The best figure of every species, according to Halichoeres

[Strepsodus]

Yeah it's a shame that Vitae canceled those figures, oh what could have been...

For all their popularity, Mosasaurus and Tylosaurus seem to be the only ones most companies would like to admit exist. PNSO made an Ectenosaurus clidastoides which I calculated to be exactly 1:51.

[Halichoeres]

For all their popularity, Mosasaurus and Tylosaurus seem to be the only ones most companies would like to admit exist. PNSO made an Ectenosaurus clidastoides which I calculated to be exactly 1:51.

Yep, it's just slightly too small for my collection, which is a bit frustrating. There was a Kinder Surprise Prognathodon at some point too, although not as good looking.

Cheesus the Torosaurus is huge

More a pet than a toy, really.
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March marks 7 years since I joined the forum (and 7 years plus one month since the first dinosaur I bought as an adult). Starting with just 4 Papo dinosaurs (all since sold or traded), I'm now up to:

693 items, representing 642 unique taxa, made by 95 different companies, and released over a span of more than 65 years. Over half my collection is from just 6 companies:
99 Safari Ltd
81 CollectA
60 Kaiyodo
49 PNSO
34 Favorite Co
24 Creative Beast
But there's about to be a new number one, as my miniatures from the Life game kickstarter have finally shipped!

My cabinet of life-sized aquatic animals hasn't changed at all in the last year, so these are just the same photos from last year. These shelves are about to get a lot of additions, though.

Spoiler

Cambrian and Ordovician


Silurian and Early Devonian


Devonian


Carboniferous


Permian and a bit of Mesozoic

[close]

Larger than life. Another shelf that's about to get a bunch of new blood.


These don't actually scale well together, but they don't scale with anything else either. They're large-scale, we'll leave it at that.


~1:2


~1:5


~1:8


~1:8


~1:15


~1:15


~1:20


~1:20


~1:30


~1:30


~1:40


Smaller than 1:40, mostly around 1:60. This shelf has been a bit depleted as a lot of animals that used to be on it have been made in larger sizes in the last year (Helicoprion, Cretoxyrhina, Xiphactinus).

[Leyster]

It's always a pleasure seeing your collection, it's so inspiring

[Gwangi]

A very unique assortment, your collecting strategy is serving you well. I see quite a few figures there that I feel like need to be on the blog, stuff that's not likely to be covered by anyone else.

[TooOldForDinosaurs]

Your collection stats are beyond impressive and I love the colorfulness of your figure arrangements - especially the 1:20 shelve with the corals! 

[Halichoeres]

Thanks for visiting and commenting, everyone!

A very unique assortment, your collecting strategy is serving you well. I see quite a few figures there that I feel like need to be on the blog, stuff that's not likely to be covered by anyone else.

Yeah, at this point I reckon a third or so of the items in my collection do not have a blog review. I keep meaning to rectify that, but these days it's hard to find a spare hour or two to knock out a review.

Your collection stats are beyond impressive and I love the colorfulness of your figure arrangements - especially the 1:20 shelve with the corals! 

Thanks! That's definitely one of my favorite shelves. The other displays really need more plants/stationary animals.

[Leyster]

May I ask you where are the stands you used for the green-white nothosaur thing (Ceresiosaurus I think?) here

Spoiler

[close]

or Himalayasaurus here

Spoiler

[close]

from? They're really neat

[SBell]

Those look like replicas of the old Invicta stands for their ichthyosaur and whale. Someone on Shapeways had made a few sizes

[Shonisaurus]

Those look like replicas of the old Invicta stands for their ichthyosaur and whale. Someone on Shapeways had made a few sizes

I'm sure they are the Invicta supports that were used for the blue whale and for the ichthyosaurus, I mean the PNSO himalayasaurus. I like the Invicta supports for prehistoric reptiles better than the PNSO supports and despite the fact that Invicta is a vintage company, despite the years Invicta still has the same appeal that it had in the 80s.

[Concavenator]

Those are some nice arrangements! BTW, since your collection isn't covered by a cabinet or anything, how do you manage keeping the figures clean? With your collection being so inmense, I imagine it would be quite difficult.

Also, do you follow any criteria as to what species you are willing to have several versions of?

[Halichoeres]

L @Leyster Shonisaurus is right, I think they are genuine Invicta stands. Elegant, simple, effective, not sure why other companies haven't done something similar. Their occupants rotate, as I don't have enough for everyone.

@SBell I do have a couple of the Shapeways stands but they are pretty useless because they lack the concavity at the top, so rounded figures tend to just roll off.

Those are some nice arrangements! BTW, since your collection isn't covered by a cabinet or anything, how do you manage keeping the figures clean? With your collection being so inmense, I imagine it would be quite difficult.

Also, do you follow any criteria as to what species you are willing to have several versions of?

Thank you! I dust them periodically with a feather duster. It takes time but it's also an opportunity to rearrange, which I do a lot anyway because replacements are reasonably frequent.

As for the multiples, I have always been willing to have an animal at two different scales (Safari Velociraptor in standard and Toob size), or in different growth stages if they are known (juvenile Parasaurolophus by Kaiyodo, Safari Dracorex, PNSO Nanotyrannus). Once in a while I can't decide between two very nice versions so I'll just keep both (Kaiyodo color variants, e.g.). In rare cases I'll have 3 (Dunkleosteus, Cladoselache), which, as with any other exception to my personal "rules," applies only to fishes.

[Faelrin]

Always love seeing pics of your collection, and how it shows how diverse life was throughout our planet's history.

In the 1:15 pic, is that the Kaiyodo Anomalocaris? I feel like I should know better if it is, lol.

[Gothmog the Baryonyx]

Nice collection updates, I like looking through your things.
Still love that Aquilolamna, I do hope someone else makes one, has to be the fish of the decade (using the common meaning of the word)
I didn't realise that Wendiceratops was one of the larger Ceratopsids if that big figure goes in that scale?
Also, it may have already been asked, but what is the brown tetrapod behind the (I think its a Cladeleche?)?

[Eocarcharia]

Lovely new additions, and seeing your collection together on display is also a treat. It looks like it could be a museum. Especially the Paleozoic and fish shelves, almost like they're your favorites or something

[Halichoeres]

Thanks, everyone!

In the 1:15 pic, is that the Kaiyodo Anomalocaris? I feel like I should know better if it is, lol.

Correct, it's the Leaps in Evolution version:

Nice collection updates, I like looking through your things.
Still love that Aquilolamna, I do hope someone else makes one, has to be the fish of the decade (using the common meaning of the word)
I didn't realise that Wendiceratops was one of the larger Ceratopsids if that big figure goes in that scale?
Also, it may have already been asked, but what is the brown tetrapod behind the (I think its a Cladeleche?)?

I'm still trying to figure out exactly where all the ceratopsians should go, but I get a scale of about 1:18 for Wendiceratops. It's with the 1:20 figures because I don't really have a dedicated 1:18 shelf. With these in hand and now all the Life miniatures, which arrived yesterday, I'm going to be recalculating all the scale categories for my shelves to make them as cohesive as possible.

As for the tetrapod, do you mean this one?

It's the Sbabam Metoposaurus (a jiggly rubber figure). The shark is the Rheic Ctenacanthus, but good eye, because it would be much more accurate as a Cladoselache. They did a pretty bad job to be honest.

Lovely new additions, and seeing your collection together on display is also a treat. It looks like it could be a museum. Especially the Paleozoic and fish shelves, almost like they're your favorites or something

Thank you! I'm aiming for something like a tiny personal museum. I've taken to rotating my dinosaurs, but all my aquatics are on permanent display. What can I say about fish except

(Not sure who made this image but I'm grateful that they did)

[Leyster]

Those look like replicas of the old Invicta stands for their ichthyosaur and whale. Someone on Shapeways had made a few sizes

I'm sure they are the Invicta supports that were used for the blue whale and for the ichthyosaurus, I mean the PNSO himalayasaurus. I like the Invicta supports for prehistoric reptiles better than the PNSO supports and despite the fact that Invicta is a vintage company, despite the years Invicta still has the same appeal that it had in the 80s.

L @Leyster Shonisaurus is right, I think they are genuine Invicta stands. Elegant, simple, effective, not sure why other companies haven't done something similar. Their occupants rotate, as I don't have enough for everyone.

Thank you all!

[Strepsodus]

What's the most expensive figure you've bought and/or had to sell?

[Halichoeres]

Cephalopods of the Paleozoic! (+1 from the Mesozoic)


CollectA Cooperoceras
Scale: ~1:1
Sculptor: Matthias Geiger
Released: 2022
Upper Carboniferous - Lower Permian
This is not an ammonite (and I don't mean in the René Magritte sense). It's a stem-group nautilus, part of a clade of loosely coiled and often ornamented cephalopods called Tainoceratoidea. I'm so glad that CollectA is continuing to release invertebrates; they're such a great way to add some variety to my display shelves. Cooperoceras is a good choice for its elaborate spines; as far as I can tell the fossils are all quite broken, but enough pieces are known to have a good idea of how it was put together. I think the very complete fossils that show up here and there are fakes. I've based my scale estimation on C. milleri, a Carboniferous species from my backyard in Illinois, but it would be very similar for the Permian C. texanum, from my old backyard in West Texas (I used to live in El Paso). 


With my Kamyk Paramblypterus; an encounter like this could have happened almost any time in the Upper Paleozoic.

The rest of these are from the Life... game, first delivered to European backers in late 2021 to try to beat a new import tax. I just got mine in a little over a week ago and I'm savoring the process of unpacking them a few at a time. The Kickstarter campaign to fund these was a nailbiter. I didn't expect to be the only one to pledge for a painted set; if one other person had done so it would have sailed through. But I think it means that I am currently the only person in the world with a painted set of these miniatures, which is kind of cool. All of these were designed and painted by O @Oammararak. Some seem to be inspired by an old Tumblr blog called palaeopedia (Evolution of Life on Earth), which had short illustrated entries about hundreds of ancient and modern organisms (mostly animals). Those updates stopped a few years ago, and the creator seems to have shifted to YouTube (RIP) under the name Anthöny Pain.


Clymenia
Scale: 1:5 - 1:6
Late Devonian
A proper ammonite, one of the earlier ones, with a very standard evolute coiling pattern and a deep umbilicus. A nice tidy stripe pattern becomes it.


I was not prepared for how small these are! Yowie and Cog Ltd figures are comparable to Kaiyodo minis or Toob figures in size, so these miniatures are really very small. The paintwork is especially impressive when that is taken into account. The numbers on this side are game stats for this organism.


Soliclymenia
Scale: 1:1 - 1:2
Late Devonian
One of the first ammonites to say, "To heck with tradition, I'll do what I want!." Growth series show that young individuals were ordinary spirals, but subsequent coils of the shell took on this strange three-sided shape. I wonder if anyone has modeled what it would be like to move this shape through water.


This game is going to make the Devonian easily the best-represented period of the Paleozoic in my collection.


Erbenoceras
Scale: 1:10
Early - Middle Devonian
A primitive ammonite whose shell coils seemed desperate to avoid touching each other (not quite reflected in the figure, but if it were, it would be impossibly fragile). The nautilus-style hood is likely inaccurate but this is otherwise a good representation.


Anetoceras
Scale: 1:9
Early - Middle Devonian
Another primitive ammonite with contact-allergic coils. These were floating around with some of the earliest gnathostomes, 150 million years before dinosaurs.


Between these, CollectA, Kaiyodo, and a handful of other companies, I actually have a pretty great time series of cephalopods. One of these days I should do a stratigraphic chart with them.


And finally, a recent gift from my sister, a pyritized ammonite from Russia (she bought it last year before...everything). I think it's the Callovian (Middle Jurassic) Hecticoceras.


It's pyritized, although the luster doesn't really show up too well in this photo.

What's the most expensive figure you've bought and/or had to sell?

S @Strepsodus sorry I missed this question before. I think it was probably the Kanna Dinosaur Centre (Dino Nakasato) Tsintaosaurus fundraiser edition, which had the unicorn-style crest and cost something like $130. They replaced it with a more plausible version less than a year later.

[BlueKrono]

The paint job on those does indeed look great. Where did you get the Kamyk fish from? I've never heard of those before.

[paintingdinos]

The Life game pieces look amazing painted. Can't wait to see how the rest of them turned out