Over the years I have attempted to organize and take stock of all the miniatures I have. Sometimes it's to help plan future painting initiatives. I do like having statistics - all the information - when trying to make decisions. Or, just as often, it's been a desperate attempt to shame myself into NOT BUYING MORE STUFF!?
Most recently, about a year ago, I spent a few days just looking through all the drawers of miniatures - mostly the ancients, through medieval and renaissance collections. I took some pictures and shared some of the thoughts I was having at the time about reducing some of those collections (which I have yet to do... but that may be coming - sooner rather than later!). I'd planned to do similar some of the other collections... but then didn't. Partly because I worried that sort of looking through MORE boxes and thinking about them too much might either A) get me COMPLETELY distracted from what I was trying to do... or B) get me really depressed... Either way, I kind of just didn't get to it!? you can read about that here:
Thinking About Things... Making Plans...
The most thorough attempt at stock taking was done TEN YEARS AGO (which also happened to be after ten years of blogging!). I mostly just counted the 28mm miniatures - ignoring ignoring all other scales. In the final accounting I found myself to be in possession of 18,908 28mm foot figures, 1011 mounted, 63 guns or other artillery (catapults and the like), and 175 vehicles or big beasties. Overall about 51% of the collection, at that time, was painted (in calculating percent complete I weighted cavalry as being worth two foot and vehicles being worth 5) – breaking that down, I found there to be 10,221 painted 28mm foot (54% complete), 381 mounted (38%), 32 guns (51%), and 48 vehicles (27%).
You can read ALL of the stats and further breakdowns of what collections were the most painted here:
Now that I find myself approaching TWENTY YEARS of blogging, I thought it might be time to do it again - a rather thorough accounting of ALL THE MINIS!! (or, at the very least, ALL THE 28mm MINIS!!)
(I had, in 2021, tried to so something similar to the 2016 Stocktaking, but everything was STILL in a state of chaos and spread out in boxes all over the house - fallout from multiple home renovations over the previous years... which continued for a few more years... including THIS YEAR!? I didn't get to it, but you can read about the thoughts I was having at the time here: Stocktaking 2021 - there are no stats as the post was more about WANTING to do a thorough stocktaking and planning how to do that...)
Recently, I did a brief calculation (when I was filling out the 14th Annual Great Wargaming Survey!) to determine a rough estimate of the numbers of total miniatures owned versus number of miniatures painted. I took that 2016 stats and added the number of acquisitions to the Grand Totals and added the minis painted each year to the number of miniatures I'd had painted at the time of the 2016 Stocktaking... and I figured I roughly 29,078 28mm foot miniatures (and 1250 mounted) of which 12,926 28mm foot (and 482 mounted!) were painted (around 44% of the miniatures I own)! Which leaves about 17,000 miniatures, unpainted, foot and mounted (and this isn't even counting vehicles... or larger monsters... OR ANY of the stuff in other scales...!?)
(I do still have a BUNCH of modern stuff in 20mm/1:72 plastic and PILES of "Epic" 40K miniatures and some 6mm moderns and NOW some 10mm stuff!?)
It was also at this time I decided to the large stock-taking to see where everything is at! It felt like a good year to do it, as I haven't been acquiring a lot of new things and don't really have PLANS to acquire much more. Still... I was thinking the ACTUAL stocktaking should happen at the very end of the year, so I have an accurate picture of where things were at, at the END of 2026 - then, going forward, I can just look at the stats I keep through the year (every year) of miniatures painted versus miniatures acquired, to quickly get a sense of exactly where things are at!
For a while I though maybe I could do it in chunks, as there are collections I was unlikely to touch between now and the end of the year - unless looking through them all and counting them and thinking about them and considering what to do with them completely derails whatever plans I currently have and inspires me to work on... whatever it is I'm supposed to be counting and leaving alone!? Because I AM that SPECIAL KIND OF STUPID!?
But then September happened and I got completely overwhelmed by school and at this point have realized I'm just NOT going to get to any of that until classes are over and portfolios submitted (11 December 2026)... I WILL still have a Philosophy final after that (I think it's on the very last day of finals around the 22nd or 23rd) but after the 11th I can get started on the counting and cataloguing of miniatures.
There will be a fair bit of work involved, not just because I have SO MUCH STUFF... but because, as in 2021, there is STILL stuff spread put all over the house! There WAS a PLAN, when I started thinking about this in the summer - that Amanda and I had been discussing - to sort through ALL THE BOXES through the summer and into the fall after the last of the renovations wrapped up... and when that was done, counting might have been a bit easier! But none of that has really happened... yet (though maybe THAT will be happening in December along side all the accounting).
Currently the majority of my collection is housed in these storage drawers in the Game Room, in the basement... The drawers contain both painted and unpainted miniatures. As miniatures came into the house I have generally prepped and assembled and primed and based all miniatures and then stored them in the drawers that would be their permanent home - partly so I keep in mind that I have them and to NOT go buying more than I can easily store!
These drawers, however, are pretty much at capacity! If I want to acquire new miniatures, I'm kind of going to have to start getting rid or some. Or sort out some other kind of storage solution!
Some larger things are stored in the display cabinet...
Other things, that are too tall for the regular drawers, but too numerous to go in the display cabinet, I've started storing on other shelves in the Game Room in clear plastic boxes. (there are loads more on this shelving unit, lower down, but they are currently obscured by boxes of stuff that had to be taken out of the closet under the stairs for the most recent renovation to happen... and they haven't found their way back into the closet!)
A significant portion of the collection is on or clustered around my painting station on the second floor...
Or on this folding table that was set up a few months back to facilitate oganizing and boxing up of some miniatures that were all over the place... but has kind of become a semi-permanent fixture in the room taking up WAY TOO MUCH space!?
Still more are collected into boxes on shelves nearby my painting station (the "on-deck" boxes of things I'd ideally like to work on soon... or, at least, sooner than any unpainted miniatures being stored in the drawers in the Game Room!)
MORE of the "On-Deck" boxes...
And STILL MORE are stuffed into storage boxes in one of the storage areas throughout the house (MOST of these boxes are NOT miniatures... a lot of that is Morgan's fabric... but some of them are filled with boxes of older plastic model kits bought for one project or another... others have been moved into the next room which is just too embarrassingly messy to even take a pictures of... like... even messier than what you've seen so far...)
Most of these boxes in the living room contain books and papers and random other stuff displaced by renovations that haven't been sorted (or discarded) -but probably contain a few small boxes of minis squirrelled away within the bigger boxes
Considering the drawers in the Game Room are "at capacity" and I have and these boxes and boxes and boxes of stuff haunting the painting station and storage closets and living room... It is fair to say, I am very definitely BEYOND capacity to store what I have and very much need to start disposing of miniatures... never mind that I only have so much time left on this earth... and I'm just not painting 800-1200 miniatures a year (like I did between 2009 and 2015 - the years leading up to the 2016 stocktaking!)
Since 2020 I've painted between 57 and 438 28mm foot miniatures per year, the average being about 200 per year. Despite painting 438 miniatures in 2025, I feel like Im not likely to paint more than 200-250 per year, going forward. At that rate, it would take me over EIGHTY-FIVE years to paint just the miniatures I currently HAVE!? I don't know that I'm going to make it to 65 myself, let along live another 75 years beyond that - AND KEEP PAINTING 200 miniatures per year!?
Mind you, that 200 per year average over the last five years is largely based on painting highly detailed, individual fantasy and Sci-fi miniatures from Games Workshop... Last year I painted double that because I started painting historical miniatures again (all those WW2 minis for Bolt Action!). Even so, if I can realistically paint 200 or 400 miniatures per year, I still have FAR TOO MANY - more than I will EVER be able to paint - whether it's 85 years at 200 miniatures per year or just 42.5 years at 400 per year - I can't possibly ever get them all done
So I don't want to JUST do a count, I really want to assess what I have, what I want to use if for, and what I can REALISTICALLY expect to get done in an average year... and maybe start getting rid of the stuff I can't imagine being able to finish in the next five to ten years...
But how many is that!? Even if we assume that two-thirds of the miniatures I paint over the next decade are historical miniatures that I can paint at 400 per year and a third of them are Warhammer Miniatures that I can paint 200 per year... That's going to be about 3300 miniatures. If I have 17,000 unpainted miniatures, that would still mean disposing of nearly 14,000...!? How do you even DO that!? (Honestly, how do I even HAVE that many!?).
Maybe this year end count WILL just be a count... and the assessing will come in the new year...?
In addition to just getting rid of stuff that I'm NEVER EVER going to get around to painting (so Amanda and my kids aren't burdened with having to do that - and end up just pitching it all in the landfill) I feel like maybe it's time to downsize the overall collection - partly because, despite declarations for DECADES suggesting that she did not want to move again EVER and was going to DIE in this house that she keeps renovating (and will NEVER make back the money she's put into it...), earlier this year Amanda had an extended stay on Vancouver Island with a friend that was house-sitting and came back all determined with a new Ten Year Plan to move us all to the island as she retires!? (WTF!?) Anyway... it might be a good idea to start THINKING about reducing the overall collection in case something like that actually happens... But also, again, considering my own mortality, maybe it would be good to get rid of SOME of this stuff BEFORE I'm gone (again, so Amanda and my kids aren't burdened with having to do that themselves - and end up just pitching it all - included FULLY PAINTED COLLECTIONS - into the landfill)
(I probably need to start thinking about doing something similar with the board games at some point...)
