TF Views

Shockwave's comments about the state of his display over on the hauls thread got me thinking: just how much of any of our collections get displayed versus being packed away at any one time?

A few years back when we moved to our current house, I started buying those big plastic storage bins at Wal-Mart that have the lids and snappable handles to pack all my Transformers in. I'd have to count to tell you how many I have, probably 11 or 12, packed mostly full. There is no room to unpack and display them all, so I'd be willing to be that 98% of my collection stays in those bins and in one of two closets. A few figures are on display on some of my bookshelves, and I have a cabinet for all the G1 boxed figures and reissues I have, so I can open the doors and enjoy them, but they are otherwise neatly tucked away. I'm not sure I'd ever have all the figures out on display at one time even if I had the room, but I'd put more out than I do now. I did an inventory a few years back, down to making a spreadsheet, and had pretty close to 600 Transformers. I had no idea, I figured it was about half that many!

So how about all of you? How much of your collection do you figure is in storage versus out on display?

Right now pretty much my entire collection is in storage, and none of it is on display, though there are a few figures scattered around on various surfaces. I've been slowly clearing out the basement so I can have a nice display space, but once I get that I honestly plan to get rid of anything I'm not going to display. Still sorting through that as well. 20ish years of collecting racks up a lot of toys.

I've got the majority of my Beast Wars figures on display, along with a few select favorites from other series. The rest are in a couple of storage bins tucked away in a closet. My mom may have one bin as well... Not sure if she still has it or not. They were figures I'd decided I didn't want anymore, and she wanted something for my cousins kids to play with when they came to her house for holidays.

So I guess most of you know my answer to this which is most of my collection is on display. Only about 1% of all of my toys is in any kind of storage, which is drawers beneath the shelves. The only things not on display are my 30th Anniversary Darth Vader, Obi-Wan Kenobi (vintage collection, ANH, to go with Vader), my BotBots, and various phasers, tricorders, and communicators, and a sonic screwdriver. All of my Transformers are on display, my Enterprise D, my lone AT-AT, which is actually a popcorn bucket from Disneyland that my parents got for me, Potatoheads (Star Wars and Optimash Prime), various droids from Disneyland, 3 Lego sets: Imperial Shuttle, TIE Fighter and Lamborghini, Force FX Black Series ROTJ Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader Lightsabers, Darth Maul Lightsaber, my Galaxy's Edge custom Lightsaber (from the experience), Jedi and Sith Holocrons, with additional Kyber Crystals... and that's it. That's the entire collection. Even after all of that, I still have one empty shelf and one shelf with my IDW hardback collections. If I put those with my other comics, that would free up one more shelf. Oh, and my Botcon 2009 set is on display in the living room, alternating between in the box and out of the box. Right now, they're in the box. The living room also houses my Harry Potter wands, if those count as toys. So yeah. Scaling back has certainly allowed me to get things the way I want it and I'm much happier and really enjoy the things I have.