The Cases
I spent a months looking for glass display cases in Colorado that fit my criteria; Must be affordable, must be mostly glass, lighting friendly, must fit in van/car. Well I came up dry in my state so I hit the Internets and found some display cases that met my criteria, the only downside was they were out of state, and so I drove out to California. IKEA had the cases I wanted, but shipping was outrageous, something like $200 just to ship the cases, again this is why I just drove out, it was cheaper and I ended up buying like 10 cases and selling them to my friends and family.
If you own collectibles in general you will love these cases, you can pile in large figures, statues, and models, my largest figure being a 1/4th scale figure fits tightly standing up inside the Detolf case. IKEA makes several glass cases some with 3 shelfs like the Detolf and some with 5-6 shelfs for smaller figures such as the Klingsbo. Both cases are fantastic but the Detolf is much cheaper. The quality of these display cases is so-so but they are only $59 so it’s hard to complain and I have never been able to find good cheap display cases period.
On a note to those who live in Colorado we will have an IKEA megastore in our state by late summer, and to those who don’t live near an IKEA at all well either roadtrip up or pay the high shipping rate.
Detolf Link – $59.99
Klingsbo Link – $129.00
The Lighting
As for lighting for the cases I can’t recommend the lighting kit they sell at the IKEA store, its overpriced, under preforming and will melt your figures heads off. Instead I opted for LED lighting pucks that are linkable and mountable. The LED kit I speak of can be purchased at your local hardware store for about $30 per kit. I used two kits which is 6 lights for 2 cases, the nice thing about these kits are power usage is very low, no heat output, and they light kits are linkable so you can turn on all 6 lights thats 2 kits with 1 switch.
The kit(s) I purchased are powered from the wall socket not by batteries, make sure not to buy battery led pucks it may be easier to find the battery powered units but they are not bright enough and require fresh batteries often. I kit linked below is very much like the kit I found at my local hardware store.
LED light kit -$33 on amazon.com
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