What’s in a Stash...?

 

 The Immortal Bard certainly did not have plastic modelling in mind when he coined the line so freely paraphrased for the title above, but it makes for an interesting question. The modeller’s stash... The “styrene ceiling” that has been collecting dust in the attic since you moved into that house not long after you were married (out of sight, out of mind, at least for one’s other half if said half is less than tolerant of the hobby), or the pile of boxes jammed onto the top shelf in the hall closet, or the packing case in the basement. Or the tea chests in the shed. A shed can be a good thing, for more than powertools and a place for sawing timber. A modeller’s kit stash however represents changing interests and availability over time -- I mean, how long has that collection been amassing for? We buy kits at a far faster rate than we can build them, and many of us pride ourselves on the stature of our collection. The oldest kits in my stash (meaning the date of my acquiring them, not their date of manufacture or reissue) probably date from the late 80s/early 90s, I had quite a few older Hasegawas from the 1980s that I traded off to a dealer about that time, along with an unfinished Revell Cutty Sark dating from about 1975. But even the oldest parts of my stash have probably spent no more than 20 years in my care. So in 20 years, where have trends in the market and variations of interest taken me? A burgeoning interest in armour, the odd ship here and there, a major emphasis on larger scales, dinosaurs when they were in vogue, even a few space and SF subjects. (A few? I’ll build all those AMT Star Trek kits eventually...) What about the role of eBay? I recently passed the 5th anniversary of my first tremulous venture into online bargain-hunting, and in those five years my stash has grown faster than ever before, with kits I never imagined I would snag for reasons of cost alone. But good quality kits at genuine savings are a daily event on eBay, and gradually many gaps in my collection were filled in. All of what you see here are eBay transactions.  

 I imagine most modellers go through a ‘flesh-out-the-stash’ phase, when the allure of bargains allays the fear of unwarranted luxury expense coming back to bite one when there are bills to be met. But, sometime down the track, there are indeed those whose tastes and interests change so drastically over the years that they realise the investment their stash represents by offering them for sale, either piecemeal through eBay as a seller, or by moving the whole lot to a trader. Trading in collections was a brisk business before the current economic downturn, and resulted in more great bargains for buyers further down the line, as individual kits moved from Stash A to Stash B and profit accrued for the facilitator. Hopefully things will recover and this system will become profitable again. That’s business, and everybody comes out of it happy. I would certainly never have afforded a great many kits in my stash any other way. One day I’ll have a dedicated modelling room, like you see in the pages of FSM, with a properly-lit workbench, bookcases for reference materials, drawers and cabinets for every last tool and accessory supply I could need, paint racks for the hundreds of shades I have in stock, and of course a spraybooth and silent compressor, and a permanent photographic area for recording my work in progress. Display cases for the finished product, of course, go without saying. And I would hope that an entire wall in this room would be shelving for my stash, from floor to ceiling, the whole thing brought together in one place rather than in the cardboard cartons it presently occupies: it would look like a well-stocked hobby shop and the great thing is, it’s all already paid for! Here’s one of two small rooms my packaged stash occupies: have I mentioned lately how much I appreciate the support and interest of my better half? 

I’m not preening here, I know there are modellers out there with much more extensive stashes than mine, in size, in quality, by any reasonable form of measurement, and the stash is what it’s all about. What interests the modeller, how your interests change over time, and how you dip into that stash as the years go by to build that special item at long last -- these questions are the mystique of having the collection. Some folks ask me why I don’t sell the lot at once if they’re worth money, and ‘do something with it.’ I answer them that I am doing something with it: I’m enjoying being a collector!