How to Choose a Display Case
for 1/4 and 1/3 Scale Statues

For a 1/6 figure, the scale tells you most of what you need to know. For a statue it tells you almost nothing. A 1/4 Spider-Man hanging off a lamppost and a 1/4 Hulk mid-roar are both quarter scale, and they are not the same object. The number describes the character. It says nothing about the piece.

Scale describes the character. The base describes the case.

Studios stopped competing on the figure a while ago. They compete on the base.

Rock spurs. Water effects. A dead tree. Rubble that spills past the edge. A fallen enemy the hero is standing on. The base is where a sculptor gets to be ambitious, and over the past decade bases have grown considerably faster than the characters standing on them.

Two pieces at the same nominal scale, one on a simple plinth and one on a full diorama base, will need different cases. So the scale on the box is the wrong place to start.

Start with the piece in front of you, and measure it as an object rather than as a statue.

Measure three numbers, in this order

1. The base at its widest points. Not the base as described on the product page. The actual widest points, including the spur of rock that overhangs one corner and the tail that hangs off the back.

2. The widest reach of the piece. An outstretched arm, a cape at full sweep, a spear held across the body. This is very often wider than the base, and it is very often the number that decides the case.

3. The highest point. Not the head. A raised weapon, a wing tip, a plume of hair.

The practical way to do it: stand a straight edge either side of the piece, and measure between them. You want the bounding box, not the statue. Then add clearance, because the numbers above are the point at which the piece touches the acrylic.

Turn it. A square case is bigger on the diagonal.

Max cases are square inside, and a square is much larger corner to corner than it is wall to wall. Across our Max interior, the diagonal span is around 40% longer than the straight span.

Not all of that is usable. But a piece that misses fitting square by two or three centimetres will usually fit turned, and this is the most common thing collectors miss when they measure once and conclude they need the next case up.

There is a second reason to turn it, and it has nothing to do with clearance.

Most dynamic statue bases are composed on a diagonal. The lunge, the swing, the fall: the sculptor built the piece along a line, and that line is rarely parallel to the front of the base. Turning the piece inside the case lines the display up with the sculptor’s line instead of fighting it. The front acrylic stops being a flat window onto a flat pose and becomes a corner view, with depth behind the leading shoulder.

If you are building into an actual corner of the room, the 45° corner units do the same thing structurally.

Weight is the number nobody checks

Resin and polystone are dense. A large 1/4 piece will happily pass what a standard shelf is built to carry, and 1/3 pieces are in a different category again.

At this level, a load rating is not really about collapse. It is about the base staying dead level.

A base that gives a single millimetre under a heavy piece shows up as a hairline of light where the panel meets the frame, and the piece sits a fraction off vertical. You will notice it long before you could measure it, and you will not be able to unsee it.

So if you are putting a 1/4 statue into a DF, weigh the piece first. If it is anywhere near the line, take the enhancement bar: one for a DF60 or DF130, two for a DF120. If it is past 30kg, that is Max territory, and no amount of reinforcement changes it.

One caution on manufacturer figures. Listed weights often include the packaging, which on a big resin piece is not a small fraction. Weigh the piece itself if you can.

Plan the lift, not just the fit

Here is the part almost nobody plans for.

A heavy statue goes into a case from the front, held in two hands, lifted over the frame, and lowered. That needs hand room above the piece and beside it. A case sized exactly to the statue is a case you cannot load without your knuckles against the paintwork.

Three things follow from that:

• Heaviest piece at the lowest level of a stack. Loading 30kg at chest height is how paint gets chipped and how backs get hurt.
• At 1/3, treat it as a two-person job, and work out the route into the case before the case is assembled.
• Assume it comes out again. House moves happen. Part swaps happen. Re-sealing happens.

Risers are worth a thought here. They lift the case to a better eye line, which is why most people buy them, and they also take the bottom of the display off the floor so you are not working on your knees under something heavy.

Headroom is not wasted space

A statue with a centimetre of air above its head reads as boxed in.

This is a display judgment rather than a measurement one. Where the piece nearly fills the case, the eye reads the case. Where there is air around it, the eye reads the piece. A tight case makes an expensive statue look like it was squeezed into whatever was available.

This is what the Plus variants are for: the same footprint, more height above the piece.

Light it from below as well as above

The face is the whole point of a statue, and it is the hardest thing to light.

A single source directly overhead drops the brow into shadow and hollows out the eyes. It is the reason sculpture in a gallery is almost never lit by one light from the top. A statue is three-dimensional in a way a flat-fronted lineup of figures is not, and overhead-only lighting flattens exactly the depth you paid for.

Spotlights mount on the top panel or on the base. For a statue, the combination that works is a strip up top for the interior as a whole, and a spot placed low and forward for the face and the front of the sculpt.

In black, the velvet floor absorbs what would otherwise bounce back up off the base and wash out the underside.

On colour: pure white 6500K tends to keep armour and metals reading as metal, and warm white 2700K flatters skin tones, wood and earthier bases. Both are a preference rather than a rule. Each is a dedicated diode, fixed and true to its temperature, chosen when you order, rather than a colour-shifting LED trying to approximate white and never quite landing on it.

What a case fixes, and what it does not

Dust. Statues are the hardest case for dust, because the surface is textured. Rock, fur, fabric folds, matte skin. Dust settles into crevices a brush cannot reach, and compressed air drives it further in rather than out. Sealing the display turns dusting from a monthly chore into something you stop thinking about. Our panels seal because the frame holds them: a lip underneath carries the panel, lips above and to the side guide it in flush. Glued magnetic tape, which is how cheaper cases do it, peels in time and lets dust straight back in.

Knocks. Acrylic will not shatter. For a four-figure piece standing in a room where people walk past it, that is worth more than it sounds.

Daylight, no. We do not claim UV protection, and we are not going to. Acrylic is not a sun filter, and white paint yellows in daylight over years. Choose a wall that does not take direct sun. If the only wall you have faces a window, deal with the window rather than the case.

A case solves dust and contact. It does not solve the sun.

When two cases beat one big one

Cases in the same family stand side by side, and the panel between them is optional.

Panel in, and you have two separate displays. Panel out, and the interior runs continuously across the row. For statues that means a two-piece confrontation, or a wide diorama, without a frame line down the middle of the scene.

This works horizontally. Stacked cases are always closed between levels, so if what you need is height, the answer is a taller single case rather than a stack.

Choose the family for the biggest piece you will own

DF connects to DF. Max connects to Max. They do not connect to each other.

That makes the family a longer commitment than the individual case, and statue collections tend to move up in scale rather than out in quantity. One grail arrives, and it is bigger than everything before it.

So choose for the largest piece you expect to own in a few years, not the one on the desk today. Starting a second row in a different family because the first one cannot take the new piece is the expensive version of this mistake.

Where pieces usually land

Interior dimensions, since this is a sizing guide:

Measure your piece as a bounding box, check its weight, then look at that table. In that order.

If the piece is close to a line and you would rather not guess, send us the three numbers. We are collectors ourselves, and we would rather talk you into the right case than sell you the bigger one. Free consultation