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To the OP. Check out some of the bigger gaming events such as Adepticon and Orgins ect ect.. My buddies have walked out of those shows with great deals from vendors.

darkcloak wrote:
And yeah I look at the situation objectively. I pay a certain price to bring my goods in and I am bound by that prices, it dictates what I can sell my items for. If someone can beat that price then fine, but what they don't realize is that yeah, sure in the short term I lose and they win, but long term they can't sustain their operation because now they've lowered the value of the market. No one is going to keep going to that merchant when his prices go up.

What you're missing here is that the people selling piles of badly-painted space marines are usually people who just want to get rid of stuff, not businesses looking to build a long-term market. Selling a whole army for 10% of retail price is a great deal if they'd otherwise just toss it in the garbage because they're tired of having it take up space. The long-term part of the market is provided by the fact that there's an endless supply of people trying to get rid of their low-quality models.

As for your claim that you'd laugh at an offer of half retail price for the worst of your models, I think you're making the mistake of confusing the value of something with the price you need to sell it for to make a profit. Remember, the absolute maximum price for NIB models is 80% of retail price, unless you're making a charity donation to your local store. I think it's pretty hard to argue that badly-painted models are as appealing as NIB, so that means the reasonable price you can expect to sell them at is going to have to be a lot less than 80% of retail. IMO if you're really getting offers of half retail for your worst models you should be taking them, as those are the kind of models I tend to see being sold for beer money.

I have a lot of the same buyers sense the OP has. When I first got into 40K near the end of last year, I didn't feel like spending a crap ton of money, but I also wanted to get a good chunk of models as well. Being an Ork player, I did a lot of research on what I was in for, and knew it would be costly. I can say I've done an amazing job getting deals to bolster my army. I can comfortably field 4-5k points of upgraded Orks in the monthly Apoc game at the local shop. And I spent just under 500 bucks for all of them. I bought two lots on Ebay, but it took me a lot of waiting and watching, and I had to be firm with myself that I wouldn't spend over what I thought they were all worth, painted/assembled or otherwise.

A lot of people need to understand that used models are USED models. I know it sucks having to let them go for less than you payed/put time into. But it doesn't matter. A used TV is still a used TV, even if you only used it for a month or so...it's no longer new. It's value drops. Period. Also, when you buy used models, as the OP said, most times you will want to paint them yourself in the end, so that work the old owner put into them is gone.

Then comes the fun of buying online and shipping. Then you have time to put into repairing broken models. I had to spend at least a week or so per order I made on Ebay to repair units that had broken off bases or lost limbs, and don't get me started on the sorrow of completely broken Deffkopter rotors or broken beyond repair flight stands. I know that comes with the cost of buying online, but thats a factor sellers need to include in their prices. Not try to earn back all their losses. Thats not how selling used works. If someone could buy the same item new as it costed used...why would anyone ever want to buy used?

Kiwidru wrote:
I guess my rebuttal would be: If it is established that a factory-new product can be purchased for roughly a 30% discount
(many options here: http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/363810.page ),
That becomes the 'upper limit' of price.

Except that GW is making more and more things web-only every day, forcing people to pay the full price for army essentials. They are rapidly cutting down on ways to get cheap models.

The best way to get bulk models is to buy the worst abominations you can find on eBay, strip them, separate out the parts, convert them, base them, paint them, and use them in your games.

I don't personally pay more than 50% of the retail price for used models, and rarely buy new ones. The exception to this is Forgeworld, which are hard to get secondhand. Historically, about 90% of my purchases come from eBay, but I recently purchased 6 'big' armies from friends for very, very little money (about $1,700 total for 21,000 points+ of models that includes a lot of new stuff and a lot of OOP stuff).

At this point in my life, I don't see the point of working with things new off the sprue. It's less about money and more about personal creativity. Models on the sprue tend to suggest certain ways of assembly, while existing models tend to suggest unique ideas that can be built upon and made my own.

as i said i agree with the bulk purchase of poor painted assembled models being cheaper, the examples i provided are the type that if you were to consider buying its because its ready to play as it is, you dont need nor want to do anything with them. also the other reason that i mention that if i sold my army and i was asking a premium in my case everything is magnetized for every option and would also be coming with enough BF to lug 20,000 points of army around.

sure it wouldnt be for everyone, and its not something that you buy JUST to buy. if you want that sit on ebay and wait for someone desperate for cash, eventually you will see something really cheap.but personally for me... nope, i dont want to buy something thats a pain in the ass, i just would buy NIB NOS and start from scratch. id also as an aussie get mates in america to get it for me and get some meaaan discounts.