It's quite possible that those who have been building models for years, know very well what I'm going to talk about. For newcomers, perhaps, it will be something curious and many of them will find out that they have been thinking about this, lately.

In 1982, I had the chance to build my first Pocher, an Alfa Romeo 2300, that was a greatly expensive kit and required a great effort on my fresh family's part. Time passed and things changed......My son....today, an Information Systems Engineer, and Modeler Site's Webmaster, was by that time 3 years old.....and I had abundant hair :-)

It was the first time, since I had started building models, that I felt I could construct what I call "the best model of my life". This meant to me, several things: the perfect model, the most complex, the most real....close to live itself.

When I opened the box, and after having a look at the parts, my feeling was well defined, I would build the most detailed and accurate model I've ever constructed.....Everybody can imagine the end of this story, it was one more in my collection, in fact by that time, I decided to sell it in order to be able to buy another, and thus, during sometime, I could build several POCHERs successfully. The funny thing was that I used to sell them at an incredible knockdown price!!!!, but......everything was worth building the next one.
Then, I realized that models are valuable for their own sake, for the satisfaction they give the builder, specially in building.

Obviously, the following years, there were several "the best model of my life", including a 1/8 Jaguar XKE from Monogram, 1/8 WWI aircrafts from Hasegawa, a 1/6 Cherokee R/C from Graupner, a 1/72 Flower Class from Matchbox, several 1/16 tanks.....etc. From 1992 on, the 1/8 Citroen 11 "Ligero" (unfortunately I only have one photo), the Pocher Ferrari F-40....and a great many kits more.

Each of them was considered during some time "the best model of my life" by me, however, once every model was finished, a slight disillusion cropped out, as I realized that.... that model had not been "the best model of my life".

Now I actually believe that, this is not the way it turned out to be, I really enjoy building superdetailed or out of the box models, and I concentrate myself on the pleasure of building besides of adding another model to my collection rather than looking for a definitive model, which…. would allow me to taste delicious forever.

By no means, I pretend through these lines neither "teaching" nor giving advices to you, modelers, about your way of thinking or feeling, this is not my intention at all. Nobody can steer the hobby in any direction. What I only aim is to share my experience and to let everybody know, how I found out that "the best model of my life" is, and will only be, an illusion in modelling, I mean that the real pleasure is beyond doubt, the moment we keep that illusion alive, and it's not the final result: successes, contests, medals, articles.... or any other kind of recognition or reward, they're only seasonings of the main food.......building models.