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Folks,
Straight off the bat, apologies if this is regarded as off-topic and of course move it to a more relevent forum if so.

I'm currently looking to build up my 500pt Eldar army without constantly relying on the charity of my fellow gaming club friends to lend me their Eldar force for every 1500pt game I play, but am also in the postition of needing to be very tight with my money since I'm about to be a dad in a month! The obvious solution is to sell what I have - and I do have a lot on sprues that I haven't touched! My question for you fine folks who are more experienced in the second hand market; are the items I sold worth more intact and on their sprues, or already assembled and waiting to be painted?

Not a veteran but just my $.02, I'd rather have the sprues, that way I can pose/model/convert as I please instead of trying to make things work.

It depends. If the piece is well assembled into major subcomponents, that is a huge value to me, as it saves me a ton of time. Painted typically doesn't add any value to me. Poorly assembled items are a pain to work with.

Moving to 40k General Discussion.

I would value on the sprue models more highly. I want to be able to pose them as *I* see fit and clean the mold lines to *my* standards. I've gotten too many pre-assembled models that have whole arms obscured by glue or some ridiculous pose that I would never have bought, were it not for the incredibly low price.

On the sprue, you're competing with bulk sellers that ship for 20% under GW list price. Built, you're competing with everything from moms clearing out their glue-happy preteen's closet to twitchy ex-hobbyists selling their mangled armies for meth money to skilled modelers looking to divert funds to another force. Prices and build quality vary too much to be able to nail down a good price.

I find that models decrease in value as they go along this scale:

BNiB -> sprues -> assembled -> undercoated -> painted.

Obviously the quality of the painting makes an al-MIGHTY difference but generally, unless people are paying commision prices for one-off pieces (or whole armies) the models are going to be stripped and re-painted to the new owner's liking.

Sell them on the sprue, the more hobby you leave available to the second hand purchaser, the more money you can ask for them.

L. Wrex

Sprues tend to have extra bitz too, so you have to lower the prices since the buyer will likely not recieve any of these bitz. For converters like me, those bitz are sometimes worth more than the actual models themselves.

I wouldn't pay more than 50% of GW price for assembled models.

Sprues are the most valuable from your options.

Generally, the less touched it is (In box, to sprue, to assembled, to primed, to painted) the more its worth. Some assembled stuff will sell for 50% or less than retail value.This is a generalisation though. You can get top dollar for high quality assembled and painted and highly desired armies.

Back when the only 5th edition codex out was C:SM, and Vulkan armies were high on the food-chain, I had a fully painted and highly competitive 1850pt list (Vulkan, TH/SS terms, LRR, Ironclads, all the shiny new toys) that I sold for almost 100% of the retail value. I did the same thing with my Mech Guard when 5th edition guard codex was released and made 100% retail. On the other hand, 4 months ago I sold my deathwing army, and I barely made 50% of retail.

Depends on the model for me. Assembled Cadians are better than NoS Cadians, that way I don't have to assemble 80+ models. For Space Marines and other elite/small model count armies, NiB or NoS for sure, with the other options a distant second.