Category: finances
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A Very Personal Boycott

And for a very personal reason. A recent visit to a hobby shop in our metro area ended unpleasantly – when I asked to use the toilet the owner directed me outside to the end of the car park and told me to pee behind the dumpster. Fortunately I was able to make it in…
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We Get What They Got

And if they don’t have it, neither will we. Shopping at the local hobby shops is a good idea. It gives business and employment to local people and keeps vital supplies available to us year-round. Except when it doesn’t. Shops can run dry of all sorts of things for all sorts of reasons – and…
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SUCKER!

Tell me the minute you were born and I’ll introduce 5 people who want to discuss virtual investment. You’ll have something in common… You’ll want to recreate yourself after the financial discussions are over, so go to the hobby shop and buy yourself a new kit. Follow these easy steps to make sure you get…
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Scale Model Puzzlement

And not the jig-saw kind. I mean the sense of uncertainty and curiosity that arises when you see certain aspects of our hobby. Here is a list of head-scratchers:
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The Ideal Stash

The ideal stash is just as easy to construct as the ideal house or the ideal marriage. All you need is about ten centuries of unremitting toil to buy, shelve, rearrange, sell, build, discard, and trade your scale model kits and eventually you will have it perfect. I should start now before the summer heat…
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Building One A Year

Building one model a year may sound like a limiting sort of hobby, but you have to consider what is meant by ” one “… One scale model railway layout, complete with track, landscape, and operational trains would be an ambitious project for any builder. Even a skilled railway modeller would be daunted. One scale…
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The Transient Model

Some modellers are lucky. They get to keep their models as long as they want…whether in kit form or built-up. They have display space and protection for their work. Others have to watch their results given away, trashed, or lost. Their only consolation is that it makes more space to build again. Yet the impermanence…
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We’re Not A Club

We’re a cult. The building of scale models is not the sort of thing that you can leave to just anyone. You have to be chosen. Who, exactly, does the choosing? You will be told in due course. If the behind-the-scenes investigation report is favourable. Do not try to hide anything – we have ways…
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Buy A Curse

Be careful in your selection – you want something that will disturb and haunt you for a long time to come. The thing to do is go to the hobby shop and search the shelves until you find something that is both impossibly expensive and horribly complex. Preferably with a complicated colour scheme and a…
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Hobbyist Approved…

Oh dear God. I have just seen an advertisement for a portable airgun that is ” Hobbyist Approved “. The world is spinning before my eyes. Bells are ringing and strange phantoms drift in an out of my vision. Whether they are approved by hobbyists is unknown. Children, we are scale model hobbyists and we…
