Any ideas...

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HotShot81
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Any ideas...

Post by HotShot81 »

Like countless collectors before me, and countless after me. I am hitting that wall that says, "I need more space for the collection."

Usually I am one who believes a bot has his/her space destine before they leave the box.

I am just wondering how do others handle that "lack of space" for the collection problem?
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Knightdramon
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Post by Knightdramon »

It really depends on the situation.

Running out of space because the reasonable amount of space you have dedicated to displays in your apartment run out

Or

Running out of space because there's figures on tables, under tables, on bedside tables, on display cases, on bookcases, toilet, storage room etc? :lol:

When I first moved into a largely unfurnished apartment, all I had was MP Rodimus, Red Alert, Smokescreen and one Macross valkyrie.

After being able to afford it, I got a bookcase and moved over most of my other MP figures from my mother's house.

After this was becoming a bit too crowded, I bought another piece of furniture for the living room.

Things are nicely spaced out now so the collection "breathes" [aka two-3 figures per shelf].

Once that starts to run out, I think I'll either sell some or pack some and keep a rotating display.

Don't get me wrong, [eg] MP Prowl/Streak/Smokescreen are amazing, but if I'm short on space, only one will stay out.

But to be fair, my definition of display space/figure ratio is possibly a lot more stringent; anytime I go over 20-20something figures, I start selling. I keep a max of 25 figures on display. They're my hobby, not my life...right? ;)
Few stuff in the UK to trade/sell. Measly sales thread.
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numbat
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Post by numbat »

I have very limited display space, mainly because my wife loathes Transformers. The space available fluctuates depending on how tolerant she is feeling at any given time, but they are relegated to the study. Here I have some shelf space for them, and at the moment that allows around 20 to be displayed (not counting MP Soundwave cassettes). I rotate a little bit, but Masterpiece figures and Buster Prime are on permanent display really.

I have dedicated cupboard space for storage too, where I have five boxes (two Classics/Generations, two Movies and one Prime) and enough space for Generations Titan Metroplex (Takara version), Year of the Snake Supreme Omega Supreme (with Maketoys add-on) and the boxes for Masterpiece and third party toys.

That forces me to make decisions about which figures to keep or not, and I am moving towards one mould per character per incarnation, but imagine in future it will become more and more Masterpiece and third party dominated. At the end of the day, the current high end figures are brilliant display pieces and really fun to play around with, so the mass-market figures have less and less of a role to play for me anyway. I also feel satisfied with the Movie figures, but that there has been a steady decline in quality of design so unless something radical happens it's unlikely I'll buy many from upcoming films (a 'Universe' of films I hear? Hmmm...).

New sale thread added with a range of Transformers including Masterpiece, Botcon, CHUG, RID, Movies etc.

Looking for MP-11T Thundercracker and MP-9 Rodimus v2 (Takara version with as few QC issues as possible).


Check out my new sale thread now!

Also items on eBay.
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Warcry
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Post by Warcry »

HotShot81 wrote:I am just wondering how do others handle that "lack of space" for the collection problem?
There's really only three possibilities, when you get right down to it.
  1. Get rid of some toys that you're not a big fan of anymore.
  2. Put some older toys in storage to make room for the new stuff.
  3. Stop buying stuff entirely and just enjoy what you've got.
Now for me, I doubt I'd ever be able to do #3. There's always going to be something new that I wanted, and I'd basically have to unplug from the fandom entirely in order to pull it off. I have started to be way more picky with what I spend money on, though.

I've been doing #2 for a while now, though. In fact, I've got 75% of my collection sitting in big storage containers in the basement. At this point I have way more stuff than room to show it off. I've got space to display between 30 and 60 TFs in the living room (depending on size class and such) and honestly tend to forget that a lot of the other stuff even exists. I could make more space for display down in the basement in a pinch, but honestly I don't really want to.

Once I realized that I escalated to #1 and started actively pruning my collection, since there's not much point in keeping figures I'm not enjoying (or even remembering that I own, in some cases). So even though I've kept buying stuff, I actually own fewer TFs than I did four or five years ago. And honestly, if I wasn't so lazy I'd have gotten rid of far more than I already have.
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Sades
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Post by Sades »

Our bedroom is practically wall-to wall shelves. all those eyes...

Buy a bigger house/rent a bigger space? Shelves on the wall close to the ceiling? Dig a secret toy dungeon in the backyard? Take out the bathroom and the closets and convert them into toy display?

Srs though. Can you put up shelves in your place? Might be worth it to run to an Ikea or something and pick up a few. Ikea also sells little electric drills/screw sets that are fairly inexpensive. I'd also recommend picking up a level (if you don't have one) for those shelves or else you're going to have all sorts of fun putting them up.

If you can't hang shelves, next best thing would possibly be bookcases, or DVD wall cases/bookshelves. The DVD shelves would take up a bit less room so you can fit them in smaller spaces, but they will also be shallower than the bookshelves.

I believe the ones we have in our bedroom are these ones, if so they're pretty decent. It's a small room and we've got a lot of toys in there. They allow enough room to display (some) Voyager size toys two deep (one behind the other) if you want, and Fort Max/Metroplex seem to stand pretty solidly on top of them (toes overhang a bit on Ft Max, but not much). Plus the shelves are adjustable so you can move them around to fit what you want. Don't think Ikea sells them anymore, but they seem easy enough to buy secondhand. I don't know the website I linked to (just googled to find the shelving unit and it was the first one to come up), so I wouldn't recommend using that.

Also, from what I've read it looks like you can get the same sort of versatility out of the Billy series, probably with deeper shelves.

Edit: I took a quick picture, just to show the DVD/wall shelves we've got and how they're all adjusted and such. We have a few more of those wall shelves above our dining area table in the main room. Regular bookshelves would probably have been too deep for this space, but these DVD shelves worked perfectly.

IMO it's worth it to try and get one or two if you have a small space to put them in. We could probably fit more toys on there, but Hound has his preferred way of laying things out and I DGAF as long as the stuff I like is out, too. :p

(I envy his organisational skillz.)
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Denyer
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Post by Denyer »

Knightdramon wrote:Things are nicely spaced out now so the collection "breathes" [aka two-3 figures per shelf].
Prefer ensembles personally -- and to mix up the usual groups rather than display team members together (or collect teams, for that matter).

I periodically clear out things that aren't displayed, very rarely go for duplicate moulds, etc.
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Post by numbat »

Sades wrote:Also, from what I've read it looks like you can get the same sort of versatility out of the Billy series, probably with deeper shelves.
Yeah, I've used Billy for years in a couple of homes for books and Transformers. They're pretty good. Unicron can fit happily with wings extended at an angle behind.

I was annoyed they stopped making the Birch colour ones though...

:swirly:

New sale thread added with a range of Transformers including Masterpiece, Botcon, CHUG, RID, Movies etc.

Looking for MP-11T Thundercracker and MP-9 Rodimus v2 (Takara version with as few QC issues as possible).


Check out my new sale thread now!

Also items on eBay.
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Knightdramon
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Post by Knightdramon »

Denyer wrote:Prefer ensembles personally -- and to mix up the usual groups rather than display team members together (or collect teams, for that matter).

I periodically clear out things that aren't displayed, very rarely go for duplicate moulds, etc.
I do ensembles as well...just of 2-3 bots at once :lol:

Pretty much the only two that stay close to each other are Rodimus and Ultra Magnus. Soar usually hangs out near them.

Wheeljack is with Starscream, Soundwave is with all his cassettes but periodically Ravage hangs out with Magnus, Whirl kind of floats around...Red Alert and Smokescreen have been together since December 2013 :lol: but occasionally stay by Rodimus.
Few stuff in the UK to trade/sell. Measly sales thread.
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Post by Ryan F »

Masterpieces and third party figures, I buy to keep. Most main-line figures I get are pretty much disposable, and I end up chucking most of them out when I get bored of them (they are usually impulse buys anyway). My only main-line keepers are Buster Prime, some G1 reissues, Prime Vehicon, Prime Wheeljack/Dead End and the Mechtech helicopter guy (Skyhammer I think his name was).

On my desk at work I have RID deluxe Grimlock and 1-step AOE Bumblebee, both of which are great to fiddle with whilst waiting for Autocad to load. Starting to get bored of those, I need some fresh meat.
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Post by Clay »

Amateurs.
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HotShot81
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Post by HotShot81 »

It's not at the messy stage, close to it. Sometimes I've waited months to take a bot out because I finally see his/her space. Ball park is 140 bots in my home office. I fiddle with them sometimes when waiting on things like paperwork.
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Post by Notabot »

I'm really regretting that I never took a picture of ALLL the Transformers that I had up before we moved. I had my entire collection of hundreds of toys up and filling shelves in my two offices. Two entire bookshelves, an entire wall of shelves, a whole section of just Optimus Primes (my Optimus Shrine), all packed as full as Clay's picture. And that was just one office! A couple years ago I actually took down a shelf of books that I hadn't opened for years to make room for more Transformers. Filled it up and then some.

Packing them all was a real pain, though, and now that they're boxed, I'm hesitant to unpack them and start up the sickness again. But, if they're just going to sit in boxes in the basement, I'm better off selling them, which I don't think I could do. I am inspired to thin them some, though. Sadly, most of the ones I'd be looking to get rid of are worthless because they're the ones that everyone agrees are kind of stupid. :(
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Post by Warcry »

Sades wrote:Edit: I took a quick picture, just to show the DVD/wall shelves we've got and how they're all adjusted and such. We have a few more of those wall shelves above our dining area table in the main room. Regular bookshelves would probably have been too deep for this space, but these DVD shelves worked perfectly.
Just out of curiosity...does the little one constantly try and grab the stuff on the low shelves, or is she so used to them that they're just like scenery to her?
Ryan F wrote:Masterpieces and third party figures, I buy to keep. Most main-line figures I get are pretty much disposable, and I end up chucking most of them out when I get bored of them (they are usually impulse buys anyway).
You just straight up toss them in the garbage? And here I feel shitty throwing out even broken toys...
Clay wrote:Amateurs.
...please tell me that's an old picture and you don't have another Universe Depth Charge hanging around.
Notabot wrote:Packing them all was a real pain, though, and now that they're boxed, I'm hesitant to unpack them and start up the sickness again. But, if they're just going to sit in boxes in the basement, I'm better off selling them, which I don't think I could do. I am inspired to thin them some, though. Sadly, most of the ones I'd be looking to get rid of are worthless because they're the ones that everyone agrees are kind of stupid. :(
Worst-case scenario, you could give them to some kids you know or donate them to a charity. At least then someone's enjoying them and they're not taking up space in your basement/shed/closet/whatever, even if you don't get anything back for them.

I sent my sister's kids home with a couple boxes full of mostly Unicron Trilogy stuff a few years ago and they seemed to enjoy it. In fact, they enjoyed the stuff that I thought was goofy and worthless the most (Armada Cyclonus seemed to be the most popular for a while).
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Post by Sades »

This isn't even my final form This isn't even all of it. We still have some stuff in bins, and 4 of those black shelves full of toys in the main room. This is mostly recent-ish stuff, stuff we're working on now, plus some favourites of mine/his.
Warcry wrote:Just out of curiosity...does the little one constantly try and grab the stuff on the low shelves, or is she so used to them that they're just like scenery to her?
It's all on the far side of the room so she isn't allowed on that side of the bed. :lol: The rest of it is high up on shelves. She occasionally makes a grab for something, but mostly she ignores the stuff over there. Probably because she knows we'll catch her before she manages to get around the bed.

She gets to play with certain items on the shelf in the main room with supervision, but the stuff in the bedroom is off limits mainly because we (I) don't want her going in there and grabbing stuff herself because there's so many little bits lying around.

We're saving stuff we were going to get rid of so that when she's a little older and gets to a point that she can't leave our stuff alone, we can put that stuff up and set up a sort of "decoy shelf" for her that will be the stuff she's "allowed" to play with.
Warcry wrote:you could give them to some kids you know or donate them to a charity.
:up:
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Post by Clay »

Warcry wrote: ...please tell me that's an old picture and you don't have another Universe Depth Charge hanging around.
Ha! That picture is from early 2005, which was ten (!!!) years ago. I still have most of the figures in that picture, though.

I think I posted a picture of my collection in the collection thread: just toys in plastic storage bins, mostly. I've been moving more toward curios and display cases as that helps keeps the dust off things. I converted one of the bookshelves into a display case and had some glass cut for it (here), and that's my favorite case now. It's also crammed like the above picture at the moment. When I find the time, or more accurately the space to move the stuff off the other bookshelves, I'll convert them too.

I'll echo what Warcry said about the three options: rotate, sell, or just quit buying stuff. I fall firmly in the rotate category.
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Post by Dead Man Wade »

My wife is awesome when it comes to my displaying stuff, provided it doesn't encroach upon every flat surface like it did before we lived together. I generally rotate things, as most of my collection is down in the basement. I've culled my collection comparatively recently, so while I do have a large number of TFs, it's not a lot of crap I dislike.

The one rule my wife has is that there's a limit on how many bookshelves I can buy.
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