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Ok guys and gals, I have an important question regarding trades here on Dakka:

I have a 5000 point Tau army, assembled and mostly unpainted, and a 3000 point nid army, assembled and mostly unpainted.

Which would be better: to sell them as is here,on ebay and bartertown,

OR

Paint them up real nice, and then sell them?

Is it worth the time to paint them to a theme, and then sell them, or would it not make too much of a difference? I know alot of people who will just strip an army and start over, and others who never paint and could use a painted army. Which is more cost effective? I'd like to make as much as possible with these armies, while at the same time I don't want to spend all my free time over the next several months painting just to make roughly the same amount of cash.

I think it really depends on how well you paint them, and if you are going to sell it as "an army" or individually. Unless they are extremely well painted I have to say I've not seen too much of a difference in price between painted and unpainted (discarding horribly painted stuff).

You also need to consider the time and money it will take you to paint the armies and whether it is worth it or not.

Personally I prefer to buy unpainted.

if you sell them painted as an army... and they are painted REALLY well (like 8-9 out of 10 on the tourney apperance score). you can get a good chunk of change for them.
if you sell them as squads then most of the time people want unpainted stuff or painted to match their army.

if you are looking for quick $$ then its not worth you time to paint them. i would also advise splitting them up and selling in smaller lots (like 100ish retail)

A big lot may be WORTH 1,500$ retail... but very few people will shell out enough for you to even come close to getting what you could get by selling in smaller lots.


.... to say it in less of a text wall....

my advice would be to sell them in small lots and AS IS. dont put any work into them you dont need to do.

I would say paint them up to one of the Codex Themes and then sell them off is small lots, Normally if people buy unpainted ones, they are looking for super cheap models. but if they are fairly well painted you can charge better then retail for them.

definitely don't paint them unless you plan on doing a golden demon level of quality on them in a standard paint scheme. people routinely claim that even nicely painted stuff is worth less than new on sprue to them or assembled and just primed. i've even had someone that was trying to bargain me down an extra 20% for some nicely painted ultramarines a few years back because it was painted; when i said i'd strip the items for him in exchange for the extra 20%, he quickly changed his mind. alot of people will CLAIM to want to strip an army to repaint it but only a portion of them will.

I have purchased a lot of minis second hand and painted minis are almost always a deal breaker for me. If I'm buying to add to an existing army I'll have to go through the tedious process of stripping the paint. If I'm buying to start a new army, I'll either have to strip or attempt to emulate the paint job on what I've just purchased. Even if I am buying an entire army's worth of painted minis, if I ever want to add to the collection I'll have to emulate the paint job. I'm much more willing to pull the trigger on a purchase if the models are unpainted.

As the others have said: generally speaking, unless it's award-winning painting, most people would prefer non-painted (though primed is usually alright) armies. I would venture to say that more people are put off at the prospect of having to strip used models than not.


That said, opinions have been posted on the topic, and seeing as how this isn't a trade thread, I'm going to lock it up.

In general, 'trading advice' type questions are probably more suited for Dakka Discussions, not the least of which because there's more traffic there.