The Complete Guide to Long-term Figure Maintenance
If you are comparing The Complete Guide to Long-term Figure Maintenance, the useful questions are narrower than most guides admit: what it is made of, how it is finished, how big it actually is, and how many exist.
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.
Original Carton vs Generic Wrap
Moulded foam is cut to one silhouette and distributes shock across the whole casting. Generic bubble wrap concentrates force at the weakest point. If you still have the original carton, use it; otherwise reproduce the two-box method above rather than wrapping the piece in a single layer.
Carton Sizes That Fit
A 32 cm piece such as the ASH 1/4-scale polystone bust needs an inner carton near 40 × 30 × 30 cm and an outer near 50 × 40 × 40 cm. The 34 cm LIN YUANZHE 1/4-scale articulated bust with extended armour wants 42 × 32 × 32 cm inside and 52 × 42 × 42 cm outside, plus 4 cm per side if the panels are posed open rather than closed.
Targets That Prevent Damage
Keep displayed pieces at 18–24 °C and 40–55% relative humidity. Above 60% invites bloom and mould; below 35% dries fabric trim on mixed-media builds. No direct sun, ever, and gentle indirect airflow rather than a fan pointed at the shelf, which raises dust deposition sharply.
Display Insurance
A documented collection is easier to insure. Photographs plus edition numbers and values let a policy reflect what you actually own, rather than a generic collectibles line item that underpays because it cannot tell your piece from any other.
Read the specification before the photograph, buy the piece you would keep even if the price never moved, and plan the shelf at the same time as the purchase.