I had this moment in 1985, when my collection count hit 52. I remember stepping back and looking at my collection, which was sorted by faction spread out under my bed from one end to the other and thinking to myself, "Whoa, that's a lot!" I would've hit the hundred figure mark around 1989, thanks in no small part to the Micromasters boosting my collection count. But I know that by 1988 I had already dedicated a bookcase for displaying my Transformers collection; which started off being fairly spaced out but became increasingly crowded. I had my toys spread out between two sets of shelves and the top of a bedside storage thing by 1998.

From around 1988-95, one of my friends would walk into my room when I wasn't home; he would choose just one row of Transformers toys (e.g. shelf 2, row 3) and turn each figure on just that row 180 degrees... then leave. So I'd come home and find my Transformers all standing perfectly, except for one freaking row that was facing backwards! In 1998 I had some uni friends come over for a party, and they freaked out when they saw my collection (I had about 300-something Transformers then). One of them told me that I had "some kind of awesome childhood!"

Apologies for those who've seen these photos umpteen times, but this is about what half of my collection looked like in May, 1998. There was one more set of shelves, but the photo of that has been lost. This is the first bookcase that I started using in 1987/88:


And this was the top of my bedside thingy.