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Title pretty much says it. Been thinking about becoming arsed to sign up and get cheaper stuff, I've always bought straight from GW. So what's everyone's experience?

How much money do you save?

Ever made a good killing?

Ever gotten ripped off?

You save a ton. Without luck you get your stuff for 60%-80% on ebay.

If your are willing to use assembled stuff, buy whole armies you can get things for even much less.

Got mostly great deals. Had to resell some things of armies I bought.

Got ripped of too, but not to bad. If you pay by PayPal you mostly have a protection and cant be ripped of.


You should look on ebay.co.uk because the pound is low a shipping costs are fair even to Europe. You might also try ebay.de because its the second largest market for GW-stuff.

Buying direct at GW is just a waste of money. At least buy at some discounters like Wayland games.

From what I've experienced, it's an excellent way to get models/boxed sets and such.

If you pick carefully and patiently, you can save up to 50-60% on average and up to 80% if you're lucky, particularly if you don't mind cleaning the sloppy painting of other people.

Best purchase was 10 Kasrkin and 20 Steel Legion troopers for about 8GBP.

I haven't got ripped off (yet), but once or twice packages didn't arrive. The sellers quickly refunded me, though.

I've had generally good experiences with Ebay.

I often find myself buying retail at my flgs so that they keep in business.

However the times I have used retail ( I refuse to buy bikes from GW...) I have been impressed. I got 9 Eldar bikes for ~80 dollars which was a great deal. I've also gotten some dirt cheap wave serpents. If you are patient you can get some pretty sweet deals on ebay, and save a fortune if you don't buy retail.

Don't forget that you can get 20% discount by buying from certain other retailers...

I rarely see stuff that's new on sprue for less than 20% off anymore.

There are still plenty of decent deals out there, but the great deals are few and far between.

I haven't been ripped off and have a decent amount of bits and units from Ebay.

Ebay? Got a link?

Ebay is awesome for buying gw stuff but they can be a death trap as well. Since most of the sellers are located on US sihpping out of US is in some cases are either very expensive or non-existent.

For my self i got 1500 eldar army just for 90 bucks once but there was also this auction i got into for paying the double of a assault squad because i got it from australia and it had a ridiculous shipping rate.

And if you buy second hand and not sprues you can go up to 40% easily altough you would be lacking bits which is not a nice thing when gw decides to make your halberded gk s have 5 different weapon options.

I just bought some bitz from an ebay store, pretty good prices, 3 pk's, 5 nob torsos, 6 ork bikez cowls, 3 powerfists, and 3 lascannon arms for space marines dreds was 53 bucks sipped, but nots of that the dred lascannon arms were the most expensive at 24 bucks for 3. also note the nobz torsos were the kind from the bike boxes so the aren't the two piece types.. will eb using them for a second group of nob bikez

I've gotten a few better deals on used stuff there to, bought 18 ork bikes for 56 bucks .. .preassembled and they went overboard on the glue, but nothing some filing couldn't fix

add

on the bikes they also didn't have thier dakkagunz, but i used some shootas I had around and put 2 on each bike ... boom twin liked dakkagunz

So in summary, much praise for ebaying warhammer, that's encouraging.

Scipio, the UK site seems like the best bet yes, they must have most of the stuff anyway right?

akaean wrote:I refuse to buy bikes from GW...

Someone ought to sig this.

Keep your eyes out, and when you see a good deal, jump on it. It's how I bought 10x Necron Immortals for $60 (still in their unopened blister packs).

I also bought 10x flayed ones in old blister packs for about $30

eBay is really most useful when you have plenty of time, several different buying goals, and patience. If you can wait around and look for good deals, you will do really well. If you need a specific thing RIGHT NOW, it might not be there, or it might be ridiculously expensive.

Also, you need to spend the time looking around. I just saw a Gorkamorka Big Lugga (which I SHOULD have bid a bit more on) go for less than $40, when other people are selling them for $95.

Don't get caught up in bidding wars, and make some lowball bids every once and a while. I lucked out and got two Praetorian Sentinels for $20 total (including shipping!), when I paid $25 for each of the first two I bought.

I got a converted Vendetta for 30 dollars last year.

It depends,
recent releases, not so much.
Older stuff, I find it a bit hit and miss.
However, if you're not in a hurry, and you know what you want, you can save some money.
I rarely bother any more, I prefer my stuff on the sprue these days.

Check it most days.

Picked up a new box of Warp Spiders for £8. Clueless Father selling them for his son... Also bagged two new Wraithlords for £30... eBay? Made of win.

Ebay is great you just need to bear in mind the following stuff:

Not everything will be there, you sometimes need some patience for something to come along.

Sometimes the price is laughable, old models and people are trying to get £30+ for them...

A lot of the models you will find cheaper are older editions, if that doesn't bother you again its great!

Have paint stripping stuff handy, again getting stuff unpainted means higher prices, a lot of bargains just need stripped down and you're good to go.

The only part of my 3500pt+ Eldar army bought new was a single Battleforce box. Everything else was second-hand or ebay.

You can get some great bargains with some casual browsing and patience. A particular story that stands out was that I wanted a jetbike squad, but hate the static pose of the current 15 year old model. I was lucky enough to come across someone who had bought 6 of each dark eldar and normal eldar jetbikes and combined them into 6 single models that looked great (Eldar style canopy but with the rider leaning forward).
Best of all, I got them completely unpainted for less than the cost of buying six brand new jetbilkes from GW.

There are also plenty of people who are either desperate to sell or have no idea of the value of what they have (try searching for common spelling mistakes, or for models listed under the wrong race).
And finally there's the option of 'stocking up' on models that currently far from being flavour of the month, but you still like anyway. Perhaps they'll get a new codex soon, and you can be ready knowing you got them for less than half the price they'll be once the unit is FOTM again.

I just grabbed an Eldar Battleforce (minus 8 Guardians), with the starter paint set, for less than half the BF price.
With postage.

I buy most of my metal Eldar for less than half the price of GW.
£4 each for the box of 5 Warp Spiders, or £2 each on ebay. You don't even end up with lots of Exarchs you can't use, either.

Searching for "Warhamer" hasn't bagged me any bargains, but there's often stuff there with very few bids.

Skinnereal wrote:I just grabbed an Eldar Battleforce (minus 8 Guardians), with the starter paint set, for less than half the BF price.
With postage.

I buy most of my metal Eldar for less than half the price of GW.
£4 each for the box of 5 Warp Spiders, or £2 each on ebay. You don't even end up with lots of Exarchs you can't use, either.

Searching for "Warhamer" hasn't bagged me any bargains, but there's often stuff there with very few bids.

Bastard! I lost that one by 50p or something... Left it till the last 5 seconds to put in a bid of £21.50 and I turned out to be outbid at £22 (or thereabouts)

'grats on it though, t'was a really good buy.

eBay is very strong for used stuff. For new stuff? I prefer to just deal with either the Warstore of my FLGS where I can negotiate a price up front.

But if you don't mind buying used, and in bulk, it can be a great place to shop.

I've gotten some good wargaming stuff on Ebay, but in general I get better deals at Bartertown or here at Dakka.

Still, it's always worth having an Ebay account for when that one item you really want appears.

Eiríkr wrote:

Skinnereal wrote:I just grabbed an Eldar Battleforce (minus 8 Guardians), with the starter paint set, for less than half the BF price.
With postage.

I buy most of my metal Eldar for less than half the price of GW.
£4 each for the box of 5 Warp Spiders, or £2 each on ebay. You don't even end up with lots of Exarchs you can't use, either.

Searching for "Warhamer" hasn't bagged me any bargains, but there's often stuff there with very few bids.

Bastard! I lost that one by 50p or something... Left it till the last 5 seconds to put in a bid of £21.50 and I turned out to be outbid at £22 (or thereabouts)

'grats on it though, t'was a really good buy.

The amount of bids I later find out who I was up against....
I set myself a maximum price, and watch 80% of my bids sail away.

But, be careful when bidding for that one thing you've got to have.
I ended up with 2 Eldrads by bidding on 2 long-shots at the same time. I won them both

Alright, you've convinced me. Now I just need to find a good stripper.

edit: paint stripper...

Almarine wrote:Alright, you've convinced me. Now I just need to find a good stripper.

edit: paint stripper...

Glad you edited it, I was about to say.....
The way I understand it, is Simple Green works well.

You will save money.

The only issue is that what you want may not always be avaliable or you may have to buy more then you wanted.



If you are after boxs of troops or assembled squads, E-bay is perfect.

Almarine wrote:Alright, you've convinced me. Now I just need to find a good stripper.

Ebay is not THAT useful

I buy most my stuff off ebay. Ebay is basically a way for a small store to have a worldwide customer base, so you can usually find great deals on inventory places are just trying to not lose money on. Also there are a ton of people who put together an army then a new codex comes out so they sell that unpainted army for cheap to get some cash for a new army.


I love it, having a sellers rating is great too, I only buy from top rated sellers

Almarine wrote:
How much money do you save?

A TON (depending on the item)

Ever made a good killing?

No. But I did save a ton of money by buying a battleforce for certain sprues and then selling the ones I didn't want.

Ever gotten ripped off?

Not yet.


Ebay can save you TONS of money depending on what you are looking for. Stuff from the AoBR box set is usually dirt cheap compared to a retail box version. Aslo a few of the pieces in that box are unique to it. Like the MM dread and the captain model. Also probably the cheapest terminators you'll ever find.

However, paying 5-10 dollars for a SINGLE unique weapon is a bit outrageous. (combi-melta from the SM Captain sprue)

So it all comes down to what you are looking for. Stuff that comes in Battleforces and Starter Boxes can be found at GREAT values. And you can save money by buying a BF and then selling the sprues you don't want.

Almarine wrote:Title pretty much says it. Been thinking about becoming arsed to sign up and get cheaper stuff, I've always bought straight from GW. So what's everyone's experience?


Ever gotten ripped off?

eBay Buyer Protection covers items purchased on eBay with eligible payment methods that are not received or not as described in the listing.


their lawyers can go after a seller for fraud or theft, also only buy from top rated sellers, there are millions of them

DIDM wrote:

Almarine wrote:Title pretty much says it. Been thinking about becoming arsed to sign up and get cheaper stuff, I've always bought straight from GW. So what's everyone's experience?


Ever gotten ripped off?

eBay Buyer Protection covers items purchased on eBay with eligible payment methods that are not received or not as described in the listing.


their lawyers can go after a seller for fraud or theft, also only buy from top rated sellers, there are millions of them

I only have been selling and thats because the item wasnt sent signed for in the end. Limited edition SM sarge from the 4th ed army box, was out of pocket on the postage and still very angry it "got lost in the post". Simply put I would ask for a quote on registered delivery from each seller just to make sure items arrive that were bargains, like my NiB giant I got a couple of months back

I buy a lot of war hammer of eBay,last year i got a hierodule for £40.