Taking these ideas one step further, an interesting concept (about which I’m 100% kidding) would be to offer special badges to members who make a legacy donation to A&A.org through their will after their demise. I think that fundraising people call this “planned giving”. The catch, unfortunately, is that the deceased person would never get to enjoy seeing the badge on their account since they’d first have to die to get the badge.
All kidding aside, though, I’ve occasionally looked at my collection of A&A sculpts, built up enthusiastically over many years and stored in rows upon rows of plastic tackle boxes, and I’ve wondered: Just what the heck is going to happen to all this stuff when I die? How can I make sure it ends up someplace where it’ll be appreciated? Will whoever gets it have any idea that such-and-such a unit (like the Battle of the Bulge truck sculpt category) is pretty rare? And are there any other piece junkies out there who’ve asked themselved these existential questions?
Mine will end up sold to the lowest bidder, if I know my wife.
My only concern with my dying, as I said before, is that you guys would think: that bastard has gone and found another forum and did not have the decency to say goodbye.
@wittmann:
Hell is a world without A&A (and this forum).
My optimistic hope is that we’ll end up in a special section of Valhalla where dedicated A&A warriors from this life can enjoy playing the game in the afterlife, which is the image (without the A&A element, of course) that Shelby Foote evokes in Volume III of his book The Civil War, a Narrative: “Who knows but it may be given to us, after this life, to meet again in the old quarters, to play chess and draughts, to get up soon to answer the morning roll call, to fall in at the tap of the drum for drill and dress parade, and again to hastily don our war gear while the monotonous patter of the long roll summons to battle? Who knows but again the old flags, ragged and torn, snapping in the wind, may face each other and flutter, pursuing and pursued, while the cries of victory fill a summer day? And after the battle, then the slain and wounded will arise, and all will be talking and laughter and cheers, and all will say: Did it not seem real? Was it not as in the old days?”
@wittmann:
My only concern with my dying, as I said before, is that you guys would think: that b��t��d has gone and found another forum and did not have the decency to say goodbye.
You shouldn’t worry about that, in my opinion. Your credentials as a gentleman on this forum are well established, so I’d be suprised if anyone here would attribute your sudden disappearance to anything ignoble.
and your immortal soul goes to everlasting torment in the fiery furnace of HELL
So, God’s more of a Risk fan then?
@ABWorsham:
Guys, not everyone has someone, that would be willing to inform us of their death.
It is sad, but we may never know what has happened to someone. We just have to cherish the memories of what they brought to the community. :-)Well said brother!
Thanks Worsham! How have you been doing? :-)
@wittmann:
Hell is a world without A&A (and this forum).
Let us all say:
“I promise I will never die!”
With all the good stuff you guys have put on here over the years that’s never going away you will all be immortal.
Gar, then we will never know if your gone. :x :x :x
It would take a lot of new topics in the BOTB section and my not replying to them before someone went, “Hey, where’s Frimmel been?”
I’ve been reading this thread with some interest as just last week someone from my Matthew Good fan club site posted an obituary of someone and revealed his user name was Suburbia22… that was a shock to most of us as he was a popular guy on the forums, but what was even more shocking was how we found out who he was, lets just say it was a complete fluke and there was a 99.9999% chance that we never would had known that Suburbia22 died.
With increasing social media sites, you gotta believe that someone will come up with some software that will automatically notify all your accounts when a loyal family member pushes a magical button. That way your notifications to all your accounts can be personalized by you before you pass (you heard it here first).
I also remember back in 2008, I asked to join a meetup group playing 50th AE and I got an email back from a nice guy named Graham. I was all set to go to his apartment that weekend when I got a generic email saying that he had died. I later metup with his loyal group of A&A players, many of whom still play at the Bunker to this day. I later found out through them that Graham had hundreds of dollars tied up in an awesome collection of painted A&A minitures. Those guys who knew graham were 100% positive that Graham would have wanted those minis in the hands of his gaming friends, but the family gave them to their small children as toys to play with.
My point is… this is a serious issue and I wonder if there is anything that can be done.
@Young:
I later found out through them that Graham had hundreds of dollars tied up in an awesome collection of painted A&A minitures. Those guys who knew graham were 100% positive that Graham would have wanted those minis in the hands of his gaming friends, but the family gave them to their small children as toys to play with.
My point is… this is a serious issue and I wonder if there is anything that can be done.
Yeah, I have quite a collection of HBG A&A pieces, some I have painted, many I have not. My wife would probably give them to my brothers. Even though they play A&A, they certainly would not appreciate my collection like someone here would. Similar hypothetical situation… but I guess that is what a Will is for. However, before this conversation I probably would not have thought to include my collection of customized A&A pieces in a will.
Good points, LHoffman, because one person’s treasures can easily be viewed as another person’s junk.
In the case of some types of things that people collect – let’s say stamps – the inheritors of a deceased person’s property might at least realize that the stuff may be valuable (even if them themselves have no interest in that particular hobby) because it’s fairly common knowledge that some rare stamps are worth a lot of money. In the case of A&A sculpt collections, however, there are several problems. First: collecting (and painting, if applicable) A&A sculpts is – let’s face it – just not as well-known a hobby as stamp collecting. Second: although some really rare A&A sculpts (like those accidental “green Germans”) can probably fetch a decent price for piece of plastic small enough to fit on a dime, I don’t see such sculpts being worth what some people will pay for super-rare stamps. Third: someone who knows nothing about A&A would probably not realize the phenomenal amount of work that goes into the exactingly detailed paint jobs that have been showcased on this forum. (They could easily assume that they just come already pre-painted when you buy them.) And fourth: to borrow a phrase from Calvin and Hobbes, I suspect that A&A sculpts might very well appear “to the untutured eye of the ignorant layman” as just plain old toy soldiers, and that they might be casually (or even contemptuously) dismissed as being only fit to be given to the kids to play with.
So yes, I’d agree that if a person cares about what happens to their collection, they should make provisions in their will for it to be handled in a suitable way.
It would take a lot of new topics in the BOTB section and my not replying to them before someone went, “Hey, where’s Frimmel been?”
_There would be a Rift in the Force Frimmel!
Even though you are a Treky_. :-)
This post made me realize I have not finished my three son’s game training.
They have made good Risk players for the age they are. And we have started playing Catan.
I have been slowing building up to the World Wars.
@aequitas:
It would take a lot of new topics in the BOTB section and my not replying to them before someone went, “Hey, where’s Frimmel been?”
_There would be a Rift in the Force Frimmel!
Even though you are a Treky_. :-)
I like Star Wars too but I’m certainly a bigger fan of Star Trek.
@aequitas:
It would take a lot of new topics in the BOTB section and my not replying to them before someone went, “Hey, where’s Frimmel been?”
_There would be a Rift in the Force Frimmel!
Even though you are a Treky_. :-)
I like Star Wars too but if forced to choose I’d go with Trek.
Democrat
LOL that said, and without getting into politics. I would probably pick trek too…
Tough call.
LOL that said, and without getting into politics. I would probably pick trek too…
Tough call.
Luckily you only have to choose which you’d like to partake in on any given day. They are very different things and answer rather different callings in what you want from some viewing or reading.
@CWO:
Taking these ideas one step further, an interesting concept (about which I’m 100% kidding) would be to offer special badges to members who make a legacy donation to A&A.org through their will after their demise. I think that fundraising people call this “planned giving”. The catch, unfortunately, is that the deceased person would never get to enjoy seeing the badge on their account since they’d first have to die to get the badge.
Or you know, they could fake their death, start a new account, and look at the badge they earned…
Or you know, they could fake their death, start a new account, and look at the badge they earned…
A clever idea with Alfred Hitchcock overtones. This method would imply interesting things about the person using it – perhaps the notion that “I value my badge more than my life.” They’d have to be seriously motivated because it wouldn’t be enough to just fake their death on the forum; they’d also have to convince the authorities that they’d died, because otherwise the will wouldn’t get implemented.
