Display Insurance: A Practical Checklist
Everything below is written for display-focused collectors who are weighing Display Insurance: A Practical Checklist — the numbers, the trade-offs and the details that decide whether the piece still looks right three years in.
Polystone Care in Three Rules
Support the base, never lift by the head or an arm, and never reach for a solvent when a stain appears. Polystone is brittle under point impact and slightly porous, so handling and cleaning decide how a piece looks in five years far more than the initial paint job does.
Aftercare File
- Certificate, carton, receipt kept together.
- Four-angle photos dated on arrival.
- Quarterly seam inspection under bright light.
- Insurance list with edition numbers and values.
Movement Causes the Damage
Most shipping damage comes from movement inside the box, not impact outside it. The two-box method removes the movement: pack the piece into an inner carton with 5 cm of cushioning on every face, then suspend that inner carton 8–10 cm inside an outer carton so the gap, not the piece, absorbs the shock.
Orientation and the Shake Test
Ship upright, base down; on its side the full mass rests on the thinnest casting, exactly where breaks start. Close, lift 5 cm, set down and shake two seconds — any rattle means packing is not finished. Tape with the H-method and label fragile on at least three faces, then photograph the sealed box beside a scale.
Care vs Aftercare
Care keeps the piece looking right today; aftercare keeps its value and story for the next owner. Both matter, but aftercare is the one most collectors skip and later regret, because it is invisible until the day it is needed.
The short version: material and edition size set the ceiling, finish sets the day-to-day impression, and display decides how much of that you actually see.