Two weeks ago, I found something amazing. In Davis Square, Somerville, Massachusetts, two blocks from the Davis T stop is Comicazi. As I walked in, I could immediately tell it wasn’t a run of the mill comic book store by the unpacked action figures lining the tops of the graphic novel-filled bookshelves. I kept walking, maybe twenty feet into the action figure room. Floor to ten-foot high ceiling packed with new action figures (many of which were purchased wholesale when KB Toys closed an employee told me). The floor is lined with bins full of used action figures. I’ve never seen so many action figures in one place. The store is aptly named, because my wallet committed kamikaze on the store, spilling money in every direction on its way down.

Once I had the figures (I got seven in two trips over the period of a week), I realized that I needed to identify where they came from and who they were, and I had no idea where to start. If in your collecting travels you are lucky enough to find a store quite as amazing as Comicazi or some kind of tag sale/flea market, here’s how I’ve gone about identifying my figures.

The failsafe method would be Reddit or other toy forums. /r/actionfigure is a great forum, and you can’t go better than talking to them. The decades of collecting experience makes figure identification easy. It’s better, and more fun, to find it yourself. (Plus, no one wants the whole forum to be filled with figure identification questions).

The first step is to check over the figure for identifying marks. Where I find them most commonly is on bases, feet, and thighs. If a figure has one, it will always be somewhere out of sight to avoid distracting from the figure itself. I had no idea where to start with this guy.

What would I even Google? Dead soldier action figure? Vietnam Zombie toy? I picked it up, and on the bottom of the base I saw that it was copyrighted by Todd McFarlane (no surprise there looking at the gory details on the figure) in 2003.

I searched McFarlane’s website, and found nothing, so I Googled, “Todd McFarlane 2003 soldier” and “Todd McFarlane 2003 zombie soldier figure.” I tried a few more Google searches. The problem is that Todd McFarlane has also been making the figures for a little television program you may have heard of called The Walking Dead. Then I went somewhere I thought I’d bet better results: Ebay.

Ebay didn’t turn up any results either. I couldn’t bring myself to keep looking after the seventh page of “McFarlane” action figures. Too much temptation. I was about ready to give up before I found him on Amazon by searching “McFarlane Zombie.” He is the McFarlane Toys Spawn Mutations Series 23 Action Figure Al Simmons. It took me about thirty minutes, but I grew a healthy McFarlane wish list while I was at it. I also found that Amazon is better for figure identification than manufacturer’s websites and Ebay.

Some of the other options are to search by character. That’s how I found this Banshee was from the Marvel Collector Editions of Giant Size X-Men.

It was quick because there’ve been so few Banshee’s made, something I know all too well as a fan of the character. (On a sidenote: his death was stupid. Why didn’t he fly up and shoot the plane headed for his from above? He had a better chance of blocking it like that than from straight ahead, and he would have been out of the line of the collision if he couldn’t knock it down).

The last way would be to know the manufacturer and line but not the character. That was the case with me and this G.I. Joe astronaut. (If you see a G.I. Joe astronaut and don’t think that’s the illest, I don’t want to know you).

This one, as opposed to Al Simmons, was extremely easy to find. One Google of “G.I. Joe astronaut” and I was here.

Reddit and other toy forums are the best bet for identifying, but it’s more fun to search like I did. I hope the strategies I employed here help you identify the used figures you pick up.

A Call to Action (Figures) is a weekly column published on Wednesdays, chronicling my rants and raves about all things action figure. Next week I’ll be doing a special on the Figures of Boston.

Did I get it right? Are there some fundamental strategies I missed? Let me know in the comments!