The Little World

No, it isn’t a new take on Mozart’s Magic Flute characters – I am trying to quantify the pile of unbuilt kits that every modeller seems to have. If one kit is…one kit…when does a number of kits become a stashette and when does it graduated to being a full-fledged stash?

I could have answered this more readily a few years ago when I had no kits, and set out to buy one. For some reason I settled upon an Academy AT-6 Texan and built it to look like an RCAF Harvard. Even then I was going off on a modeller’s tangent as soon as the lid came off the box. But this is not about that – it is about the next purchase which was made before the Harvard was completed. That’s stashing.

At least I think it is – there is no recognised number of unbuilt kits that actually qualifies as an official stash. And that means that there is no top-end number either. One hears fables about 5000+ kits sitting in some attic space, but one never actually sees them. This is probably a good thing – if you saw 5000+ kits stored against the possibility of lockdown or divorce you will also see the collector…and they would see you. It could be awkward.

And there is always the moment when you have built out the piles of kits – the stash has diminished imperceptibly over months and years until what you thought was an inexhaustible supply has turned into the last box on the shelf. Dare you build it…or is it so terrible that you have avoided it for years? Is there really a kit in that box…or a demon?

Let’s hope it’s a Hawker Demon…