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As with all hobby things, be 100% honest with yourself.

Games and rules change all the time. Do you collect miniatures which are specifically for a certain game, or more generic ones? If you're collecting historicals there are always more rule sets out there to try. If you love the period (or have previously), stash your minis, wait for a new inspiring set of rules, or go on Game Vault and start digging around for some new $3-5 PDFs and see if you can find something that intrigues you.

If they're miniatures tied to a certain rule set....how much do you like that game?

I've sold off a number of games I started and don't normally regret it, but that also means I wasn't super-invested in the start. I only occasionally sell off painted miniatures, and only when I've replaced with them with painted miniatures which are nicer/neater/better/newer, etc.

Are the things you're considering selling off valuable at all? Would the proceeds help fund another project you're more passionate about? Normally you lose your ass selling on used wargaming stuff, so it's hard to justify actually selling them if you make back 20-30% of what you spent on them, particularly if the miniatures aren't terribly popular.

 Just Tony wrote:
I was just given a box of models that one my my son's physical therapists had sitting in her garage. Apparently her father in law died before being able to finish his small Space Wolves army, and she gave them to me with the stipulation that I don't sell them, that I pay it forward. So now I'm sitting on 6 Wolf Guard Terminators, Ragnar Blackmane, what looks to be a few Rogue Trader era pewter Wolves minis, and a ton of pewter Grey Hunters/possibly some Long Fangs.

So now I get to chase down a recipient. Yay. Hopefully they'll want to swap some 3rd ed or later plastics, my daughter is eyeballing the models and wants to start her own army to play 3rd Ed. with me.

Disregard, my daughter is going to be using these.

At one point I had 11 40k armies all between 1.5 and 2k points. One day I just turned around and realised the amount of work I had to put in to those armies to get them to the standard that I wanted them to be at. I baulked at it and it nearly killed the game for me.

Through a slow process I realised that I had armies I didn't really care about or had no real affinity with. Some I inherited from former players and no-one needed 6 astartes armies(TS/IW/BA/DA/SW/UM) ever. I sighed and got rid of 9 out of the11, over a period of a year or so. I'm so glad that I did it as it just seemed to clear the decks for me and allowed me to focus on the factions that I did actually enjoy.

The only army I even slightly miss was my Tzeentch/TS army and only because of the conversions that my friend did for me. And I don't think he's forgiven me for it 5 years later. I do miss a few small things but it's outweighed by the relief of not having so many projects hanging over me. Which I didn't realise was a huge stress factor for me and getting rid had a massive efect on me and my hobby.

For memberberies I present the Tzeentch daemon trolley alas now long gone:

I think it's down to you how you want to do it. If you're unsure or nervous as I know some people can be then start with some small things you've never used and see how it goes.

Now I've got 2 armies and focussing on them and getting them to an I'll admit middling standard has allowed me to start a scenery project which I'm really enjoying.

kryczek wrote:
it's outweighed by the relief of not having so many projects hanging over me. Which I didn't realise was a huge stress factor for me and getting rid had a massive efect on me and my hobby.

I wasn't in as extreme a position as yourself, but I'll certainly echo this point!
It's REALLY easy for some of us to get wrapped up in the story and creative potential of new armies; plus buying into new armies isn't too hard - new or secondhand you can very quickly build up a huge backlog of models. Thing is without realising it you can pressure yourself this way. It's all possible to achieve, but eventually you reach a point where the time required exceeds that which you have. This can really start to put a dampener on your progress because no matter what progress you might make with one army, the bulk of the work above you weighs you down and doesn't seem to "shift" or change. You're basically chipping away at a mountainside with a toothpick.

For me I found that selling off a load of old elf stuff that I was just never getting around to using really freed me up. I even sold on my Battlefleet ships that had never seen combat more than once or twice. Not only did I feel more free, not only did I find I had more mental and physical space - but I also freed up money that let my invest into a new army without any purchasing guilt. So in the end I was able to not only remove projects I wasn't working on; but also give myself a nice boost to momentum and energy to get on with a fresh army that, otherwise, I'd likely have not been able to buy into and would have also not had the "mental" space to really fit into things.


Something else I found was that selling models became a lot easier and quicker when I did two things:
1) I got onto Facebook - yeah its social media with all its trappings; but it has a much bigger buying population. Forums you can find many great people to trade with, but the populations are much smaller and the time scale can be quite long before you get anyone interested. FB can speed things up no end in that regard.

2) I set myself a financial target for the money raised from the sales. For me this was putting the money toward Ossiarch Bonereapers at launch. This in effect gave me a "deadline" to work with. Sure it wasn't a strong deadline, but it was a target to work with. It helped me focus on selling - on remembering to update and put up ads; to bump them (at the right time without spamming) etc.... It gave me that little edge. In the past I've sold stuff, but also been very casual as I wasn't "using" the money for anything specific (it was just clearing space) so it was easy to forget it after a while (esp if I'd not had any bites in a while).


Of course there is a trap with the last one - that trap being that if selling starts to go really well, you can run the risk of tricking yourself into parting with more than you might otherwise. So DO temper it against trying to keep a level head. The risk is that you get so hooked on that financial target that you start to sacrifice more and more potential projects and models for the sale; only to later pause and realise that you didn't actually "really" want to part with them.

I am also going through this at the moment. Too many half baked projects that are taking away time, space, and resources for games that I actually play and like.

I have a specific drawer in my closet called the "drawer of hurt feelings" filled with crap that will never get used.

I'm about to bite the bullet and get rid of absolutely everything that I'm not using. I'm tired of looking at it and feeling guilty.

I have cleared out items from my past and greatly regretted it (namely my GI Joe, transformers and Battletech), so I prefer not to get rid of anything I can.

There was actually a lot of things I was holding on to play with or pass on to my sons, but it has become clear they aren’t interested (40K and the Star Wars figure collection I have, for example).

However, about two years ago I had moved a substantial amount of my RPG collection (mostly D&D) to a storage unit while remodeling the house. I have a substantial amount that was not moved back that I now have in electronic format.

I would like to part with the excess, but there’s too little interest to sell it, and I would rather not just throw it out. I had contemplated donating it, but not sure if they could handle the volume.

 Just Tony wrote:

 Just Tony wrote:
I was just given a box of models that one my my son's physical therapists had sitting in her garage. Apparently her father in law died before being able to finish his small Space Wolves army, and she gave them to me with the stipulation that I don't sell them, that I pay it forward. So now I'm sitting on 6 Wolf Guard Terminators, Ragnar Blackmane, what looks to be a few Rogue Trader era pewter Wolves minis, and a ton of pewter Grey Hunters/possibly some Long Fangs.

So now I get to chase down a recipient. Yay. Hopefully they'll want to swap some 3rd ed or later plastics, my daughter is eyeballing the models and wants to start her own army to play 3rd Ed. with me.

Disregard, my daughter is going to be using these.

Awesome!!!


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I gave models to some kids at the local GeeDubya this year for xmas... a unit of old gobbo.spider riders i was never going to use for a kid starting out, some old metal gargoyles for a guy with an old metal fetish ... next year i will give others...

Keep 'em. There's always a use for them, a new ruleset, one you've written yourself- or you'll find you want to play one of those games again after you've given away the minis and rulebooks.

I've kept all my stuff, even my 40k minis which I don't expect to ever use to play 40k again. I built them. I painted them. I'll use 'em for other rulesets.

 jeff white wrote:

 Just Tony wrote:

 Just Tony wrote:
I was just given a box of models that one my my son's physical therapists had sitting in her garage. Apparently her father in law died before being able to finish his small Space Wolves army, and she gave them to me with the stipulation that I don't sell them, that I pay it forward. So now I'm sitting on 6 Wolf Guard Terminators, Ragnar Blackmane, what looks to be a few Rogue Trader era pewter Wolves minis, and a ton of pewter Grey Hunters/possibly some Long Fangs.

So now I get to chase down a recipient. Yay. Hopefully they'll want to swap some 3rd ed or later plastics, my daughter is eyeballing the models and wants to start her own army to play 3rd Ed. with me.

Disregard, my daughter is going to be using these.

Awesome!!!


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I gave models to some kids at the local GeeDubya this year for xmas... a unit of old gobbo.spider riders i was never going to use for a kid starting out, some old metal gargoyles for a guy with an old metal fetish ... next year i will give others...

Not so awesome. I'm not keen on my daughter messing with metal models, especially a few I am fairly confident are lead. I think I may wind up waiting until my wife is well and truly distracted and not focusing on the "feels" involved with this and find a better owner. Sure, it'd be ideal if I could make it a trade, but in the end I will follow the donator's stipulations.

From what I recall the lead models GW used to make only contain a trace amount of lead. She'd have to be eating/sucking on them for hours to have any lead poisoning effect and once layered with paint and varnish they'd be pretty darn safe to use.

Besides why strip them out, fuel the fun and add to it with some modern plastic Space Wolves. Perhaps she'll paint up the metals and then move to plastics all on her own without you stealing them away.

Fairly sure the amount of lead in GW minis has about the same negative health effect as a day out in a large city, probably more heavy metals and carcinogens in the air in said city than in 2000pts of old GW models.