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At age 14, I'm not doing this for a living, but I have been selling painted miniatures at a hefty profit for the last year or so--almost completely LOTR ones. I consider myself a fairly skilled painter, and have found that LOTR sells quite well, so I've mainly stuck to that. My few and far between attempts at selling 40k have been at a loss of money. Anyone know what I'm doing wrong? Does 40k just not sell as well? And how well does Warhammer Fantasy sell painted?

Thanks,
-Josh

Honestly, unless you can paint to GD standards, then I would perhaps offer a commission service and not try to sell one off jobs.

Few people buy prepainted singles for fantasy.

I would assume that the people that play 40k are a little more Hard-core into the hobby side of the game rather than the LotR players.

Non-wargamers buy pre-painted LotR models. You could try painting some models from other famous books and movies.

You will have to look at non-GW manufactures though.

Lord of Kaith wrote:At age 14, I'm not doing this for a living, but I have been selling painted miniatures at a hefty profit for the last year or so--almost completely LOTR ones. I consider myself a fairly skilled painter, and have found that LOTR sells quite well, so I've mainly stuck to that. My few and far between attempts at selling 40k have been at a loss of money. Anyone know what I'm doing wrong? Does 40k just not sell as well? And how well does Warhammer Fantasy sell painted?

Thanks,
-Josh

Its the crowd thing , every area have their popular choice of mini game.
In your case its LOTR , and in the area here , its 40k ( infact i have never seen a LOTR mini in store that belongs to a player )

Me neither, I've never even seen a LotR game get played...

Henners91 wrote:Me neither, I've never even seen a LotR game get played...

I think I saw one at Games Day last year, but I gave it a wide berth

I think the other issue with 40k is that more armies have uniforms and color schemes that need to be matched, so when buying something prepainted you are only likely to match the army you have. No one playing Ultramarines is likely to drop a big chunk of change on a Chapter Master in Dark Angels colors for example. It might be easier when doing an Ork or Chaos demon, or perhaps Aspect Warriors in their traditional colors, but most armies won't be able to fit the model in the scheme.

Fantasy might suffer the same problem, but I don't know about that as much.

I agree that commissions are probably a good route to go for doing more frequent work.

Thanks everyone for the quick and helpful replies

Commission painting it is. I have a few more LOTR minis to sell, and then I shall start advertising for commission painting.

A well painted limited edition model, such as Harry the Hammer, can sell for a lot, my friend say he saw one going for about £70 on Ebay, and it should rise as the WHFB 25th anniversary becomes further away into the past.

The only problem with this is, obviously, if you don't already have them they can be tricky or expensive (or both) to get hold of.

Good luck with your money-making schemes! I guess it beats selling lemonade.

got any photos of your work?

Sure

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/272792.page

Did this recently, however it is not to my highest standard (close though)