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I only buy stuff I will build and paint, so for me I have 0% unbuilt/unopened. I am pretty intentional about my purchases, and only really buy Underworlds stuff at this point, as my 40k and AoS armies are complete at the moment.

I enjoy converting and kitbashing more than any other aspect of the hobby, so I have many, many “boxes” (baggies) where I have so far only used a fraction of the bits. But I still plan to use those bits of and when inspiration strikes.

Usually I’ll build one or two sprues worth of minis as intended to get a feel for how they look, how they go together, and how they might be converted. Then I will build a handful of minis based on a project idea I had that inspired me to buy the kit. Then, I hold onto them for the long term.

I think as high as 50% if we count stuff that is opened and looked at, and then put back into the box.

Many lack friends to play with apart from a single gamle with a weekend visit cousin. Others fail to build their stuff or paint it. My estimate is that in Europe during whfb 6th edition run maybe 9 out of 10 players who bought into whfb never played it, or played more than 2-3 games. Out of the remaining 10% I think maybe a third ever fielded a mostly painted army. All these unpainted and unassembled models on ebay has to come from somewhere, right?

 BertBert wrote:

The idea of buying a whole pile of boxes and stashing them away to maybe open them at a later point is so strange to me. Might as well buy them when I'm ready to build them and free up the money for the time being.

When to spend the $ is the point of a few of my purchases.
I bought the Silent King last year. I've very little interest in ever actually playing the piece - not then/not now/not in the future - because "giant character" has never been my style. And I doubt that's going to change. But it IS a cool model that one day I'll want to build/paint up anyways. Eventually it'll sit on my model shelf alongside other cool models I've built over the years.
So yeah, I spent x on it last year & put him on my storage shelf. Knowing that I'd eventually buy it anyways, it was smarter to spend x$ then than x++$ someday in the future (you know, after a few annual GW price hikes). I simply freed up future $.
Same with several FW kits back in the spring that I'd been looking at for a while. FW announced their price hike & the decision was pretty simple. Spend x$ now - even though I knew I was almost a year out from the project I was planning - or definitely pay considerably more later. I'm still several months away from the project (probably come Jan/Feb), but that $ was well spent.

The idea that you can buy any kit later is pretty crazy in light of GW squatting whole armies, selling out of unique FOMO boxes, and generally sabotaging any customers who like to plan their spending.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
The idea that you can buy any kit later is pretty crazy in light of GW squatting whole armies, selling out of unique FOMO boxes, and generally sabotaging any customers who like to plan their spending.

GW are also pretty tame.

Privateer Press have had stocking issues for a while and are just making most of their two main games out of production as they go through an insanely huge range update.
Infinity regularly has whole swathes of models (some not even that old) put out of production for random periods of time before they might come back (though everything remains in the rules)
Spartan Games had stocking issues and then upped and died overnight - which is an issue for many of the smaller firms - they can collapse for various reasons.


So yeah GW kits might not last forever, but they are one of the more stable firms.

Yeah, that strengthens my point that most gamers have to buy stuff and sit on it because “I’ll just buy it when I am ready to assemble it” doesn’t work for many of us.

It really didn’t work for me, as I tended to plan purchases out in terms of months and years, which means the end of the Old World dashed a lot of plans for Tomb Kings, Empire, Wood Elves and High Elves projects.

I bought an entire 1,500+ pt Nid 3e army once and never opened it; it spent about 2-3 years in my closet unopened and got sold. I even made a bit of money on it as I bought it back when Newwave had a big sale (35-40% off?).

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
The idea that you can buy any kit later is pretty crazy in light of GW squatting whole armies, selling out of unique FOMO boxes, and generally sabotaging any customers who like to plan their spending.

I reasonably sure that I can buy almost any kit later. Even really rare/old stuff.
The only question is how long it'll take to track down & how much more expensive it'd be.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
The idea that you can buy any kit later is pretty crazy in light of GW squatting whole armies, selling out of unique FOMO boxes, and generally sabotaging any customers who like to plan their spending.

If it's not there to buy when I'm ready to buy it, I just don't buy it. There's always something else I can buy instead. I don't have the space or money to buy stuff 'in case it won't be available later'. It really is that simple.

Likewise, I try hard to NOT buy stuff I'm not going to use soon.

And it's quite possible for something I'd like to have price itself out of my budget, at which point again I just do not buy it.

Not that I don't have a pile of shame myself, but it's measured in individual models and not boxes of boxes of models.

(Having said that... I must confess to a hefty amount of envy for those of you who CAN buy and store whatever you want for future use without worry. Sigh.)

I can think of one item I have that is unopened, but that's because it was given to me as part of a lot and I'm just going to sell it.

Otherwise everything gets opened, although I definitely have a number of kits that are still on the sprue.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
The idea that you can buy any kit later is pretty crazy in light of GW squatting whole armies, selling out of unique FOMO boxes, and generally sabotaging any customers who like to plan their spending.

Yeah, I don't even want to think about how much money I've spent on FW kits that were going OOP just in case I ever want to build them someday.

I have a rule where I have to build and paint any purchase before I buy something new.

I think all I have still untouched in a blister is an old metal Talos.

Oh, and a friend gifted me some of the SOB sprues from the partworks magazine -- they're next up!

I've got a fair backlog of things to paint, but nothing unopened - and only Silver tower and Mordenheim unbuild.

 alphaecho wrote:


One photo nearly made me cry.

A real collector, and I mean REAL collector who may or may not have ever built and painted a model, had around ten unopened, still shrink wrapped Praetorian Imperial Guard army boxes.

And that was just a small part of his unopened MIB collection of GW products.

Fairly certain you are talking about me with this post. I can assure you, I have many many built and painted models. It just so happens I also love old sealed models as well.

Now, now, none of this is meant as a personal attack...

Personally, I don't leave boxes unopened when I buy them. I rarely if ever buy anything unless I've finished painting what I already have on my table anyway; except as we go into winter, I usually buy a couple extra and undercoat them before it gets too cold to do so. But then no more till those are painted, hopefully by late spring.

Only one I have unopened is that free chaos Terminator guy I got from the subscription; I'll probably open it one day if I'm bored and feel like painting something different.

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:
Now, now, none of this is meant as a personal attack...

Didn't take it as a personal attack at all. Was just saying that I'm pretty sure he was talking about a picture of mine that he probably saw on Instagram.

ccs wrote:

Other than that? I've got about 75 GW kits (40/AoS/BB/etc) sitting unopened on a shelf.
That sounds like a lot, but around 25-30 are individual blisters/characters or really small units that could be knocked off the list on a rainy day as far assembly & base coating goes.

And that # has fallen to about 61 kits - I knocked out 12 Drukari Medusa & two boxes of Mandrakes this evening.

edit#1: The # is now down to 57 kits as I've built & base coated 4 Sslyth
edit#2: and then I bought a crap ton of Votaan - pushing the # back up to 65....

Probably a lot stays in boxes.

Not too long ago I was dealing with this, and this, and this.

Now it's more like this, and I'm trying (ever so slowly) to go through one box at a time, clearing it out so that I can put the built things either onto shelves, into the box itself, or some other form of case.

Tyton wrote:

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:
Now, now, none of this is meant as a personal attack...

Didn't take it as a personal attack at all. Was just saying that I'm pretty sure he was talking about a picture of mine that he probably saw on Instagram.

It certainly wasn't meant as one

I don't have the self control to leave anything Praetorian in packaging so there is some admiration.

But still, how many boxes have you bought to be able to leave so many mint?

I have around 630 Praetorians painted with another hundred or so perenially on the back burner so I'm still in a good place hobby wise.

I have a fairly sizable stash of Tomb Kings stuff that I spent a silly amount of money on when they axed them.

Other than that I have a fair amount of "kitbash fodder" Ork stuff. Ork Boys, Ork Nobs, Deff Dreads, Trukks, etc.

 alphaecho wrote:

Tyton wrote:

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:
Now, now, none of this is meant as a personal attack...

Didn't take it as a personal attack at all. Was just saying that I'm pretty sure he was talking about a picture of mine that he probably saw on Instagram.

It certainly wasn't meant as one

I don't have the self control to leave anything Praetorian in packaging so there is some admiration.

But still, how many boxes have you bought to be able to leave so many mint?

I have around 630 Praetorians painted with another hundred or so perenially on the back burner so I'm still in a good place hobby wise.

I had to stop and re-read this post a few times for the idea of 630 Praetorians painted, and in a single person's possession to actually process in my head.

 NH Gunsmith wrote:


I had to stop and re-read this post a few times for the idea of 630 Praetorians painted, and in a single person's possession to actually process in my head.

Obsessive?

Me? Naaaah.




Ignore the ones on the dark right. They're a mixture Mordians and converted Ventrillians.

My un opened pile of shame is a box of ogors, 3 land raiders (these are old because they have the $45 price tag from 1999 on them), a wave serpent, a stegadon, a box of plague Marines, and a rhino.

 alphaecho wrote:

Tyton wrote:

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:
Now, now, none of this is meant as a personal attack...

Didn't take it as a personal attack at all. Was just saying that I'm pretty sure he was talking about a picture of mine that he probably saw on Instagram.

It certainly wasn't meant as one

I don't have the self control to leave anything Praetorian in packaging so there is some admiration.

But still, how many boxes have you bought to be able to leave so many mint?

I have around 630 Praetorians painted with another hundred or so perenially on the back burner so I'm still in a good place hobby wise.

I've been collecting since '96. So it's a pretty high number. Over that time, when I had less and less time to play I started collecting the things I wish I could have bought when I was young and just got into the hobby. There are things I buy for armies that I'm working on and things I buy for the collection side that are new in the box. It's really two things going on at once.

That's a very impressive amount of Praetorians!

If we're just whipping out our pratorian collections to see who's bigger, I'll throw mine into the mix:



That's only 510 praetorians proper, but almost 100 metal Kasrkin and another 70 or so Inquisitorial storm troopers

And, of course, I sitll have probably a dozen or more blisters of praetorians on my shelves of shame, along with probably 50 or more loose models.

Nice muster.

Did someone say 'inquisitorial stormtroopers'?
still havent finished the 117+ in my 'WIP' pile...


These praetorian armies are really something to behold.
Kinda like a kreig army but with a tiny bit more 'speciale' to them

My still sealed pile is smol - one original rhino, one 25th anniversary RT marine and an imperial techpreist with the square axe in a blister.

I feel like Imperial Guard players / collectors are a very special kind of people, because they're the only ones in threads like these (or show your army treads) to line up stupid amounts of Minis and tanks, like they want to invade a country or something. I've not seen that many Ork or Tyranid armies (or
... Space Marines) of that size you guys rock!