How to display smallish objects for sale?

I'm very slowly creating a small inventory of loosely-related products that I'm thinking will some day be in a small shop or street cart. One line consists of something in what I think is a clever package that needs to be rather small-- a bit less than .5m on its largest side.

In my previous, short-lived shop I used hover text to label the products. I'm not crazy about the way that "messes up the scene" even though I've learned to do multiple lines and thus place the objects closer together. I'm not a big fan of vendors since every one I've seen seems to take forever to load the images. The rest of my products at this point are boxed with an image of the contents on the box which works fine since they can be larger. Maybe I could make signs to go with them? I don't know. I guess I'm looking for some help brainstorming this.

Any suggestions of how to display my little wares?

Well, first of all if your textures take a lot of time to load is not because of the vendors, but because of the texture's size. try to use 512x512 or less and TGA format.

One way to show small objects is simply zoom on them, and take a snapshot.

Oher way is make them bigger.

Big signs would be great.

Hi Bod,

I'm not sure what your tiny objects are......but the bottom line is, folks have to be able to 'see' what they're buying. I've seen some nice displays while looking for small items like jewelery......where the actual item is in a glass case and you can zoom in if you want.....but there's also larger pictures to demonstrate the detail of each piece.

The same was true when I went shopping for a watch. The guy had the watches in cases....and some on a display table...but of course trying to get a good look at each one would have been impossible.....so he also had nicely done images on the wall to show each watch in detail. I think, depending on your product....you may have to go with some kind of large image, if you really want folks to appreciate the craftsmanship that goes into what you create.

I'm thinking a clear big picture of the item would be good to draw attention then in front of the sign you could have the actual item that people could zoom in on if you think the sign isn't enough. The sign prim could have the merchandise item as contents and sell it when clicked the actual demo merchandise item could sell a copy of itself when clicked.
I'm not a big fan of hover text. Text on a sign looks better.

Thanks for your ideas. I've thought about sign concepts and I'm going to probably try one. I'll have a general description of the products, instructions on how to buy and price on one sign and in front of it I can have the actual products. They'll have a much-reduced specific description on the side. If and when I ever set it up I'll show it to others for sizing opinions. I'm getting pretty handy with alt+zooming to see wee things but I don't want to assume everyone does that.

Thanks again!

One thing to consider is using notecards instead of signs, or in addition to them.

I've seen signs that take forever to rez - presumably because they're unnecessarily hi-resolution. But it also takes effort to zoom in on a sign to make it a legible size.