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Well dakkaites/nauts. Everyone's worst fear was realized in my life today. Or yesterday. I had my army, paints and supplies stolen right out of my car. All of it. Gone. The cops said the chances of me getting it back are highly unlikely. All my unique conversions and all of my paint jobs that I worked so hard on...all gone.

I feel sorry for you, genuinely. But you're going to get over it and the next load of conversions and paint jobs are going to be ten times better.

I feel for you, happened to my friend a while ago. This is why I always take my stuff out of my car at night. If I don't I start getting paranoid.

It might be prudent to let as many wargaming sites as possible know.

The wargaming community is very tight knit, and it'll be difficult to resell miniatures when they're actively being looked for by an entire community of wargamers; if they do turn up, then it'll be far easier to spot them if more people know.

You might also let any local gaming or hobby stores know too in case they turn up on a gaming night; local Games Workshops are probably going to be able to keep in touch with each other and spread info around if you ask them, allowing you to potentially cover a large area with people on the lookout.

As the police said, the chances of it all turning up are quite low, but by doing this you're significantly increasing your chances of finding them, so you can't be faulted for not making an effort.

It's terrible to hear about things like this, but you never know, they might just get found. Stranger things have happened.

Where do you live? "Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn" is hard to nail down. If you're in my area I'll be sure to keep an eye out.

I remember a story that was told on here one time.

This guy had 3k points of old school (metal) gray knights in a backpack and was riding the train home. But when he got off the train her forgot his backpack.

You know how things are, unknown unattended backpack on a train in a post 9/11 world.

Well the bomb squad was called in and after a quick metal detector scan showed that the backpack was full of metal (all the old school terminators) they took the backpack and remote detonated it thinking it was a bomb.

So if it makes you feel any better it could have been worse.

Were they in cases?

edit
The perps might have thought they were stealing weapons

 Ma55ter_fett wrote:
I remember a story that was told on here one time.

This guy had 3k points of old school (metal) gray knights in a backpack and was riding the train home. But when he got off the train her forgot his backpack.

You know how things are, unknown unattended backpack on a train in a post 9/11 world.

Well the bomb squad was called in and after a quick metal detector scan showed that the backpack was full of metal (all the old school terminators) they took the backpack and remote detonated it thinking it was a bomb.

So if it makes you feel any better it could have been worse.

At the same time it would be hard to think up a more epic way for your army to be destroyed.

That sucks, man. It's not uncommon for this to happen, especially if you use the black hard-sided cases, which resemble pistol or rifle cases. Most likely the stuff was dumped when the thief saw what it was. You should try checking local dumpsters and garbage bins within a couple of blocks if you can, before trash pickup.

If you have pics, it's worth posting them on local forums, and maybe giving copies to local game stores to keep behind the counter. People can keep an eye out for them. I heard of one occasion when a thief tried selling an army to a local store owner, and the store owner played along once he saw a couple of pics and realized he recognized the models. Set up an appointment for the thief to come into the store to sell them to the store, and arranged for a cop to be there too. The odds of something like that working out are low, but it can't hurt to try.

It always hurts to lose stuff you've put a lot of work into, and have fun memories with. Of course, there are lots of worse things that could happen to you; good to keep it in perspective next to all the other ills that can befall someone.

If you have car insurance or home/renter's insurance, it may include some coverage for this. Check with your insurer. Unlikely to be more than a couple hundred in coverage, but that'd still give you a head start toward a new army.

Glioroski's right, you know. If you enjoy painting and modeling, I'm confident that your next army's going to look even better.

I live in The Woodlands, Texas. I had it out in my car (it was in a box) for literally overnight because I was moving the next day and it was all gone. I found out today that aparently "carhopping" is a real popular passtime for the younger bracket of teenagers.....

As for the army content It would be a Stormraven, 15 purifiers with falchions, justicar pauldrons and the plain cloaks from Anvil Forge miniatures (those are very nice btw), 5 terminators, Draigo (helmeted), 3 forge world grey knight dreadnaughts, 3 razorbacks with las cannons, and Crowe converted up with the wings off the sanguinor and a hellblade from the bloodcrusher kit.

I've already informed the local games stores and the police, and i'm keeping an eye on ebay and craigslist. What I'm afraid of though is that it ended up in a dumpster somewhere within 5 miles of the place and I'll never see it again......

It sucks but you will get over it.

I had a 3000pt wood elf (all metal) army stolen off my front porch when moving house back in 1995. It was enough to make me stop playing WHFB (it was my only army and not cost-effective to replace at that point).

Guy at the FLGS has his Battlefoam case full of his warmachine army stolen out of his car. A month or two later a city land surveyer came into the shop. Said there was a bag full of the kind of stuff we sell down on the bank of the creek. By where he was doing a survey before bridge construction. Guy beat feet over and sure enough it was his stuff. Almost entirely intact, but the books and card had some water damage. He was super stoked.

One of the hidden advantages to posting pictures of your army online is that, in situations like this, you have evidence of what was stolen.

Depending on your insurance and the cost of the army, a claim might not make sense, but if the replacement cost is over $500 I'd at least look into it.

You will never get your time back, but anything can help.

I see you haven't uploaded any pics to dakka, but do you have any pictures of your models? Especially unique conversions and paint jobs: the theif will almost certainly want to play with the stuff or sell the stuff, it'll turn up one day in a gaming store at which point you'd hope it would be seen by someone who's seen this.

Also, keep an eye on ebay. It could easily turn up there.

Some thieves are after metal to sell as scrap; vermin, and I always chuckle when they pick a live electric cable to try and steal!

Yeah, thefts from cars tend not to be by people that know what the stuff is, as opposed to things stolen in a store or convention.

By the time you're breaking into cars, you're not just an opportunist gamer, but an actual thief type person. Those guys are after guns, tools, or other easily pawnable items. As other posters have noted, the odds are that after seeing what he got, the thief simply dumped it.