Are we destined to become just collectors?
By Mario Covalski
Talking with some friends, modelers of course, we were discussing/chatting about the difficulties magazines and all web sites devoted to this activity, have today to get good articles. This is something that affects us obviously, so we started to reflect on this matter, the conclusion we reached was that nowadays, modelers don’t spend much of their time on building scale models.
Of course, we’re speaking in general terms, since there are always quite prolific modelers who keep their level of interest during years and those who build under commission and also have a good production. But nowadays, the average modeler is building less than before.
If there are 100 kits to purchase, and you my friend, owns 99, it would not seem strange to me that the only one missing in your collection, could keep you awake at night, giving less value to the rest. This is a reality and there have been times that nearly everyone have gone through such a situation.
Now well, let’s think in a world where the average modeler could get at local shops a couple dozens of kits, there wasn’t Internet, and if he got a magazine, it offered only little information. You may reasonably think that after purchasing all the available kits, he would start building all them, since no other new subjects would caught his attention.
Back to the present. No matter which your kind of hobby is, armors, aircraft, cars, ships…etc, the same modeler will have the chance to get hundreds of kits, and if you consider the conversions, decals for new versions, etched sets…and more scratch (cause there’s plenty of information available which increase the temptation to build subjects which have not been released by manufacturers) perhaps we are talking of several hundred, a quantity which can’t be nearly impossible built during one’s life.
Time to spend on building models decreases year after year, society is more competitive and to survive the social jungle involves struggling hard to get on in life.
Nowadays, the modeler has Internet, forums, magazines, even uploading pictures to forums means less time to build. He/She spends hours hunting the prey, that so wanted kit, hours and hours searching for references about the subject he has in mind …there’s not time left to build models.
In fact, I believe we’re witnessing the birth of a new static modeling, a lot different than 25 or 30 years ago. The adrenaline level produced by the mere act of purchasing is now replacing the one the construction of the kits used to produce. If you have a pretty good budget, these doses may be daily. Manufactures have realized this since time ago, and obviously, they encourage it.
Back to the beginning, the average modeler is building less than before, I would dare to say a lot less in relation to what he purchases and this is not absolutely bad, it’s the natural evolution of this activity. Are we destined to become just boxes collectors? Time will let us know the answer.
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