Downsizing my 3 3/4"collection never felt so good!

[Tycho]

Either way, I'd like to spend a weekend helping Tycho sort.

Please come and join me. You don't have to work, just keep me company.

Then we can both look and recall stuff from the years' past.

While I open all my figures, the last 3 years I've been leaving them on cards after cutting the bubbles open and then putting them back on cards for storage

I have always done this. The figures don't necessarily need to be displayed with all their accessories, so this helps organize and store them (and I don't even need to make labels for plastic bags).

[Mr. JabbaJohnL]

I think I'm too far into the hobby to ever do anything like this. Even if some older figures aren't as good as the newer ones, I still love them all, at least for sentimental/"historical" reasons. Even with a large room dedicated to nothing but my collection, it's not enough room, though instead of downsizing my collection, I'll just upsize the space for it.

[Devo]

Its been almost 2 years since I had shelves for my collection so at this point I'm not actually sure how much space my collection requires! I know I bought a heck of a lot last year. The space I used to have in the previous house would almost certainly not be enough for everything I have now - or at least things would be incredibly cramped and unattractively displayed. When I can finally get my shelves built in the new room I should have significantly more shelf space than I had before...but I don't know how much of it will be used up by my collection as it stands now or whether or not I'll have space to spare for new stuff I don't have yet.

I did carry out a purge on packaging and boxes a couple of years ago and that felt good. I realised that I'm more than likely not going to sell anything so I really didn't need to keep a lot of what I was keeping. So I removed the bubbles from all the figure boxes and just saved the front sheets of the blisters, taped them to the cards with any inserts retained inside and I was satisfied with how that preserved the essence of the figure boxes while compacting them into much easier to manage piles. I also threw out all the innards of vehicle boxes and opened them out and flattened them.

[bigbarada]

I did a big purging of everything Star Wars related from 2002-2003. I had been collecting for several years and had an entire room filled with boxes of toys. It was so full that I had just enough space to squeeze between the boxes to get to my bed. Of that first big purge, only my Ephant Mon figure remains. Everything else was sold, given away or just thrown in the garbage. I don't miss any of it.

Since then, I've downsized my collection quite a few times. Only now I use Ebay and just sell everything off in big lots. The most significant of those was in 2008, when I was forced to sell of my entire vintage collection to make ends meat when the economy went south and I didn't really start collecting in full force again until July of 2009.

I'm actually in need of another downsizing right now just from the toys I've bought since last summer. As of this moment, my collection takes up one coffee table, two small end tables, the top of my dresser, and a few shelves in my closet (I've also got some SW Lego sets invading my roommate's nativity scene on the fireplace mantle). I would like to get it back down to just one end table (for the BMF) and the coffee table if possible.

[AmanaMatt]

It sounds like some of your collections were/are much larger than mine. I, too, am going the 'definitive version with exceptions' route

I did keep the first removable helmet vader and the last removable helmet, but have just one ANH Leia, Luke, Han, etc.

I did have fun reorganizing the vintage-esque Saga cards, and the VTSC lines....still loves those the much....so, I will probably be getting a lot of the upcoming vintage line

[JediTricks]

I have always done this. The figures don't necessarily need to be displayed with all their accessories, so this helps organize and store them (and I don't even need to make labels for plastic bags).

All my figures are in 1 bag though, not individually bagged.

[Devo]

My figures are all loose together in boxes with many sheets of bubblewrap seperating different layers - heavier figures on the bottom, lighter warpable figures on top. As for the accessories? All jumbled in there. I don't really care what figure has what gun for the most part. I'm not buying these things with the intention of selling them so I'm not keeping track of what comes with what. My Empire Strikes Back box is tiny and most of the figures in there are repeated characters and multiples of a particular figure. Not as diverse as the ANH and ROTJ collections.

[bigbarada]

I have two different levels of storage for the figures I'm not displaying. I have a small box (about twice the size of a shoebox) for most of my figures, then I have three of those plastic fishing tackle cases, which hold roughly 12 figures apiece. Two of those are for my vintage figures and only one is for my modern figures (even though 4 of those 12 slots are taken up by vintage figures also). So, they are kind of privileged slots reserved for only my most favorite figures.

When I buy a new figure that I really like, then I display it for a while, usually forcing an older figure into storage. Those figures will either end up in the storage case (which forces another figure into "the box"), or the box depending on how much I like them. When the box gets too full, then I usually sell off a big section of it (or all of it) on Ebay as a mixed lot.

I find that strictly limiting the amount of space that my Star Wars collection is allowed to take up weeds out the good, very good and great figures, leaving me only with what I consider to be the absolute best-of-the-best of the entire line (although some figures are sentimental favorites and that has nothing to do with their actual quality).

[Droid]

I allow myself to buy the updates of the characters I like, which keeps the hobby fun for me. It isn't fun to never buy any figures. (Doesn't the current dry spell stink?) But then I force myself to get rid of one of the many inferior versions of the character I have.

In recent years I started getting rid of characters I didn't care about, from scenes I would never recreate. I got rid of Dexter and getting rid of that kind of character freed me from ever buying characters like Jocasta or Dorme.

I have a small container by movie or scene. For example, I have an Endor box. The boxes are pretty full and so as a rule if I buy a new figure I'll get rid of one or two so that the Endor stuff stays in the one box.

I bought so much from 1995 until 2002 that I have probably gotten rid of thousands of figures without ever having to make a hard choice. (Wish I had the money back, but I stopped allowing myself to feel bad about that years ago.)

I am a happier collector these days, only buying what I want and almost never buying more than one or two of any one figure.

[morpheus282]

Judging from what I've seen about figure storage so far, I think I must be one of the few remaining collectors that still uses the Kenner/Hasbro cases. I've probably got at least four of the Vaders, three 3POs, two of the Millenium Falcon, and a vintage vynil case in addition to a couple of large rubbermaid containers that I use for beasts, vehicles, and any figures that won't fit in the cases.

I'm with Droid, I very seldom buy more than one of any character that isn't an army builder. The exception to this was the slave Leia that came out last year.