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Reading the DE rumor thread got me to thinking about something. I think it's highly unlikely that all of the sprues of a discontinued model go to waste. Does anyone know what GW does with stuff that they have in stock that didn't sell before being outdated? I know LGS will keep old stuff until it sells off of their shelves but GW stores won't(I think).

I wonder if they send them back to the factory to be melted down and reused or maybe make it to someone at 1/2-1/4 off?

GG

In my pocket....
In all seriousness no one knows O.o

I would imagine a tax write-off and then recycled.

I don't know though, to be honest.

That's why they stopped selling dark eldar ages ago. In the old days you used to be get a free grab bag if you ordered over a certain amount direct from GW. It was fun, sometimes kind of worthless, but I got a few of the Old Old eldar and imperial ships from battle fleet gothic this way. Free stuff, even if you don't need it can be fun, worst case is you just threw it in the bits bin.

I know that back when we made the transition from 3rd to 4th, all the unsold 3rd Ed boxed sets were taken to land fill. That's hundreds of unsold Marine, Dark Eldar and Land Speeder sprues being crushed.

They're often destroyed. I've seen pictures of them destroying the molds for limited edition figures before anyway. Unless of course there's a big GW vault like the Disney vault where they put all this old stuff. I'm guessing they're destroyed to prevent counterfeits.

They could sell them for cheap (or cheaper) to get rid of old stock, and they'd sell a bunch.

But GW is sometimes pathalogically afraid of making money. It comes in random spurts, but it does happen.

H.B.M.C. wrote:I know that back when we made the transition from 3rd to 4th, all the unsold 3rd Ed boxed sets were taken to land fill. That's hundreds of unsold Marine, Dark Eldar and Land Speeder sprues being crushed.

And that makes me a saaad panda....

Seriously, why would they do that? As opposed to selling them off cheap/melting them down for re-use

H.B.M.C. wrote:I know that back when we made the transition from 3rd to 4th, all the unsold 3rd Ed boxed sets were taken to land fill. That's hundreds of unsold Marine, Dark Eldar and Land Speeder sprues being crushed.

Wow...I just hurled.


GG

About a 110% sure they won't be giving them away or selling them cheap. "Make 'em buy the new ones".

I think i died inside.

These guys are all just being jerks for no reason.

There's actually this beautiful farm that all the old sprues get sent to where they can run, and play, and...sprue every day for the rest of their lives.

Le Grognard wrote:About a 110% sure they won't be giving them away or selling them cheap. "Make 'em buy the new ones".

Ahh.... yes excellent point there Le Grognard...hadn't thought of it that way.

GG

I don't know. Even if they sold them are regular prices (there was no difference between the starter Speeder and the one sitting on the shelf - ditto for the Marines and DE) it would have been fine. But just destroying them was so... senseless.

plastictrees wrote:... and...sprue every day ...

Nice.

The type of plastic that they use is NON recyclable. bummer.
the fact that GW just crushed the old ones. TOtally senseless. they could have just sent them to some young boys in tailand to have them assembled and painted for next to nothing and then sold as a prepainted army for a huge mark up./ yea ... i know. never going to happen.

Le Grognard wrote:About a 110% sure they won't be giving them away or selling them cheap. "Make 'em buy the new ones".

That's completely logical from a business stand point and not having to deal with too many unsold sprues is the best reason for them not to show us what's coming.
That said, from an economical stand point crushing them makes little sense, melting them and using the plastic does.

H.B.M.C. wrote:They could sell them for cheap (or cheaper) to get rid of old stock, and they'd sell a bunch.

But GW is sometimes pathalogically afraid of making money. It comes in random spurts, but it does happen.

By "spurts" you mean "every month or so" right?

The plastics are split up into the different types, then chipped and re-used to form new minis. The paper and card all goes to the recycler too, I know a couple of guys who work there

I'm suprised that the unsold kits and games don't go to a major liquidator to be sold off. GW would at least get something out of it.

GW does seem to give away quite a few sprues at Games Day in the make and take events, but......

+1 to destroying them

Its like back in the day when Atari dumped all their unsold game cartridges into landfills, or had them steamrolled.

I know my local GW keeps them in the back room and has an auction every now and then.

H.B.M.C. wrote:They could sell them for cheap (or cheaper) to get rid of old stock, and they'd sell a bunch.

But GW is sometimes pathalogically afraid of making money. It comes in random spurts, but it does happen.

They don't want you to bulk out your army on the cheap, they want you buying new fully priced stuff. I imagine they believe that the loss of destroying old stock is less than the loss in sales due to dumping a lot of stuff cheaply around the time they are re-releasing the product. And they could be right actually.

rabidaskal wrote:Its like back in the day when Atari dumped all their unsold game cartridges into landfills, or had them steamrolled.

Yeah but that was "E.T. - The Game", so there was a very good reason for that.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Howard A Treesong wrote:They don't want you to bulk out your army on the cheap, they want you buying new fully priced stuff. I imagine they believe that the loss of destroying old stock is less than the loss in sales due to dumping a lot of stuff cheaply around the time they are re-releasing the product. And they could be right actually.

But that's my point - they wouldn't need to sell it on the cheap. They could sell it full price because it's no different to what's on the shelf.

H.B.M.C. wrote:But that's my point - they wouldn't need to sell it on the cheap. They could sell it full price because it's no different to what's on the shelf.

Isn't that what they do with the 'collectors' range on the website, expect they put the prices up for older stock. All the DE have been on there for a long time now rather than the shops. They've probably been winding down the total stock for a while.









This thread title has just reminded me of that bit in Red Dwarf -

"But where do all the toasters go?"

I remember reading on one model company's website once before that they take their unused sprues and melt them down to cast new models with.. so maybe GW does the same.

I would hope they keep a bunch and sell them as archive/collector's sprues on their website in the off chance that someone wants them.

Necros wrote:I remember reading on one model company's website once before that they take their unused sprues and melt them down to cast new models with.. so maybe GW does the same.

I would hope they keep a bunch and sell them as archive/collector's sprues on their website in the off chance that someone wants them.

Odd, it was by my understanding that the plastic they use in the sprues was not reusable due to some sort of chemical process that went into the curing of the plastics while it was still in it's initial molten stage. This understanding was based upon other forum chatter though, so I can't verify it as fact.

Pretty sure they give them all away as prizes for all their corny in store games and contests.

That and at the Carnival of Chaos during Games Day.

There all gone to a big vault and in 15-20 years when there collectors peices then they will rerelease them at a 1000% mark up :]

H.B.M.C. wrote:I know that back when we made the transition from 3rd to 4th, all the unsold 3rd Ed boxed sets were taken to land fill. That's hundreds of unsold Marine, Dark Eldar and Land Speeder sprues being crushed.

And how exactly do you know this?

Told by GW staffers at the time.

Why, do you think I'm making it up?