Storing Minis

[Faux Real]

Every year I buy several complete sets of D&D minis, and by now you can imagine that I have quite a few of them. I used to store them in tackle boxes, but by now they've grown to such numbers that doing so has proved financially difficult- plus, because of their numbers they are hard to keep straight for ease of use, with the result that they've spilled out into my (home) office space.

I love the ease of use this provides, but kind of wish that I didn't have a bajillion minis lying around all the damn time, especially when people ask to be shown round the house and I say: You can see every room except that one, like some sort of modern-day Bluebeard. Its not that I'm ashamed of my hobby, its just that it is a little overwhelming to step into a room thats so full of minis that it looks like I am obsessed with collecting them (and maybe I am, but that's a story for another time...)

So how to store them, where to store them, and still have them be useful to my regular game?

Help!

[lynora]

I use a variant on the tackle box theme. There are these boxes you can get at hardware stores. I've gotten some from Home Depot and from Lowes. Black and Decker workmate series small parts box. Each box comes with four plastic trays in it. For large minis I had to buy some larger plastic trays that sit seperate, but these work great for mediums. So I then put a little sticker on each tray with a number and typed up an excel list as I put things away telling me what the mini was, what type it was, and what tray it was in. I try to keep like things together, so tray 1-3 are undead, tray 4-5 are animals, etc. All the minis cases fit on one set of metal shelves and I hung a print copy of the index on the side for ease of use. It works for us, but it did take a lot of time setting up.

[DonJ]

I get around 8 cases of DnD minis per set. From Harbinger to current that amounted to a big mess of minis.

I tamed the beast by keeping the minis seperated by set and storing them in card houses.

http://www.bcwsupplies.com/picts/house.gif

I have to store huges seperately, but it takes care of the complete sets very nicely.

To quickly locate a suitable mini for play I have a partially completed search system that allows me to look up a mini by it's appearance (ie weapon, armor, race, type, size, etc).

[Cpt_kirstov]

I use Jetmax Modular Storage cubes... they look similar to this one but the ones I use have 3 shelves on the top and two pull out canvas buckets on the bottom. I got mine from A.C. Moore in the scrapbooking section for 15.99 (on sale - reg price is 32.99) each you could most likely fit a full regular set (the shelves are a little to close for the huges and a few of the taller regular sized pieces, only ones taller than the yon-ti from the new starter) I have 2 of these, and fit all the complete sets plus doubles of the non rares after the first 3 sets

[Callous Jack]

I use plastic Christmas ornament containers. They are fairly large and can be stacked on top of one another. The space is dividd up in a # grid so I can store the minis in groups as I want them.

[Faux Real]

All good suggestions... Thanks!