would all be unique and special, and not redundant to what you already have in your collection. The chances of this are very, very slim. For instance, for each one-of-a-kind item you find, there could be a hundred copies of a high-running, popular product - these high-runners are the most common in populations simply because of the sheer numbers produced.
It depends too on the pre-selection process applied by the seller. If he was a serious collector, and painstakingly gathered and organized all these over many years, and saved one or two of each piece, then that would be great. Chances are though, that like many of us, you grab what you can when the opportunity arises, and you throw it on the pile to figure out later. Ultimately, the pile gets so big that you have to rent storage space until you have time to figure it out (which may never come), or have to move or such, and get rid of it quickly. Or, he may have been a manual seller, and it's just excess inventory. Or, he may have been involved with a document rescue activity. I remember when Manuals Plus went under, years ago, and there were a bunch of people and efforts applied to try to save and organize the inventory. That was at least a few years ago, and to this day, I have not heard of any results. This was on a scale much larger than your current situation - maybe a hundred times bigger.
So anyway, barring a meticulous collector, or maybe a lost da Vinci manuscript somehow buried in the pile, it's most likely a common collection of manuals from the era of its gathering. In this kind of situation, I'd apply the Pareto principle, to get some idea of the range of possibilities and value. In essence, most of anything is caused by a relatively small amount of something else. Here, I'd say that for your purposes, "uniqueness" is paramount, so one might say that 80 percent of the uniqueness is contained in 20 percent of the pieces. Or, it may be 90/10, or whatever, depending on the biasing. The point is that only a small fraction of all the stuff is of value in a particular situation - or conversely, you might say 80 percent of the stuff (and cost to get it home) is crap. So, the problem as always is figuring out what's good and what's crap, which you may find out eventually if you spend a fortune getting it home. The valuation and bias direction depend on the situation. If you're a manual seller, then you might say that 80 percent of the stuff is common, and more likely to be in demand (but not likely to fetch high price, since it's so common, while the relatively few rare items may be worth a lot, or zero, if they're so obscure that no buyer can be found). You can frame the situation in many ways, depending on what's needed, but the basic principle is the same.
An alternative is to go and visit the stuff, and do some of your own sorting. Instead of just arranging it all to be shipped, maybe you could fly to SFO, rent a car or van or truck, and go see it in person. From the writings, I think the cheapest part of the whole deal (aside from the purchase price and possible SYD-SFO trip(s)), is the storage rental - that can buy you some time to figure things out. I can picture a scenario where you drive to the storage place and can do some sorting and assessments on a lot of stuff, fairly quickly. The day one goal should be clearing out a workspace, say the first meter or so (maybe 3-4 stacks deep into it), or about 20 percent. The obvious crap can be set aside, the questionable tossed deeper into the pile, and any good stuff or gems go back to the hotel or stay in the vehicle. This should give a pretty good idea of the ratios to expect, and if it's not looking good, you can look into getting a dumpster delivered on site at the appropriate time. A second day should provide great progress, and better assessment of the situation. If it's mostly keepers, then you'll have more confidence in shipping it en masse. If not so good, then look into disposal or abandonment. Check with the storage management on their abandonment policies - I think they usually just sell off the contents or have it tossed after so many days of unpaid rent. You wouldn't want to leave it a mess or on unfriendly terms - just explain the situation and see if they're OK if you can't take it all in a reasonable time. Then, whatever you don't want can be left for disposal rather than expensively shipped and tossed anyway. Even if you have to pay some to get rid of it, it's likely ten times cheaper than bringing it home to do the same. You could also advertise it on craigslist - a free for all manual pickup for anyone who wants the leftovers, on an appropriate day of the project. Any more stay days can be determined by the results of the fist two - you may find it actually easy, or a PITA, but you'll have the presence, control, knowledge, and decisions.
Between various options of dumpsters, recycling, hauling some stuff in a rental car and storing in a hotel room temporarily, giving it away, or abandoning it, some combination should give I'm guessing, maybe two or three pallets of desired manuals and other documents - much less than a whole shipping unit container. Just as a ballpark figure, if the Pareto values are 80/20, then only 20 percent of the total manuals and other documents are 80 percent of the value - the trick is to effectively pre-sort (ideally the whole population), knowing and expecting to get rid of most, so that the result is better. The remaining 20 percent of total value may be contained in diminishing fractions beyond that. If you demand perfection in inspecting and deciding on each and every one, then you would have to pay to send them all home, and take all the time necessary. If you do this, there is no uncertainty, but it may take forever. All I can say is that without knowing more about the system, I'd expect that the total number of keepers will be around 20 percent, whether they're picked in Sacramento, or Sydney, accounting for 80 percent of the value. The difference is that if you can pick in Sacramento, you only have to ship about about one fifth as much stuff to Sydney. Thoroughly sorting for 100 percent yield can be done at either spot, but the number of pieces won't be very much different. Picking efficiency would be different, of course, with different pressures and conditions. If you do it at the source, there's limited time and resources, but saves a lot of shipping. At home, less pressure, but cost a lot to get the situation.
Ed
Guy Dunphy
Froggie the Gremlin