watch out!

The other day I was at Walmart and they were closing out the cheap Plano hard cases for around 8 bucks. I thought what a great way to store and protect my guns so I bought some of them. One of my guns is an old junk bolt action 410 shotgun I've had in my shop forever. It's been out there in and out of a soft case for 20 years, no problem. I put it in one of the cheap Plano cases. We took off for xmas for two weeks and today I got it out to shoot some magpies. It was totally covered with frost and rusted. The temps have dropped to well below freezing and it's been snowing. Nothing else in the shop was frosted or rusty. It's a tight dry shop, but inside that gun case was soaked. All of my other guns were inside the house and no problem, but I took everyone in the cheap case out and will only use them for transportation now. That got me to thinking about some of my other hard cases. My Wildcat is in a good hard case that is waterproof and seals with a rubber seal and 5 latches. I've noticed when I shoot it in the cold it gets moisture on it where I breath on it while shooting. It always gets oil wiped down when I'm done and I leave the case open in the house until the gun warms back up before latching it back up. BUT, if it were just put away and the case closed tight the moisture would be locked inside. So that brings up the question. Are hard cases the way to store guns? I have no idea why this happened. I cleaned the gun and got the rust off, but it could have been a 2000.00 gun instead of one I gave 40 dollars for.