Wednesday, April 15, 2015

A Tour of the "Geek Cave": This one's a doozy folks!

Welcome to a very special edition of Goodwill Hunting 4 Geeks!!! Today I'll be walking you through the Goodwill Geek Cave as it currently exists (I've done this before... but the cave has had SOOO many facelifts and other cosmetic procedures since then that it's overdue time sharing the new look with y'all...). Because this post is going to be so VERY picture heavy, I'm actualy going to try to keep my comments brief so I don't end up writing something A Game of Thrones in length here. 

So let's get started! 


First view here is one of my favorites. It's the corner of the room I spend most of my time gazing at from my desk. This is definitely the bulk of my collecting space, though there are SEVERAL other shelves that you can't see from this angle.


Turning slightly to the right you can see the shelves where I keep my personal collection of DVDs, my boxes of comic books, and some other various sundry collectibles that we'll get to in a bit.


Keep turning to the right, past the entrance to the cave, and now you're looking behind where I sit at my desk. More shelves and more toys, all over every surface!


Final big shot of the corner where my desk resides. As you can see, my desk actually houses even more shelves full of toys, and is surrounded by tiny curio shelves on the walls, filled with even more.


Next to the desk I keep a DVD player and TV if I feel like having a move going in the background. This is also the current home of my Adventure Time and Doctor Who toys. Below the A.V. setup are various games I have found at Goodwill, been given, or collected from other sources. Bigger games lean against the shelf to the left, and a few have even invaded the bookshelf to the left of that.


Speaking of, here's a shot of that shelf. As you can see, the top shelf is dedicated to my vintage Masters of the Universe collection.


Here's a closeup of what I think of as my "Random 80's" shelf. Not everything there is legit from the 80's, but everything there celebrates the 80's, and that's what really matters to me. 


Here's my G.I.Joe Shelf... with several different versions of the Joes (and Cobra) from several different toy lines. 


Down on the very bottom shelf we have mostly toys from the 90's. Other miscellaneous, homeless toys hang out here too.


Up above the TV you'll notice some of my Halloween goodies, and an assortment of art and cards and things from my family and online friends.


Creeping now over to the desk territory, we have curio shelves packed with Toy Story Buddies and my ROYGBIV shelf dedicated to toys that get found at the bottom of the toy box. 


Next to that is my Monster 500 collection. So sad to see these discontinued. They had such plans!!!


Here's a full bore shot of my desk. Let's take a closer look at some of the collections that live here, shall we? 


Tipp-top shelf we have LEGO movie, and a handful of other random favorites. Shelf below that has some kick-ass vintage toys, including a TON from my very own childhood!


California Raisins and The Simpsons (plus some random Army Ants and Food Fighter toys).


On the very bottom shelves (behind my laptop) an even more random assortment of toys, including my Perry the Platypus collection, my Wall-E collection, and too many awesome toys to recount them all. 


Scooby Doo Mystery Mates, Ghostbusters Mini-Mates, and Green Lantern Action League toys! 


Some of my absolute favorite Halloween toys, Christmas and Creepmas toys, Ice Age toys, and mini figure Avengers, TMNT, and Astonishing X-Men! 


This corner of my desk is again, kind of random. Funko Fabrikations, and a bunch of other objets d'art. 



Window dressings above the desk include Halloween decorations and the Christmas stocking I used as a little boy. (You can also get a better look at my Rock Lords, Battle Beasts, and various other action figures here!) 



The top of the shelf right next to my desk is dedicated mostly to Halloween, but any horror toys are welcome. 


Right below Halloweentown you will find a shrine dedicated to one of my favorite films in recent history: Guardians of the Galaxy! I absolutely adore these guys. Below the shrine is my cassette collection, which is in part inspired BY GotG, so they go nicely together.


Directly ABOVE Halloweentown is my Star Wars collection. This is something I am constantly reworking and refining, and trying desperately to unclutter. I just recently made a semi-formal rule of "no prequel toys" on this shelf. I gave those all to my kids to destr-- play with. It may be controversial I guess, but I've decided I'm an "OT Man all the way". I'm keeping my fingers crossed that the new movies will be good, but if not, there's not exactly a dearth of Darth to keep me interested in collecting the original stuff.


The shelves above Star Wars are all dedicated to Marvel. Up top we have the near-entirety of my SHS collection (believe it or not, there are a couple of items still in storage that just don't fit... like the Helli-carrier), and the shelf below that has everything else, including my Marvel Mighty Muggs, my vintage Toy Biz X-Men, Funko Pops, and other stuff. You can see my Hot Wheels collection has sort of crept in behind the Marvel shelf... which brings me to:


The wall of Hot Wheels! I prefer to keep my toy cars carded. I like the packaging, and I like that they don't constantly roll off onto the floor like when I set loose cars up on shelves. You might notice a heavy focus on Batman related cars, and that's not by accident.


Corner shot of my various other little collections... robots, pirates, little plastic men, kaiju, Sesame Street, Transformers, and Scooby Doo! The Scooby Doo shelf is another one that has kind of become a home to other toy refugees, like Monsters Inc, Archie, Tailspin, Stretchy Screamers, and The Walking Dead Funko Pops. I feel like there's a nice sense of logic to the assortment that works though.


Thundercats, a handful of AD&D and other 80's toys too big for the other shelf, and advertising mascots all get squished down into this corner. This is also where all of the Batman and DCU toys end up, because I don't love them nearly as much as I love Marvel (but don't tell them that).


I hate Hate HATE the way these two shelves lean away from each other... But it's either because the floor is uneven or the shelves themselves are warped... not sure, and I can't fix it... so oh well. Up top there is another collection of misfit toys, stuff to big or too weird to go on the other shelves. We then have my Big Hero 6 action figures, my Bumble (from the Rudolph the Rednosed Reindeer special) collection, four-- count the FOUR shelves all dedicated to Spongebob Squarepants, a shelf dedicated solely to Pixar PEZ dispensers, a Nick Jr./PBS shelf (I would love to blame this on nostalgia for my kids, but I honestly just like some of the characters, and the riot of colors) and well as a knights/castles shelf, and another sort of random shelf at the bottom.



Top shelf is almost completely dedicated to vintage TMNT from the late 80's or early 90's. The shelf below is TMNT from the current show or from the early 2000's.


The vintage shelf stretches on the left.


Below that, Real Ghostbusters toys and books!


Below that Fisher Price Little People!!!


And to the right of that... McDonaldland Happy Meal Toys!


And finally, my wall of PEZ.

Hoo boy! That's it for tonight guys! I hope you liked taking this ten-cent tour of the Goodwill Geek Cave! I'll be back soon with some Geeky Goodwill Goodies to share, so until then... Happy Hunting!

30 comments:

  1. Take a bow. This is an incredible collection. My eyes are dried out from staring at all the pics for so long!

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    1. Thank you very much! I owe you some eye drops.

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  2. So very amazing! So many cool memories inside! Good attention to detail throughout!

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    1. Thank you! I took a lot of time setting up everything just the way I wanted it... it's a constant work in progress.

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  3. Dang, that is one hell of a collection man. I saw a lot of gems from my own youth hanging out in there.

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  4. Beautiful, wonderful, absolutely amazing. I would hate to be the one who has to dust that. Utterly fantastic collection and display.

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    1. Yeah... dust happens... sometimes... But I move stuff around and change stuff often enough that I kind of dust portions of the room on a regular basis anyway.

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  5. I think I peed a little....yep, I peed!

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  6. Would love the Crestwood monster books down here. Are you done collecting? Seems you have everything~!

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  7. A amazing room and collection!

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  8. That is the way a true collector enjoys his beloved collection. You have every reason to be proud.

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    1. Thank you sir! It is something I deeply enjoy indeed.

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  9. Wow, great digs! My wife would never let me have that much "clutter" in the house. Women. There are two ways you could address the shelves that lean away from each other. Mending plates in the back to join them together or wood shims on the bottom of one to force it to lean toward the other.

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    1. Well the deal when we got the new house was that all of my clutter would be contained in my own room, so it wouldn't be all through the rest of the house. Hence the Geek Cave was born. I may try to fix the shelves someday or I may just leave them as they are and just continue to love to hate them.

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  10. My head is swimming!
    How do you keep the boys out of there? I bet you don't though because you're training them up right ;)

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    1. I lock the door when I'm not in there. I do let the boys come in while I'm in there, and I even let them touch some of it. They are very respectful of my Cave though, they come in and look and ask me question about the things I collect. They sometimes ask to play with things, and depending on what it is or how old/fragile/valuable/irreplaceable it is I do actually let them from time to time.

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    2. I knew you were trainin those boys right ;)

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  11. Your geek cave is glorious! :D

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  12. Incredible my friend! I knew you had a helluva collection, but DANG!!

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  13. Holy Frakking God! I.. yep.. I just had a Nerdgasm.

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  14. man love u collection bro I enjoy looking at it ....I like went people put there pict of there toys I my self I collect a lot of action figures keep it up keep posting ur new toys

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  15. Is that an actual Hulk vs Wolverine comic book on your wall in that corner?!?!? Where did you get that????

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  16. First and foremost ... wow! Nice setup! Tons of great items there. Nice to see the Monster in My Pocket figs on display.

    Secondly, how in the world do you keep that clean? What do you do about dust?

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