The Little World

When you enter a hobby shop, do you do it with a happy heart? Do you skip in with a Tra La and a happy whistle? Do you greet the proprietor as an old friend?

Or do you slink in round the corner of the door and growl at the staff behind the till? Do you scowl at the kits and bare your teeth at the paint rack? Perhaps you need to practice Safe Shopping…here’s how…

a. Go with only a certain amount of money in your pocket. It helps if you have your credit card linked to the Federal Reserve but you need not go to quite that extent. Just know how much you have available to spend and resolve not to exceed this.

The same goes for visits to the casino or shoe store.

b. Go with a need. It might only be for a bottle of flat yellow paint and you might come home with 14 kits and a new airbrush, but the important thing is that you went there for a purpose – not just idle mooning around.

c. Go when you have been fed, had a drink, and been to the toilet.h ere is nothing worse than being in a good shop or a good library and losing concentration because you have to eat, drink, or poop.

d. Go alone. No-one in your family, and damn few of your friends, is going to be a help in a hobby shop. If they want to participate in the experience let them do so by giving you money.

e. Go to the shop that you like – not just to one that you feel you need to see.

f. Look at everything. You might be a specific sort of modeller but you never can tell when something elsewhere in the shop will be just what you need. If you haven’t seen it, your brain cannot work on it later while you are doing other things. Keep your eyes open and listen for when your brain has had a good idea.

g. Buy the cheap model. It will be a good build.

h. Buy the expensive model. It will also be a good build, but you’ll be taking longer about it.

i. Buy the model you’ve never built yet.

j. Buy your scale. Look carefully at the packaging to see that you’ve got what you want. The makers of kits have computer pantograph machines that convert a successful master model into moulds for a number of different scales and they’ll push out all they can. If you get  shop that doesn’t segregate the models into scales on different shelves you can pick up the wrong thing easily.

k. Don’t buy odd-bod scales. You’ll either get a plastic horror that doesn’t fit anywhere in your collection, or worse – You’ll get a ravishingly beautiful model that will never have any companions on your shelves.

l. Be aware that ” heritage ” and ” old time ” models are now coming from worn-out moulds that were not that good to start with. You may remember the wonderful Revell kit from 1958 as the best thing ever, but 1958 is a long time ago.

m. Buy good brushes. You can buy cheap ones in Bunnings that will do for painting garden gnomes and water colours, but you’ll be sad when you try to paint a model kit with them. Also, buy brushes in assorted sizes.

n. You may find that you get the most acute pleasure in buying a kit when your stash has been depleted. With nothing else to build, you have a perfect justification for rushing home, throwing off your hat and coat, and then opening the box immediately. And then away you go.