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Been trying to get my hands on two of those new 40k Thousand Sons dice packs and can't stop lamenting how it appears that so many people seem to have bought quite a few and think it's funny to fleece their fellow hobbyists by selling them for more than double their MSRP. So, this thread isn't all about moaning and groaning per say , but what was the 40k mini or item you saw for sale that ever made you do the biggest double take?

Hmm I can only think of Space Hulk. £70 from gw whwn they did it, go for mininum ~£140 and often north of £200 :/

The problem wouldn't exist if people weren't that amazed by fancy dice that they're willing to pay silly money for them.
I guess that could go for buying anything from GW/Forgeworld, retail or otherwise

An old old Nuln Spearman just sold on ebay for close to $2000.

Someone trying to sell the contents of the Dark Vengeance box and a 5 man squad of assault termies for $800. They were tournament painted, but not overly well.

GW selling a full tank company (ten Leman Russ kits) new in box for $200 back at 4e Apocalypse. I know it isn't a 'ridiculous markup' but that's the biggest double-take I've ever done at the price of any 40k models.

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:
An old old Nuln Spearman just sold on ebay for close to $2000.

This.

http://m.ebay.co.uk/itm/252656411519?_trksid=p2047675.l2557&_mwBanner=1

The Nuln Spearman wins. Holy gak.

And I thought that $800 for the skaven LE end times book and $120 for 10 skaven dice was silly. Yeah, that spearman wins, easily. I don't know who would want one of those orver a warlord, but there you go.

Screen shot for posterity

Assuming the seller got it in 1990 for oh, 5UKP, what is the return on investment?

£3071.25 or so. That's... impressive.

I'd say GW releasing the Tau 7E codex right after Mont'ka and Kauyon and making little to no mention of the fact to most people that you were buying literally one of the campaign books and that almost nothing changed from 6E.

When GW is doing the scalping, that's what hurts the most.

If you belong to any of the Facebook resale groups you'll pretty much instantly see people doing 1-200% Markup on the Many extra copies of things they bought online.

While not the most ridiculous, I still think it's pretty ridiculous.

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:
An old old Nuln Spearman just sold on ebay for close to $2000.

Wait, so selling a rare, unreleased item is considered scalping?

Or is that a standard release figure that got bid up by ignorance and eBay hype?

Regardless I wouldn't consider either case scalping.

I sold my Blood Rage KS stuff recently and checked Ebay to see what it was going for.. saw one guy trying to get $1200 for the same thing, there were a couple in the $5-600 range, and one around $300.

I saw my local FLGS selling Sedition Wars for $89.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
I saw my local FLGS selling Sedition Wars for $89.

I wish I only paid that much Really glad I picked Sedition Wars and dropped my Zombicide pledge for the same amount.....

Kingdom Death stuff goes for fairly ridiculous amounts on eBay...

 Drasius wrote:
I don't know who would want one of those orver a warlord, but there you go.

Someone who values a rare, unreleased collector's item over an in-production kit that anyone who wants one can buy at any time? Talking about "scalping" in the context of old OOP stuff doesn't make much sense, of course old models that have been OOP for a long time are going to sell for more than MSRP was decades ago.

sparkywtf wrote:

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
I saw my local FLGS selling Sedition Wars for $89.

I wish I only paid that much Really glad I picked Sedition Wars and dropped my Zombicide pledge for the same amount.....

I, too, paid far too much in that Kickstarter. And yet, for $15-$20, I've bought another few boxes...

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Rare-1995-Pre-production-Baron-Of-Hell-Doom-Reaper-Miniature-Sandra-L-Garrity-/252194645173

A new contender emerges....

I paid $110au for a single 32mm model. However, it's limited edition and I don't think it was ever sold. I also have one that tends to go for about $300au, but I didn't pay that (I got it in a budle) but there was only a few hundred of those made.

I would tend to agree with Peregrine and say that selling OOP rare stuff for lots of money doesn't really seem like scalping. I was more referring to things like people buying up lots of Thousand Sons dice sets that were set at $20 BT Gdubs, and then turning around and trying to sell them for $40-50 on eBay or other selling/trading sites.

Like I said, not trying to argue the morality of scalping but just wondering what other outlandish markups some of you may have seen.

Once tried to buy 20 odd issues of the old Battle Games in Middle Earth magazine off an eBay seller. All advertised at £0.99 and sold at that price me being the only bidder. All listings promised to combine postage on multiple items...

He then sent me a bill for £40 postage, and outright admitted up front he was inflating the postage to get a "fair price" according to what he felt the magazines were worth. He then "generously" offered (his words) to give me a £10 "discount" on the postage, and berated me for being a poor buyer.

I wasn't having that. If he'd advertised the issues at £5 per issue, i would have purchased at those prices. (I wanted a full collection and would have bought at any price). Got him to cancel, then told him what I thought of him hiding his true prices in postage (scathing, but not abusive). Urged him to markup the costs of his listings rather than inflate postage.

A couple days later the issues were relisted at a minimum of £8.99 each.

 DarkTraveler777 wrote:

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:
An old old Nuln Spearman just sold on ebay for close to $2000.

Wait, so selling a rare, unreleased item is considered scalping?

Or is that a standard release figure that got bid up by ignorance and eBay hype?

Regardless I wouldn't consider either case scalping.

I agree the seller was not asking that price, but idiocy drove that price up.

 bomtek80 wrote:
I would tend to agree with Peregrine and say that selling OOP rare stuff for lots of money doesn't really seem like scalping. I was more referring to things like people buying up lots of Thousand Sons dice sets that were set at $20 BT Gdubs, and then turning around and trying to sell them for $40-50 on eBay or other selling/trading sites.

Like I said, not trying to argue the morality of scalping but just wondering what other outlandish markups some of you may have seen.

actually several sets available on eBay now for less then $40 a set, personally I never could understand dice buyers and why they feel compelled to spend extra money on dice just because of a symbol on them, when you can probably go to Chessex and get the same dice with the same or close symbol on them for a lot less?

I'm a dice whore, so I "get it". However, my dice whoring only goes so far as "I'd like some cool dice to match my army...but I'll pay basic cost (if reasonable) and that's it". At the very least I like colour-matching dice, etc.

You can email Chessex and have custom made 16mm D6's with a single logo for $1.00 per dice. That's about double what a single die normally costs. Price goes down when you order over 25 dice.

You simply select from their available dice colours/combos and pay X amount for each facing (so if you want 6's replaced by an icon - that's just one custom face). It becomes expensive obviously if you want to make each die face custom.

If I were playing a WW2 game, I'd definitely spring for some cool coloured dice with a national logo on the six or something. That's geeky stuff I like. That doesn't mean I'll go pay $50 for a handful of dice though.

Nevermind

Not a 40k mini per se, but I once saw the gw fellowship of the ring box listed for 2000 U.S. Dollars on amazon.com. wasn't even rare at the time.

Buying something and then waiting decades while it naturally goes up in value isn't "scalping". Scalping implies a reasonably quick turn around buying something from a retailer then reselling it at an inflated price.

Asterios wrote:
I agree the seller was not asking that price, but idiocy drove that price up.

How is it idiocy? $2000 isn't actually that excessive by the standards of adult hobbies, and an extremely rare unreleased miniature is much more like a work of art than a common toy.