I’m a big fan of counters as an alternative to miniatures, and I’ve gone through a number of storage and organizational options before settling on this one.
It’s a plastic craft cabinet, and I paid less than $30 for it at Target. (You can find similar cabinets at hardware/home improvement stores, too.)
It holds over 4,000 counters, with plenty of room for more.
I bought a pack of sticky labels to go with it, and then spent the better part of a day sorting them into categories and labelling the drawers. I left a few drawers empty to give myself some wiggle room.
Here’s a larger image that shows my categories. They’re not the most logical, but they fit the counters that I have.
It doesn’t travel well (the counters fall out of the drawers), but that’s the only downside — I love this thing.
How do you store your counters?
Oh does that appeal to the Type A personality in me. I am going to be investing in some counters this GenCon, and now I will make sure I stop at Target afterwards and pick up a way to organize them.
Nice quick tip.
I prefer minis to counters. Not only are they easier to move around the battle grid, but if for nothing else (because I despise the D&D Miniatures skirmish game), they’re nice to look at (and they’eve gotten even nicer to look at with each expansion set that’s come out). I got lucky and found a Stanley canvas toolbag with a hard plastic bottom that’s big enough to fit all of my unique figures, and then a big plastic tacklebox from the Container Store (don’t know if that’s a chain or not, but there’s one in Paramus, NJ) to hold all my duplicates.
Target also has individual cases in various sizes whihc are quite inexpensive, and have compartments which are just about the right size for minatures. My heroclix are currently gathering dust in a set of these, and but thye traveled very well back in their day.
So yeah: Target’s hardware and storage section for the win!
Jennifer stores her miniatures in a case from target– it’s one layer thick and folds open/closed, so there’s no migration from space to space.
I don’t have the exotic counter sets; I have a package of letters (A-Z) from a wargame [Dirtside] that I carry in a small ziplock. It’s nowhere near as nice as your counters, but it gets us through.
I’ve got two similar sets of drawers for storing my minis. They differ in that they are all the largers size drawers. I do have a few odd larger minis that don’t fit even on their sides. But these drawers do keep the minis clean. I also use them to organize the minis (by genre mostly) and prep them for the game.
I don’t play any games where I would need something like this.
MDK
I have a cederwood toolcase with 4 shallow pull out drawers which I lined with the soft foam liners from some old boxed sets to keep the minitures from bouncing around and a flip top storage compartment on top large enough to hold larger minitures or some model landscapes.
Alternatively I have a small storage case from the dollar store filled with mini poker chips, glass beads and some game pieces from old board games for nights I know I probally won’t need minitures for much.
Minis/counter storage seems to be one of those areas where gamers like to improvise. I wonder if there are more improv mini cases out there than “official” ones?
Honestly, I’ve never met a counter I didn’t dislike. But, if you like them, and are going to want to store them findably, I can’t really see how to top that. Short of getting it cheaper elsewhere. $30 seems rather pricey to me, especially if it’s US money…