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Plenty ebay and house horror stories, but the one that really takes the biscuit was moving into my current house. Previous owners were kind enough to sweep up all the dead flies (they'd moved out previously), but left them in a pile on the worktop. She also left a skanky, pube covered razor in the bathroom, and a pack of 'feminine toy wipes'. Some folk have no shame. To top it off, when I went to put my tools in the shed, I found the geezer had left all their rubbish in there.

We'd just finished cleaning our old house from top to bottom, and had left the buyers a bunch of flowers and bottle of wine...

i finally got the paint off models i bought from some guy at our FLGS. I am seriously beside myself because he is a great guy, but I paid 125 for a bunch of his models and they were painted on top of painted on top of painted. totally ridiculous. He is one of those people that plays every army and obviously he would change space marine armies and just reprime and repaint over the old paint. needless to say he isnt much of a painter but my god, I can't even believe someone would paint models that much.

 snurl wrote:
I got some minis once that looked like they had been painted with latex housepaint. Couldn't even see the chainmail until it was stripped.
On the house stories side, i've been in this place for 25 years and i still find Lego bits on occasion from the kids who lived here before us. That and odd toy bits dug up from the garden.

My girlfriend exhumed an original Thundercats Mumm-Ra from her garden.

I used to have an undead army way back when (like the late 90's).

They were painted with their cloaks to look like flames.

I used the old Death Elemental as the leader of the scyth-armed unit.

I sold them to one of the local gamers at the Laurel Mall GW store in Maryland since I needed the cash, I always wondered what ever happened to them. If he still has them and uses them or if they were sold again.

I have seen some strange things from minis I bought.

Purchased a salamanders army once. The player pinned the torsos so they could rotate 360 degrees. I got the models, put them on a table and jumped up. 60 marines with bodies spinning, it was like a video game.

Purchased an Emperor's Children army once. Came with a bunch of seekers. I got the paint off them, turned out they were scratch built, some of them with modelling clay. I thought they were recasts, turns out the guy carved them himself.

Purchased a Razorback once for parts. Shook it, sounded like there was something in there. Opened the back hatch and found a guy's wedding ring. He had been looking for it 6 years ago and gotten a new one since then. Unfortunately, his wife was the one who got the letter, and she was pissed at him.

Purchased a leman russ off ebay, The guy had sprayed primer to close to the model and it had swelled up and cracked on the back left side of it. Worked fine, till the dog ate it.

New house we moved into, my showers water lines did not have extensions added to handle backlash from the lines being shut off after a shower, they continued to hit against the wall till they broke. Thankfully, the basement at the time was lined with plastic so no damage.

Family did not believe me either for the first 3 months that once the lines were cut I would hear a hard knock against the wall from the pipes jumping.

picked up a second hand rhino once, and after i had stripped the paint, i found that it had been assembled with hot glue

No bad house stories here (Not moved out yet ), but I was once give a load of marines by one of my mums friends (her son no longer played) and I was shocked by the quality. Terrible gluing on all the marines, the bolter grips hadn't been removed, they hadn't even been undercoated-just painted directly on, and the pant was really thick, etc. And I don't even play SMs. Still, the MK1 Rhino was a bonus, along with the old plastic termies, Librarian in termie armour and some other stuff, including 5 metal scouts which I now use as stormtroopers.

 paulson games wrote:
I ebay ordered some battletech guys from Australia and when they arrived they reeked of pot. There was actual trace amounts of ash in the box and it smelled like it'd been packaged in left over stuffing from Bob Marley's couch. Even after taking them out of the box the smell lingered on the model for weeks.

Amusingly it's the only package I've ever had from outside the US that was marked as having been opened for postal inspection (and I buy a ton of stuff from overseas). It likely had a sniffer dog hit on it and they checked it to see what was inside..

That reminds me of two smoking-related stories, one home, one GW related.

When I moved into my current home I got rid of a 'comms rack' (a rack for 19" wide rack-mount gear. Basically, two vertical uprights with pre-drilled homes to mount network gear, shelves, light servers, etc. I had used for years as it really didn't have a place and was kind of unwieldy. After moving, I still had some rack-mount stuff I wanted to keep, so I ended up ordering a couple rack-cases off eBay. These are simialr, but have a black pastic hard-case around them, two sets of rails, etc. They're also much shorter: The two rack cases I ended up with are only about 3 feet tall vs. 6 feet for the old comms rack.

Rack cases are big with musicians and traveling tech stuff because they're built to be kicked around. Screw your gear in, add the front/rear panels, and you're good to go. It was funny enough that these got shippid inc arboard boxes, as they're technically OK to ship by just slapping a shipping label on in most cases.

Anyway, they're popular with musicians, so I guess I shouldn't be surprised that they has a bit of what we'll call an 'herbal' smell to them. Had to keep them outside for a while to air out, but thankfully plastic and metal don't absorb smells too well. Unlike paper, which leads to....

Another ebay purchase was the old 2nd Edition SoB codex. Came in in great shape, but reaked of cigarette smoke. It's been years, but I've still barely looked at it because of that.

Got a Mephiston model a while back- was a truly horrific paintjob on it. Couldn't figure out what paint was on it but he's now been paint stripped down to the metal and looks so much better! He'll look great in my Angels of Death army.

 Eggs wrote:

Previous owners were kind enough to sweep up all the dead flies (they'd moved out previously), but left them in a pile on the worktop. She also left a skanky, pube covered razor in the bathroom, and a pack of 'feminine toy wipes'. Some folk have no shame. To top it off, when I went to put my tools in the shed, I found the geezer had left all their rubbish in there.

GRIM.

The previous owner left a massive turd in the upstairs loo for us. And a mop that smelt like it was 300 hundred years old.

They actually called 'round for some reason or other, so I gave them the mop back.

 monders wrote:

 Eggs wrote:

Previous owners were kind enough to sweep up all the dead flies (they'd moved out previously), but left them in a pile on the worktop. She also left a skanky, pube covered razor in the bathroom, and a pack of 'feminine toy wipes'. Some folk have no shame. To top it off, when I went to put my tools in the shed, I found the geezer had left all their rubbish in there.

GRIM.

The previous owner left a massive turd in the upstairs loo for us. And a mop that smelt like it was 300 hundred years old.

They actually called 'round for some reason or other, so I gave them the mop back.

My lot did a moonlight flit to a south american country. We still get calls from debt collectors nearly 4 years later. One of the neighbours is friends with them though, so I had the pleasure of passing a message asking if she wanted me to post her dildo wipes to columbia.

Call me old fashioned, but when you are giving someone over a quarter of a million quid for a pile of bricks, I expect it to be a clean pile of bricks...

I'd have asked them if they wanted their turd back.

 techsoldaten wrote:

Purchased a Razorback once for parts. Shook it, sounded like there was something in there. Opened the back hatch and found a guy's wedding ring. He had been looking for it 6 years ago and gotten a new one since then. Unfortunately, his wife was the one who got the letter, and she was pissed at him.

/thread





Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Eggs wrote:
One of the neighbours is friends with them though, so I had the pleasure of passing a message asking if she wanted me to post her dildo wipes to columbia.

At least she was hygenic.

I want to amend my earlier post. One thought I do have often when I purchase a figure that is well painted is "why did this person sell this figure". I've sold and resold many hundreds of figures, but only a few figures that I've painted myself.

When I get a great deal on really well painted figures it's almost a tiny bit melancholy that someone put such care into their minis and they sold them away. Of course I'm probably just projecting, but that's how it feels.

 Redbeard wrote:
If you think buying used minis leaves you with questions, wait until you buy a house.

Our prior owners had drilled a hole in a wall in the living room, and ran an extension cord into the basement instead of wiring a new socket.

Oh my GOD, this, SOOOO this.


As for the OP, I've traded quite a bit and I've had some head-scratching moments myself. Generally the stuff I send out is stuff that I've taken care of or not even started to assemble, so I can't speak from the 'offenders' viewpoint. But there have been times when I've looked at what the sender referred to as a Space Wolf Grey Hunter and only see the vague outline of SM armor, the rest of it is coated in things I don't even think were 40k related.

 Jimsolo wrote:

 Redbeard wrote:
If you think buying used minis leaves you with questions, wait until you buy a house.

Our prior owners had drilled a hole in a wall in the living room, and ran an extension cord into the basement instead of wiring a new socket.

My wife and I moved into a new house where the circuit breaker box in the basement is in a shower.

Back on topic though, yeah, this frequently happens when I buy used minis. When i purchased a lot of Space Marines, they all came painted brown-and-poop green, with little pot leaves as a chapter symbol.

....
Did by chance thows mini's came from New Brunswick Canada? Because I might know the guy you got thows from....

Otherwise it turns out their were two people in this world who had the same idea.

Nothing like getting models in a trade that you knew were a little beefier than normal and finding 3 total paint colors as you strip them clean.

My Dark Angel, I mean Templar, I mean Ultramarine marines are being turned into Imperial Fists!!

I needed Tacticals...and these were cheap. :-P I'm a big fan of getting cheap Marines from AoBR and such.

What I've noticed through eBay scouring is the startling amount of very fashionable womens clothing that tends to be up from the same seller as masses of warhammer, which was a bit of a surprise. Either there's some secret league of fashion and gaming or wargamers are more popular with the ladies than the media would have us believe. Aside from that just the usual tales of mini's which seem to have been dipped in poly-cement and rolled in the bits box.

 Eggs wrote:
Plenty ebay and house horror stories, but the one that really takes the biscuit was moving into my current house. Previous owners were kind enough to sweep up all the dead flies (they'd moved out previously), but left them in a pile on the worktop. She also left a skanky, pube covered razor in the bathroom, and a pack of 'feminine toy wipes'. Some folk have no shame. To top it off, when I went to put my tools in the shed, I found the geezer had left all their rubbish in there.

We'd just finished cleaning our old house from top to bottom, and had left the buyers a bunch of flowers and bottle of wine...

Oh delightful, our last house they'd left a bunch of cleaning products in the bathroom, and a couple of cardboard tubes, sorting through it we discovered they were 'make a copy of your gentleman sausage' kits, one of which appeared to be used, they swiftly found the bin along with the gloves that moved them.

First house we bought - the previous owners left a deep-fat frier, full of fat, sitting on the drive. Yum. Oh, and the ever popular "shed full of broken garden chairs".

Bought a set of Bane Knights that were brass rodded, pinned, and partially based. They really were a steal.

Except that each model had like three brush strokes of random color on various parts of the primed black model. No rhyme, no reason, just random bits of paint all over. Strangest damn thing I've seen.

 Ignatius-Grulgor wrote:
What I've noticed through eBay scouring is the startling amount of very fashionable womens clothing that tends to be up from the same seller as masses of warhammer, which was a bit of a surprise. Either there's some secret league of fashion and gaming or wargamers are more popular with the ladies than the media would have us believe. Aside from that just the usual tales of mini's which seem to have been dipped in poly-cement and rolled in the bits box.
.

I may be able to explain this phenomenon, as my very own ebay account is like this - the missus and I, when we're a bit short of cash, sometimes hit up the local car boot sales/flea markets. She'll spend 50 quid or so on clothes, while I look for wargaming bargains. Then we hawk the lot on ebay for a small profit. Keeps us ticking over during the lean times.

 Eilif wrote:
I want to amend my earlier post. One thought I do have often when I purchase a figure that is well painted is "why did this person sell this figure". I've sold and resold many hundreds of figures, but only a few figures that I've painted myself.

I've sold a couple of really well painted figures that I wish I hadn't. (especially since I paint slow as heck) I'd painted up a trio of the FW Tau XV9s to a really high standard and was having a really tight month with bills so I put them up on ebay. Even with a really solid paint job the auction barely made back what I'd paid for them. I've since replaced the models but almost two years later the replacements are still unbuilt and unpainted. I've regretted selling the original ones so many times.

The only upside is that the buyer had contacted me when they arrived and said how much he loved the paint job, so I know they found a good home rather than a bath in paint stripper.

 Eggs wrote:

 Ignatius-Grulgor wrote:
What I've noticed through eBay scouring is the startling amount of very fashionable womens clothing that tends to be up from the same seller as masses of warhammer, which was a bit of a surprise. Either there's some secret league of fashion and gaming or wargamers are more popular with the ladies than the media would have us believe. Aside from that just the usual tales of mini's which seem to have been dipped in poly-cement and rolled in the bits box.
.

I may be able to explain this phenomenon, as my very own ebay account is like this - the missus and I, when we're a bit short of cash, sometimes hit up the local car boot sales/flea markets. She'll spend 50 quid or so on clothes, while I look for wargaming bargains. Then we hawk the lot on ebay for a small profit. Keeps us ticking over during the lean times.

Oh I do love a good car boot where they've clearly got no idea what they've got on the table, once got two 99% intact copies of battle for skull pass for a fiver, then there's the real golden finds in rare sculpts and the like, though they somehow rarely make it as far as resale.

It's the same with chicks clothes believe it or not - many women will spend £50 on a top or whatever, then sell it for a pound or two at a car boot. We then sell it for 20.

I've picked up all sorts of minis at car boots. Best was a still in cellophane copy of space crusade for £5.

I've got a few used models and house stories myself. I got a set of the aeronautica imperial is rulebooks and like 8 sets of maneuver cards for 40$ on ebay, they smelled of smoke and still do a little bit even though its been a year. And recently I found an old Russ with the old metal annihilator turret for 11$ in a used bin, it was oddly missing 2 links in one of the tracks (broken missing not "used the wrong length" missing) and I noticed the outer track panels were sticking out a bit, so I prised off the panels to discover that whoever built it put the wheels on backwards. The turret was glued down to the hull. And lastly the whole tank had been primed in something that refused to come off after almost a week in simple green.

As for house stories, my current house has its oddities but my dads old house was really weird. There was puke green shag carpet in the bathroom, wood paneling in every room of the house, and Dr. Suess must've done the wiring. Also on a wiring note, in the foyer/hall, there was one of those stereotypical warehouse lamps, the dark green metal type, wired up.

Wow. I thought I had reason to be annoyed with my house's previous owners. They did plenty of perplexing stuff, but nothing of the "I'm basically trying to burn this house down" variety.

Regarding used minis...I always think I'm expecting the worst but I'm still usually surprised by something.

I get a fair amount of used stuff but I try to snag bitz lots all the time. Some of the failed conversions are outstandingly weird. like island of misfit toys weird.

The most recent was a pair of terminator conversions. the terminator had lengthened arms holding some pick axe looking weapon from fantasy maybe? the legs were tau crisis suit legs, with green stuff on the feet to look like talons and the heads were replaced with a resin head of an italian renaissance plague mask.

usually in every large bitz lot i find a partial or failed conversion and wonder "what was this supposed to look like?"

I was got a chaos rhino on eBay for a fiver. Didn't look too bad on the pictures as it was just primed black.
When I received it looked as tho it was painted with tar using a wallpaper brush, but after I cut off the random spikes and filed back the big bulges of glue and paint, it actually made a pretty nice nurgle rhino! (after a bit of green stuffing and replacing top hatch/side doors, and a half decent paint job) ;-)

Beware the blurry pics on Ebay! I bought two Wave Serpents for a "steal" that arrived globbed with glue and giant gaps. Contacted the seller, who apparently was a kid, and admitted they were his first attempts at modelling. Was cool enough to refund my money.

House-wise, I've had one previous owner leave me a garage full of junk. In my current house I found an autographed porn mag tucked away on a shelf, buried cement stepping stones that someones kid's made at school and tore up my hands pulling up an invisible fence wire out of the yard. Also found a woman's ring in one of the window sills but it turned out to be worthless.