How Do You Store All Those Minis?

I also use the Plano tackle trays, which I first started using when I got into HeroClix. I bought mine at a local Acadamy Sports. You can even buy specially sized holders for multiple trays.

Rather than have them bang around in the compartments, I bought some foam padding at a local material store and cut pieces for each pocket. Real cheap stuff.

Plastic containers such as you can get at Target. Then, minis are sorted as to MM creature type (Undead, Magical Beast, Monstrous Humanoid, etc) in large ziplock bags. Within each bag, significant creatures of the same type get their own smaller bags, such as 'Mind Flayers' within the 'Aberrations' bag.

D&D minis: Any closeable cardboard box. Seperation by type is great if you have a bunch of small boxes. Throw em in by the handfull, pre painted plastic was made to be abused.

These boxes are small baseball card boxes
Angels: Very lonely box. Just a dream blade angel& a FF7 Kefka figure.
Drow: Ettercaps chilling in here too.

These boxes are about the size of as Giants of legend box
Casters and Cultists: Spell casters and evil looking bipeds end up hear
Hellhounds: Big Evil Dawgs
Commoners: rogue minis also hide in here
Tanks: Melee combatants with armor
Aquatic: Fish, amphibians, KuoToa and other fish men
Corpses: Undead that have some meat on their bones
Fleshless: Bones and spirits
Sci fi & Modern
Troopers: Power Armor and other Sci fi ‘Soldiers’
Reptiles: Lizard men, some smaller dinos and dragons
Bugs: Creepy, crawly and bigger than a bread box.
2 unsorted boxes

Trio of boxes almost twice the size of a GOL box
Mounted figs and mounts
Gnolls and other Beastmen: AKA Box of Vile Furries
Orcs: Right now goblins and hobgoblins are chilling in there too.

These boxes are about 2-3 times the GOL box size.
Giants
Elementals
Evil Outsiders
Animals
Things: Bizarre monsters with a heaping helping of tentacle.
Huge: As many big hitters that fit into an Xbox 360 box
2 Unsorted

Precious hand painted metal figs however...

http://img120.imageshack.us/img120/5313/planominicaseis4.gif

For plastic minis I use 1000-card collectible-card boxes. One of my FLGSs carries a box that holds 15 of these card boxes. I've noted the general contents of each card box on one end and use two of the big boxes for the collection.

For metal minis, I attach magnets to the bases and carry them in steel trays to prevent damage in transit.

Tackle Box(es)... the ones I use have a large compartment on top forLagre/Huge minis.



I sort by type, etc. and my game moves around, so I pack the trays I need and go.

Last winter, my wife found these at JoAnn's. The ones she bought for me were on clearance, because the lid/handle was red/green. It came with four sections, and I've divided my minis by [PC/npc usable minis] [animals/magical beasts/aberrations] [orcs/goblinoids/monstrous humanoids/giants/reptilian humanoids] [undead/outsiders/dragons] You have to do a bit of searching for specific mini, but the sides are clear and they aren't that deep so its not too bad of a search. They have another item that is supposed to be for ribbons that I've been meaning to pick up for my larger minis, but I haven't gotten that yet. They're all stackable, and you can use pretty much as many as you want, but the four that I have right now fits all my plastic minis nicely.

For my metal minis, I use a compartmentalized container, that is normally used for beads, or dmc floss. But with some thin sheets of foam cut to size, it makes a nice carrier for my metal minis.

I use these plastic bins.

http://www.hudsonfasteners.com/Product_TOC_Akro-Mils.htm

I had them fastened to the garage wall at the old house, but haven't had time to put them up at the new place. Use a label maker for the fronts and you can find everything quickly.

Sorting them out to begin with is a task however. I have hundreds of the little buggers.

In fact, these are the bins I ended up buying. Cheap cheap:

http://www.harborfreight.com/cpi/ctaf/displayitem.taf?Itemnumber=41949

I've been wanting to go the bin route, but for now I use one of these, snagged from Sears:

Craftsman Pro Tool Box

The two top trays are great, and I keep a lot organized in the removable shelf, but the bottom area is wide open and needs a way to be organized.

I've gone through a variety of storage solutions.

First, I started with 5-drawer plastic toolboxes that are commonly used for nuts, bolts, tools, etc. When I got to 6 of them, I realized I needed a better way...

Then I bought a cabinet where I could store them, easily see what I have, and keep them out of sight. The shelf space was quickly overwhelmed and not I only use it for big minis, specials, or other ones that I like to look at.

Now I use plastic tubs about 16" by 12" by 6". I have around 10-12 of them and I've labeled each one for a particular type of mini. I then store the minis in ziplock bags inside each tub. It's not a perfect solution because I still have to search through them and it's hard to find something quickly, but it's the best solution I have.

Oh yeah, I've got 3,000+ minis.

I only have D&D prepainted plastic minis so I don't have to worry about the paint coming off. With that in mind I store them in a couple of ways. The majority of my minis (over 1,000 of the little suckers) are stored in snap-lock bags in a couple of plastic storage containers. The minis in the various snap-lock bags are sorted into groups such as Orcs, Kobolds, Skeletons, Zombies, Underdark, Animals and Goblins.

My human, dwarf, elf, halfling and gnome minis are kept in a different storage container. Since there are a lot of these I have sorted them a little differently. The humanoids are sorted by race: Dwarves, Elves and Little People (Gnomes and Halflings). The humans are sorted into Sword & Board, Single Handed Weapon (No Shield), Two Handed Weapon, Two Weapons, Polearms, Exotic Weapons, Casters and finally Cultists.

In a third storage container (a flatter under-the-bed container) I keep all my Huge-sized minis as well as quite a few Large-sized minis.

Finally, I keep some other minis in some transparent Plano (Plano is the brand name) tackle boxes. Since they are transparent I can quickly look at them and see what minis are in each box. I have 4 tackle boxes in two different sizes. The smaller sized boxes fit my Medium-sized minis and short Large-sized minis. The larger sized boxes fit the taller Large-sized minis (although some Large-sized minis still don't fit, such as Frost Giant Jarl).

In one of the smaller sized tackle box I store the players' PC minis along with all of the minis that I expect to use in the next session or two. The other 3 boxes have mainly "monster" minis. These are mostly DDM Rares of various monsters like Dragons, Beholders, Efreeti, Shield Guardians and Ogre Magi. Most of them are minis that I found hard to put into a particular "category" for storage.

So there you go. My system is a little complicated, and it took quite a while to sort all the minis into various categories. However, since I have sorted them out finding the exact minis I need for a session has been a lot easier.

Olaf the Stout