The best ways to display your action figure collection

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#Decor & Decorating#Pop Culture#action figures#clutter#collections#geeky#memorabilia#shelving

Collections: awesome to cultivate — hell to decorate. Often times, the result can be a room full of boxes that feels more like a warehouse, or a shelf full of action figures that looks cluttered and junky. Dude, you guys have worked your asses off to collect these things — you should work ’em into your decor and show ’em off! Here are some (hopefully) inspirational options…

The bane of every collector’s existence is the constant dusting. To get around this tedious task, encase your entire collection in these action figure cases and display them on a dresser, or put them up on wall-mounted shelves.

A collector's displayGlass shelves are your friend. Especially if you can find ones that have lighting.

Glass doors on cabinets are also your friend. This Billy bookcase with glass doors from IKEA is expensive as hell, but pretty damn perfect.

Action Figure RoomOf course, the best thing to do is keep your collections in the packaging. You could use them as wallpaper.

Soulja On Display…!!! HENSHIN!!!I prefer funky bookshelves, though. I found this one on Amazon that works both horizontally and vertically. Stack ’em or line ’em up, and show it all off with a little bit of funk.

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Similar to book shelves is this room divider. Separate your open spaces into semi-separate room, while displaying your collections. The thing I love about these room dividers are the built-in cabinets to keep some of the collections that you still have in their boxes.

Action FiguresThis minimalist display is awesome, but it’s clearly best for small collections. Perhaps just display the best of what you got and store the rest?

Find a coffee table, like the one pictured above from Etsy seller zandswoodwork, that also doubles as a display cabinet.

action figuresOf course, I’m a fan of recreating particular scenes, like this one from Return of the Jedi!

Millennium FalconSpeaking of Star Wars: I have a buddy that hangs all of his Star Wars air crafts from his ceiling and it delights me to no end.

I’m sure that a TON of you out there have even more suggestions from your homes. So please: enlighten us! How do YOU display your action figure collection?

About the Author: Megan Finley Horowitz

@meggyfin @meggyfin

I'm a 40-year-old potty-mouthed writer with late-diagnosed ADHD and a shit-ton of anxiety. I live in my hometown of Los Angeles with a husband, a daughter I never planned on having, and a senior rescue dog. Anything else you need to know can be gleaned from my instagram and my TikTok.

Comments on The best ways to display your action figure collection

  1. Thank you! We inherited a coffee/end table set with glass tops and pull out drawers just like the one pictured and we weren’t sure what to put in them to display! If his figures fit this would be perfect!

  2. At the moment most of ours are scattered around on various book shelves and other surfaces.

    But a friend sent the boy a huge box of Star Wars figures (still in packaging) that we haven’t found space for. Unfortunately they were designed to hang from hooks so won’t stand upright in the packaging (and of course can’t be taken out) which makes it difficult.

    I’m hoping to aquire/make some sort of case once we move to our new place.

    Also, so not what this is about but one day I want a coffee table like that to display my semi-precious gemstone collection. I’ve got hundreds of them but they’ve always just sat in boxes because I have no where cool to put them. I’d love to have them in there.

    • i rented a house once that had a bedroom paneled in that plywood with holes in it like you find in a garage or woodworking area, the kind you can poke different holders into and what not. it had been painted white, like the rest of the room. GREATEST. THING. EVER. that second bedroom was sort of like my giant closet (and my dogs room, natch). i got all kinds of hooky things from the hardware store and hung all my purses and accesory itmes on the wall. it was genius.

      those panels would be an awesome col thing to put on an enitre wall or even as a border or stripe on a wall and you could hang stuff on it and change it any time. the panel just needs to be set off the wall, like on a shim or lathe or something so the hook can attach.

      • This is BRILLIANT! My partner, Funk, has boxes upon boxes of Star Wars collectibles still in the packaging. They are currently in a storage unit that we are trying to downsize from and I was having a nervous breakdown about what we were going to do with all of it but this is a great idea! Granted, we rent, but I’m sure we can rig something up in the apartment… or I’ll just have to save it for when we (some day in a galaxy far far away) own our own place.

  3. My husband and I have given star wars action figures mounted (gently) in shadow boxes (with mirror backs to so you can see all sides). My husband likes it because he gets to show off his action figure knowledge, I like it because it increases the likelihood of someone actually displaying the gift 🙂

  4. Hee, I’ll have to show these off to my fiance. He really wants to display our collection on a tabletop, a la Super Smash Brothers, but I’m rather clumsy and bump into things far too easily for tiny figurine pieces not to wind up all over the floor. D: Maybe he’ll like one of these?

  5. We have our star wars vehicles hanging from the ceiling (like the last pic above) and in our office, the toys that are still in packaging are pinned up around the top of the wall as a border. The loose toys are in our china cabinet. It’s a formal looking dining room, so people always do a double take when they see his GI Joes/Star wars toys hanging out in the cabinet. 😀

  6. I love the minimalist one! It wouldn’t work for where we are now, but I am definitely keeping it in mind. Makes it look less like a “geek collection” and more like art. It would be so me to fake being cool, when I am really a complete nerd!

  8. My grandmother started traveling the world when her children were grown, and everywhere she went she bought a doll. My grandfather was the son of Montana homesteaders and brilliant at everything. He built her a beautiful display case, with a cherry frame, glass front/sides/shelves, and a mirror back. My aunt has it now and it will go to my cousin after. So that’s an idea, if any of y’all have mad woodworking skills! (He also built his own house. Including the brickwork and the electricity and everything. Pretty amazing guy.)

  10. Oh my god, brain spasm! First Offbeat Bride makes me excited about getting married, now this site makes me excited about just moving out! Hopefully me and my FH will sometime next year, should our financial situation become secure enough and if we do, first thing I’m doing is buying display cases!!!!! And our Star Wars crafts are going up AND I’m totally recreating miniature scenes!

    Oh my god, geeking out. This article was just too perfect!

  11. We have the tall glass display stands from IKEA (pictured above) and they are fantastic. Over time I have collected shoe boxes and covered them in black card and use them at the back of each shelf to create different levels and maximise the space, and the amount you can fit in without it looking cluttered.

  13. THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU SO FUCKING MUCH. Action Figures are EVERYWHERE in my house. They’re on top of the bookshelves (involved im an epic Jedi battle). on top of our dresser (a whole ARMY of clone troopers, ready to be deployed at a moments notice), on our dining room table! My man has so many action figures that we’re running out of room in our fairly sizable two-bedroom duplex and have been shopping around for some neat display cases.

    You are my hero. Thank you so much for posting this.

    • I am having the same problem. There are Marvel and DC heroes all over my house. And let me tell you something, when you knock Batman over and he drops a Batarang, my hubby notices! Lol these are all awesome ideas! I think the shadow boxes would be the most viable for my house. I’m also trying to figure out a way to mount his Batmobiles on a canvas so I can paint different scenes behind them.

  15. What about taking the loose toys, putting them in the china cabinet playing with the dishes ala the Christmas Elf. My stormtrooper is doing a playboy pose in the vent of my car.

  16. I am so glad I found you on a google search. I’ve been looking for something like those display cases with the three-tiered stands forever. Thank you!

  18. We have a tall glass cabinet like the one pictured at the top. We popped into a shoe store and cheekily asked to buy some of their clear shoe stands to add 3 tiers to each shelf. The staff were confused but complied and was a lot cheaper than stands online.

  19. Hello! I have a whole lot of halo 2 Joyride Figures still in packaging and the boxes are quite big and heavy. I had them just hanging on a hook but seeing as some of them are quite heavy, some of them got some creases and the cardboard hanging on to the hook almost ripped off. What is the best way to hang them on my wall to use as basically a wallpaper? I used blu tack for a while but that doesn’t always last that long. What would be the best thing to use and to make it possible to take it off the wall whenever. Thanks to anyone who gets back to me!

  21. I collect Funko and display them at work and in my home. I kept searching for ‘action figure displays’ for weeks to find little ‘risers’ to put them on. Finally, my mom suggested looking for ‘spice racks’. If you check out my blog, you can see she pointed me in the most fab direction! I have two different kind of spice racks I use for my Funko:
    http://angloanon.tumblr.com/tagged/funko

  22. I’m Using both IKEA’s Billy Bookcase and BESTA because they are modular and offer more depth allowing ships and large pieces of the collection to stand in.
    The only thing is I didn’t set up the lights already, so I will have to work on this … BEFORE I take care of the scenes background … this mean I will have to put all the figures down and do this…
    Because, Yes I think displaying the figures in scenes is much better looking than keeping them in their cases – I open 99,9% of my Star Wars action Figures 😉
    I’dlike to send pictures but I don’t know how I can share them ??? just tell me and I will send them back 🙂

    editing : oh by the way, here you will find some pics of our Star Wars collection but as we have moved recently, the setup has changed drastically… cheers

    https://www.facebook.com/akwstarwars.beauvarlet/photos_albums

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