plot with polycollection disappears when polygons get too small

I'm using a PolyCollection to plot data of various sizes. Sometimes the polygons are very small. If they are too small, they don't get plotted at all. I would expect the outline at least to show up so you'd have an idea that some data is there. Is there a a setting to control this?

Here's some code to reproduce the problem:

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
from matplotlib.collections import PolyCollection

verts = []

for i in range(5):
    w = 0.5 * 10**(-i)

    xs = [i - w, i - w, i + w, i + w, i - w]
    ys = [-w, w, w, -w, -w]

    verts.append(list(zip(xs, ys)))


fig = plt.figure()
ax = fig.add_subplot(111)
ax.set_xlim(-1, 6)
ax.set_ylim(-2, 2)

poly = PolyCollection(verts, lw=5, edgecolor='black', facecolor='gray')
ax.add_collection(poly)

plt.show()

Here's the output. Notice that only three polygons are visible, whereas there should be five.

Edit: I understand I could zoom in to see the others, but I was hoping to see a dot or the outline or something without doing this.

from plot with polycollection disappears when polygons get too small