I encountered and was able to re-encounter a nasty bug.

Did you all know that if there are to many items ina container and you try to save, your game crashes and you get a corrupted save? Well I didn't and lost quicksave and autosave while trying to find the source of the CTD.
My COBL alchemy container was very full and while filling it up even more I realised that after saving my game crashed every and every time while corrupting the save trying to do.

What the actually num limit is I don't know. But should be around 5000 in total or part 999 per item type. So when modding and you encounter the specific situation when a container COULD be stuffed, consider something like GetNufRef from OBSE or warn the user in the readme if you don't plan using OBSE.

Thank you.

I had this exact same problem last night - I too narrowed it down to having overfilled my COBL alchemy sorter. I am a complete hoarder, and I try to keep some samples of everything in reserve 'just in case'. I appreciate that most people probably don't play their game this way! I can't imagine it would be a problem with just vanilla ingredients but when you have MMM ingredient drops and tamriel ingredients and potions/scrolls with scripted effects added by various mods it all adds up.

I got to a point where I sorted my most recent haul of alchemy related goods into my sorter and then within seconds had a CTD, had a CTD when saving, or when trying to exit the cell (I had many attempts at reloading and trying again) Basically my game became very unstable. I solved it by going back to a save before I had stored that last load of alchemy loot in the sorter, emptying out the huge stock of potions I had stashed away for a rainy day, and storing them somewhere else instead leaving the sorter just for ingredients and scrolls (although if I run into the same thing later on I will have to move my scrolls too!)

It's a shame because I do love that sorter, if overfilling it is the cause of the CTDs I experienced then it would be good to have an onscreen warning or a note in the readme.

Edit to add: That I didn't have any problem when it was storing several thousand samples of bonemeal (love the grinder!) and a few other things, it was when I had a long list of different items each in smaller quantities that the problem occurred.

I've heard of items not showing, but not crashes. Could you do a bit of debugging, and see if you still get the crashes after placing the items in a nearby container that wasn't the Sorter? (The grinder would be best.) Make sure to dump everything that had been in the Sorter. I'm going to go out on a (fairly long) limb here and guess that it's the number of individual items (100 different ingredients) rather than the total number of items (10 Oranges + 10 Apples).

I can verify the container bug. I once created a chest with every vanilla and Midas Magic ingredient in it and placed it just outside the Midas Magic shop. Every time I entered the AU grounds while that chest was there, the game crashed (this stopped when I removed the chest). Note: I had set the game to auto-save when going through loading doors, so this is consistent with the above issue.

Well if it helps, when I encountered the problem I was using XJDHDR's "Basemant for Cobl" mod which is basically all the (I must say excellent and don't know how I did without them!) Cobl goodies and comprises a Cobl alchemy sorter, static alchemy equipment table, The Luggage, grinder, food cupboard and linked static dinner plate (which I use with Cobl-aware Real Hunger), water keg, as well as a few normal non-respawning containers and a bed, I bought a trashcan and put it in there as well.

I had previously stored literally thousands of samples of bonemeal in the sorter with absolutely no issue whatsoever, the problem occurred after 200+ hours of play when I had in the sorter at least one sample of every available potion, ingredient and scroll, but I'd long since used my large stockpile of bonemeal and I didn't at that point have any single item in a quantity larger than 20 - so if there is a problem it is more than likely caused by a long list of contents, rather than a short list of contents with large quantities. Interestingly, I experienced very little lag when using the sorter even when using the 'open container' option on the menu to view all contents, and apparently no items not displaying in the container (which as a hoarder I sort of expect!) when I did run into difficulties, my first warning of any problem was the inability to continue my game without a CTD after I'd sorted stuff into it.

I moved my mmm crafting supplies from a normal container in that cell (bones, pelts, ores and nuggets - I'd been saving them up with the full intention of trying out some crafting but not yet got round to doing it) to the bedroom of my Skingrad house and removed all the potions from the alchemy sorter and put them in one of the chests in the same room as the sorter (in XJDHDR's basemant) and all now appears to be OK.

Ah yes of course, I have autosave when going through doors as well so that accounts for my not being able to leave the cell without a CTD.