THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE STASH

It is a little unusual but by no means unheard of for a Lefty like myself to be engaged in the hobby of plastic model building.  In particular, most of my subjects are military (planes, ships, tanks, etc.) and I am in particular a confirmed "treadhead" in that I build armoured fighting vehicles more than anything else.

I doubt anyone has collected stats on the politics of military model kit builders, but I would be willing to bet their politics range for the most part from the political center off to the Right.

So what is this "philosophy of the stash"? you ask.  Those of you already into this hobby, whatever subject you specialize in, know what a stash is.  It's that collection of "shelf queens" or kits that you buy intending to build some day.  And in some instances you really do build them, perhaps until they are done.  Or perhaps you just get half way through and lose interest.  My own personal record for length of time to finish a shelf queen is about 10 years or so so.  This was a 1/700 scale model of the King George V, one of the battleships that was involved in the hunt for the Bismarck.

But my approach to the stash has changed.  I estimate I have a stash of about 2 to 3 dozen unfinished kits.  This is by no means a large stash, as those involved in the hobby can tell you.  Some kits I may have bought a few weeks ago, others years ago.  I used to fight relatively resolutely the expansion of the stash.  There was no use, I thought, in buying kits I did not finish.  This was especially so since what tends to happen is that once you've had a kit for a while, the chances you will ever finish it go down markedly.  The King George V I mentioned above was a very rare exception to this.

But I have let my stash grow in the past few years, largely because I said to myself, what the hell, just thinking about and buying these kits is fun.  Furthermore, I am something of a "low maintenance modeller" in that I do not purchase "after-market" items, do not own or want an airbrush, and seldom buy a kit priced at more than 40 dollars.

I was a little concerned that the expanding stash would develop into a kind of addiction, or a bad habit, like excessive fast food consumption.  I was concerned that the more kits I bought, the less satisfied I would be with each one, and that a cycle of diminishing returns would result: increasing expense, decreasing pleasure.

I still think this sort of thing is possible without a little discipline.  But I have found with the expanding stash an unexpected side-effect:  my interest in old shelf queens seems to be increasing, not decreasing.  I have a 1/700 Japanese aircraft carrier (the Zuiho) I keep thinking about, and a Tamiya T34/76 that I stopped working on years ago but which is enticingly close to being completion and calls to me now and then.