Hi everyone,

As some of you know from offline chats, I've spend the past ~6 months working on display cases for my collection. I've finally completed a solution, and while my own is unique, I thought I'd share some learnings here as a quick guide for those thinking about getting some yourself:

Quick tips:
- Buying new is very expensive, and almost all the manufacturers have gone out of business in recent years. And by my count all of the ones who did acrylic are gone
- In europe, this is the clear best solution I found: https://vitrinenschmidt.de/
- In the USA, there is a somewhat cost effective option, although quality and finish are not what I'd label as "passing FD inspection" https://www.sfdisplay.com/

Building cases, tips:
- This is (mostly) the most cost effective option, and you then get the wood and finish you want.
- If you are going more than 4 feet long, your options for thin shelves (= more shelves per wall) go away unless using plywood, which doesn't look great and cuts poorly under 3/4"
- At 4 feet or less you can get hobby-size hardwood at home depot or similar, 1/4" thick and looks great. You will need to slot/dado/glue to the backing somehow to avoid bowing in the center.
- Only use hardwoods, soft will cause trouble
- Also acrylic or glass doors are expensive! In addition, acrylic flexes so I recommend not going beyond 2x4' cases. The bonus to this size or less is 1/8" acrylic often shows up cheap on craigslist or facebook marketplace as leftovers from a big sheet, and at a fraction of the price
- If you leave in a region free of earthquakes and a home fairly dust free (my home is neither!) - I'd ditch doors altogether to make life easy

My solution:
- I had 3 cases from a company now out of business, all acrylic, and love them. The problem was I needed more. And even if they were still around, they were about $100/foot of length new.
- My wife does not like the acrylic look, or in other words I needed wood or I wasn't allowed to hang them
- In the end, I got lucky, then compromised with her: I found a lot of used acrylic cases from an estate. This fixed the cost issue, but they did not have doors, creating a problem. I solved this by making my wife happy via wood trim (poplar on big and small cases, redwood on the medium case which was too soft and a mistake) with a door system built in. This was easier said than done thanks to acrylic flex (even at 1/4") needing aluminum channel to stay straight, and tracking on the big case

The results? WORTH IT. Have a look!!! Apologies for the image glare, I'm not a photographer!

Edited by user 16 December 2020 00:07:05(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

Hi Roland, some details:

- The acrylic cases were mounted with stainless steel cabinet screws, deep into the wall studs for safety.
-The large case had a potential weight issue with the doors, so for that I used 5 reinforced (triangular) steel corner brackets into the studs on the wall side, and the wood on the case frame in order to ensure no problems. 5 is overkill, but there were 5 studs, and if anything the placement looks nice and even if you peek underneath.