Counter Storage?

[Trevalon Moonleirion]

While minatures are delightful things to have for D&D, I really don't have the time or patience to paint a ton of them, not to mention it gets a bit tough to store them. Thus, I've fallen into the practice of using counters for characters and monsters. Now that my counter collection is rather sizeable, I have a growing problem, as I use them more and more: how the heck should I store these things once they're cut out?

Most divided plastic boxes I've seen still have a gap big enough between the lid and the dividers to let the things slip and slide everywhere, and just keeping them in a plastic box is a recipe for a jumbled mess. Are there any commercial solutions to storing these things? Anyhow have any suggestions for something cheap I could construct?

I suppose plastic bags could work...? Need to find some small enough though...

Ideas and suggestions eagerly awaited

Thanks,
Trev "Me no paint" Moonleirion

 

[Cthulhu's Librarian]

I have a couple divided boxes that I got from Michael's Crafts. They are designed to hold bobbins or spools of thread for sewing, but they work just fine for counters. Occasionally a few counters will slip into a different divided space, but not too often. As long as you keep them upright, you should have no problems.

 

[Tazawa]

Here's my cheap storage solution for counters.

1. Go to an office supply store.
2. Get some plastic boxes that hold 4x6 index cards
3. Get a box of ~4x6 envelopes
4. Cut the flaps of the envelopes to make little tags you can write in
5. Put all your orc counters in a envelope marked orcs, put all your gnome counters in an envelope marked gnomes, etc.
6. Store your envelopes in the plastic boxes

It's pretty simple and it works. I've never had counters fall out during transport. Plus, you can write monster stats on index cards and store them in the same box.

Hope that helps!

 

[thalmin]

It's been a while, but I believe coin shops have plastic pages for coins, which should work for small and medium counters. Add a few pages used for cards, place in a binder, you should be good to go.

 

[pogre]

What you need is a small tackle binder. Cheap and very portable!

 

[Klaus]

Chessex also has some plastic counter cases.

And of course, there's the tins from Fiery Dragon.

For the moment I'm using a toolbox (a suitcase with a transparent lid and several compartments inside).

 

[haiiro]

I use a thing my friend found at Home Depot -- it's a plastic box with no top (and a handle), into which slide four flat boxes. Each of these has many small compartments, and the lids sit tight to their edges -- so the counters don't "jump" from one to the other. Since the trays slide in sideways, though, there is some slippage when I take it to games and so forth. But by and large, it was a great option for around $10.

With some careful organization, it holds nearly all of FD's counter sets (though I am missing a few ).

 

[Varianor Abroad]

Yes, that's a Black and Decker product. Tres cool. I use it for my plastic minis and counters. You can divide up the interior pretty well for even the Large size minis. I sort counters by theme and/or race so the few that fall through I can find easily.

 

[philreed]

I think we need a thread on how to store the Doom boardgame components. My copy arrived today and the amount of stuff in the box (not to mention the weight of the box) overwhelmed me.

Off to find some proper packing for all of my new Doom pieces.