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Okay, so in my 12+ years of miniature war gaming, I've seen some stuff. The last couple days have beat all.

I'm currently trying to make an ultramarines army using as little plastic/as much metal as possible. This has involved buying a ton of painted minis of ebay. I have been working overseas for the last few months and have just recently returned to the US to find dozens of small boxes waiting on me. After opening them all up, I set to work snapping off arms, backpacks, and the like. After that I dumped all the models into some "superclean" (degreaser known by many other brand names depending on where you are) and waiting. After a week I took all the minis out, scrubbed them down and discovered what was lurking beneath.

1. Gorilla glue applied liberally to attach arms and backpacks. Nice big chunks of foamy adamantium.
2. Superglue cascading in torrents down the entirety of the models. A superglue frosting if you will.
3. Pewter casting vent flash bent over and smoothed down rather than being clipped.
4. Green-stuff used as glue to attach limbs. Works as well as it sounds.
5. What I can only assume was spackling used to shore up metal dreadnaught arms.

Now imagine roughly 7-8 pounds of pewter models with these problems throughout.

Let's hear your tales of woe.

I oncs acquired a Hammerhead with an impenetrable oil-based paint job on it. After soaking it in Simple Green for two months straight (which had no effect on the paint), I decided Feth It and got out the sandpaper.

I ordered a Command Squad off ebay that was tagged "NIB". The five marines were put together as if a toddler did it. There was glue leaking over all of the miniatures, none had even been so much as trimmed, and one marine was missing half of his foot while another had had his arm broken and re-glued at a physically impossible angle. After re-angling the arm I decided it wasn't worth it and gave the five marines to my five-year old.

She proceeded to dip them (not exaggerating) in McCragge Blue and now calls them Ultramarines. Sadly, they look better now than they did before.

I used to do the Green Stuff with glue poured on it as a kid. It works when nothing else does and you don't have the tools to do anything else. I have since fixed MOST of those models but my Zoanthrope still has a weird neck. There is only so much a Lego scaffold system will hold up...

As for second hand models, I got a 3rd Edition starter set Land Speeder that was built so badly 13+ years ago I wrote it off as 'never going to use'. So, I didn't do anything with it until recently when I have a list that could use the thing. The plastic fused with the plastic glue, and glued so there were still a lot of gaps. As in you could see under hood like it was a little mouth going 'om nom nom'. When I disassembled it into more pieces than the box originally comes with, the parts absolutely would not fit right. The plastic had warped to the WRONG dimensions. Had to force it closed with boxes of lead, apply very liberal amounts of glue, green stuff the gaps and heat up and reform other parts. End result looks like crap, but fieldable crap. Miles ahead of what it used to be.

From that same guy I've also gotten superglue frosting on plastic models. A Sergeant of mine now has 'bioacid damage' painted on because the friggin plastic glue melted off half the chest details...

Not an ebay story but something isay done...

When I worked at my local GW store somebody came in for a paint lesson. First I noticed that they'd glued the bases on upside down (cupped up) then I noticed something stuck to the shoulders and base in random patches. I asked "what's this stuff glued to these guys?" He said "Oh, I used too much superglue and kept glueing my fingers to the models. It was skin. The models were flocked with human skin.

Fastest I have ever put down a model.

 SlaveToDorkness wrote:
Not an ebay story but something isay done...

When I worked at my local GW store somebody came in for a paint lesson. First I noticed that they'd glued the bases on upside down (cupped up) then I noticed something stuck to the shoulders and base in random patches. I asked "what's this stuff glued to these guys?" He said "Oh, I used too much superglue and kept glueing my fingers to the models. It was skin. The models were flocked with human skin.

Fastest I have ever put down a model.

Wow dude. Brutal.

As for second hand models, I got a 3rd Edition starter set Land Speeder that was built so badly 13+ years ago I wrote it off as 'never going to use'. So, I didn't do anything with it until recently when I have a list that could use the thing. The plastic fused with the plastic glue, and glued so there were still a lot of gaps. As in you could see under hood like it was a little mouth going 'om nom nom'.

I remember how those early plastic land speeders had such horrible front ends until years later they re-did the mold for the sprue. That was one of the wonkiest problems with a GW (plastic) kit I can remember.

 SlaveToDorkness wrote:
Not an ebay story but something isay done...

When I worked at my local GW store somebody came in for a paint lesson. First I noticed that they'd glued the bases on upside down (cupped up) then I noticed something stuck to the shoulders and base in random patches. I asked "what's this stuff glued to these guys?" He said "Oh, I used too much superglue and kept glueing my fingers to the models. It was skin. The models were flocked with human skin.

Fastest I have ever put down a model.

Night Lord?

Nah, probably one of Fabius Bile's creations.

And this thread is why I rarely buy 2nd hand anymore. Everytime I do, the models look like they were assembled by blind monkeys.

Best...err, worst I've gotten was an SM Sergeant with two hunter-killer missile pods glued twin-linked fashion as a hand weapon. Luckily, they'd used PVA to glue it, so when stripping the paint, the glue on the missile pods just melted away.

I'm totally going to claim that I didn't put a Multimelta from that Land Speeder I mentioned on a Tactical Marine... But if I had done that, I promise I fixed that too... Aren't you guys lucky I never sold a model from my youth?

6 models all assembled with a hot glue gun...did I mention they were third edition leman russ', you know the ones with 20+ pieces in the tracks alone. The worst part is even after I cleaned the glue out there was melting damage and slight warping.

I buy and sell minis on eBay as a small business so I wind up with loads of 2nd hand minis (including many that are ridiculously over-painted or over glued).

Lots of people like to cover their tanks with every little weapon, decoration and upgrade all at crazy angles (I mean, why wouldn't you have a lascannon coming out of the exhaust stack?). My first job when I get something like this is to remove anything that looks ridiculous.

Probably the worst one I've ever had though was a space marine drop pod that was held together by pre-chewed chewing gum. Urrrgh. They didn't put that in the listing description lol

I bought a Rhino from a kid at my local store. He had attempted to remove the paint from it and several other tanks (including 3 Leman russ. I think, I can't remember the numbers)

Anyways. This unfortunate Rhino had been... "converted" to a Leman Russ itself with a snow theme. A plastic Sherman Turret from a toy (not a model) had been super glued onto the back of the vehicle and a random hole had been gouged out of the front with a lascannon haphazardly jammed into it for the frontal LC. It was held in there by bits of sprue amoung other things.

Well... after attempting to remove the paint (another guy at the store dropped them all in pine sol for them for a night) all the tanks came out stark white in color... except this one...
It smelled heavily of the Pine Sol it was dropped into, the paint layer had thickened and the "snow" whatever it originally was (it wasn't green stuff... I have no idea what it was) had congealed into this orange.... sludge on the tracks and all over the rest of the tank with the consistency of mildly hardened bubble gum having gotten its color from the paint that was supposed to have been removed, it was nasty. I spent hours scraping off paint and this orange snow sludge as much as I could. I removed the turret that came off with a snap and pried the lascannon from its "mounting". Underneath the layer of paint it was this nasty red and white color

Hours later I still couldn't totally clean the tank but I managed to clean enough off to start rebuilding.

Its as best as I could get it. I should have taken a Before "scrap all the gunk you could" stage pic. This was after that and I had begun gluing plastic and such on.





I rebuilt the tank into a proper demolisher (more or less), giving the turret the ability to spin and a bigger more appropriate barrel. The Lascannon was swappd out and giving a much better housing. plastic pieces to act as additional armor and a whole mess of other upgrades made the tank far better than what it started out as. It also didn't smell like it was made of Pine Sol either.

I had to bury what paint was still on the tank with a thick layer of base spray

I showed the refurbished tank to the kid I got it from (it was like $5) and he wanted it back but I kept it.




Hilarity ensued (at least for me), when I used it against the kid I got it from. Fittingly the tank is named "Burning Vengeance" and runs as a Demolisher. It wrecked his Vostroyans when ever it fired at them. 3 infantry squads, a basilisk and the command squad fell to the little tank in that battle.

I once got some Warp Spiders with the mould lines and sprue pucks still attached. They were painted (terribly) in this condition.

Once got a Dire Avengers box with all the sprues there and intact... without any parts attached to them.

-

Not an eBay horror story, but I once bought a Wave Serpent in good condition - the turret had been glued in place but that isn't a major issue - and when I stripped it I found five different colour schemes beneath the one that it had (six total). The one I got it with was clearly Ulthwé, below that was Siam-Hann, then a custom colour scheme, then Siam-Hann, then Iyanden, and the first was (I think) Mymeara.

It was a most interesting to see all the different painters of different skill levels and styles as I stripped layer after layer.

I ebayed a lot of old school genestealers like these https://hivefleetletum.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/purple-genestealer-sprue.jpg just not in space hulk purple, but 40k grey. Nearly all of them came without left hands (or right, can't recall, but all were missing the same), but I got a couple of hands from the new gs set (like this: https://miladygeek.files.wordpress.com/2010/11/sprue2.jpg). Totally incompatible.

I only buy secondhand models of Ebay that are either stripped, original metal, or primed, for all the above reasons. I now have an Eldar army whose Aspects, Wraithguard, Warlocks and Rangers are all the older 2nd edition style of metals, and I love them! Now, I love the current plastic Wraithguard, but mine are from a time when you could only get Finecast (yuck) molds of the old metal models, so I definitely wanted metal.

It seems like I never buy used from someone who knows how to clean mold lines.

But once, I bought a used model (on Dakka no less) because of the awesome freehand on it. When it arrived, it actually turned out to be a really horribly applied decal. I still haven't recovered from my disappointment enough to work in it, and it's been almost a year.

 Engine of War wrote:
I bought a Rhino from a kid at my local store. He had attempted to remove the paint from it and several other tanks (including 3 Leman russ. I think, I can't remember the numbers)

Anyways. This unfortunate Rhino had been... "converted" to a Leman Russ itself with a snow theme. A plastic Sherman Turret from a toy (not a model) had been super glued onto the back of the vehicle and a random hole had been gouged out of the front with a lascannon haphazardly jammed into it for the frontal LC. It was held in there by bits of sprue amoung other things.

Well... after attempting to remove the paint (another guy at the store dropped them all in pine sol for them for a night) all the tanks came out stark white in color... except this one...
It smelled heavily of the Pine Sol it was dropped into, the paint layer had thickened and the "snow" whatever it originally was (it wasn't green stuff... I have no idea what it was) had congealed into this orange.... sludge on the tracks and all over the rest of the tank with the consistency of mildly hardened bubble gum having gotten its color from the paint that was supposed to have been removed, it was nasty. I spent hours scraping off paint and this orange snow sludge as much as I could. I removed the turret that came off with a snap and pried the lascannon from its "mounting". Underneath the layer of paint it was this nasty red and white color

Hours later I still couldn't totally clean the tank but I managed to clean enough off to start rebuilding.

Its as best as I could get it. I should have taken a Before "scrap all the gunk you could" stage pic. This was after that and I had begun gluing plastic and such on.





I rebuilt the tank into a proper demolisher (more or less), giving the turret the ability to spin and a bigger more appropriate barrel. The Lascannon was swappd out and giving a much better housing. plastic pieces to act as additional armor and a whole mess of other upgrades made the tank far better than what it started out as. It also didn't smell like it was made of Pine Sol either.

I had to bury what paint was still on the tank with a thick layer of base spray

I showed the refurbished tank to the kid I got it from (it was like $5) and he wanted it back but I kept it.




Hilarity ensued (at least for me), when I used it against the kid I got it from. Fittingly the tank is named "Burning Vengeance" and runs as a Demolisher. It wrecked his Vostroyans when ever it fired at them. 3 infantry squads, a basilisk and the command squad fell to the little tank in that battle.

Would make for a great start for an Ork vehicle too.

I got a second hand land raider that had been primed with some sort of industrial primer as the stuff stinks, aswell as done gw paints painted ontop to add to the hassle

Hot glue. The kind of glue you need a heated glue gun to use. This guy traded me 5 of the old csm terminators for a nib box of bretonian pegasii riders. He put'em together with hot glue and stupid thick layers of paint. Two layers in fact. One layer was GW paint & the other was Testers acrylic. I had to soak them for days with plenty of tooth brush scrubbing.

Makes second hand grey marines with abit too much suoerglue seem easy in comparison.

And I hope the model with skin was a night lord! Disgusting but points for fluff accuracy.

Old predator...

Half cardboard... sigh

 SlaveToDorkness wrote:
Not an ebay story but something isay done...

When I worked at my local GW store somebody came in for a paint lesson. First I noticed that they'd glued the bases on upside down (cupped up) then I noticed something stuck to the shoulders and base in random patches. I asked "what's this stuff glued to these guys?" He said "Oh, I used too much superglue and kept glueing my fingers to the models. It was skin. The models were flocked with human skin.

Fastest I have ever put down a model.

I'm not sure how to say this, but this made my skin crawl and I jerked back from the screen in revulsion.

I'd say you "win", but nobody wins at that. Instead, I'll say you have made me recoil form my computer in a way that has seldom happened before. I think I might have had to leave and wash my hands, repeatedly. Like, until they bled. Blwwluuaah!

 SlaveToDorkness wrote:
Not an ebay story but something isay done...

When I worked at my local GW store somebody came in for a paint lesson. First I noticed that they'd glued the bases on upside down (cupped up) then I noticed something stuck to the shoulders and base in random patches. I asked "what's this stuff glued to these guys?" He said "Oh, I used too much superglue and kept glueing my fingers to the models. It was skin. The models were flocked with human skin.

Fastest I have ever put down a model.

I myself must confess to having "put my body on the line" so to speak with superglue. Some models still have small traces of skin in key areas for gluing. Not to the extent you describe, but noticeable if you look close enough...

Also, I remember reading a thread here on Dakka (Tyranid Pw0n0graphy was the title I think) where the P&M blogger had a termagaunt painted in "special red"

The red was human blood.

Whenever he accidentally cut himself, he would smear some of the blood on the model. The shading on that model was quite striking.

 SlaveToDorkness wrote:
Not an ebay story but something isay done...

When I worked at my local GW store somebody came in for a paint lesson. First I noticed that they'd glued the bases on upside down (cupped up) then I noticed something stuck to the shoulders and base in random patches. I asked "what's this stuff glued to these guys?" He said "Oh, I used too much superglue and kept glueing my fingers to the models. It was skin. The models were flocked with human skin.

Fastest I have ever put down a model.

uuuuuuggggghhhhh
You know when you kindof throw up and the bile comes halfway up your throat, but doesnt come all the way out, even though you can still taste it? That just happened to me.

I'm sure a microscope well certainly find my skin cells on many of my models due to super glue's uncanny ability to bond my finger to the model in one second when it won't bond the two model parts after 15 seconds.

Anyway, one thing I saw a kid do at the FLGS is glue about 20 bolters to his Rhino.

Or all the saliva in my paintjobs from the brush........

Nope. Nope. Nope.

I'm done. I'm done. Goodb-

I'm morbidly interested.