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I have re-posted these on eBay for the second time now. I keep droping my prices. Why am i not getting any offers or sales? Any advice? I'm sure there is a reason i can't see.
I figured i would post this here as it seems best fitting. Sorry i this is posted in the wrong place.

Bloat Drone- https://www.ebay.com/itm/253411558259?ssPageName=STRK:MESELX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1555.l2649
Lord of Contagion- https://www.ebay.com/itm/253411558253?ssPageName=STRK:MESELX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1555.l2649
Blightbringer- https://www.ebay.com/itm/253411558245?ssPageName=STRK:MESELX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1555.l2649
Plague Marines- https://www.ebay.com/itm/253411545971?ssPageName=STRK:MESELX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1555.l2649
20 Poxwalkers- https://www.ebay.com/itm/253411521679?ssPageName=STRK:MESELX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1555.l2649
Primaris Intercessors- https://www.ebay.com/itm/253411539465?ssPageName=STRK:MESELX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1555.l2649
Captain in Gravis- https://www.ebay.com/itm/253411532301?ssPageName=STRK:MESELX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1555.l2649

Well using your noxious blightbringer as an example, you have it listed for $45ish. All I had to do was type in "noxious blightbringer" into the search bar and I've found several ready to sell for under £10, the cheapest sitting at £4.00 (about 5.5 dollars US).

If you want to charge that much more than the selling rate you need to have godlike painting skills, and even then that only works if there is someone out there willing to pay that much for a paint job. Slapping "pro painted" in the title doesn't mean much either.

From what I've seen, starter kit models never sell for much, probably because so many people buy the box set and sell the half they don't want, so the market becomes saturated. The number of death guard starter armies selling for £30 when DI first launched was staggering

I'm not sure how to put this exactly, but if I was going to pay for painted pieces I would expect them to be better than what I was capable of myself.

Now I'm no master painter, but there's some pretty glaring flaws in the paint jobs of the items you posted.

So I think that's why they aren't selling. Honestly selling painted stuff is difficult at best, and often times it's hard to even get near retail price let alone a markup above it.

From what I've seen, starter kit models never sell for much, probably because so many people buy the box set and sell the half they don't want, so the market becomes saturated. The number of death guard starter armies selling for £30 when DI first launched was staggering

Also this, the Nurgle half of DI seems to be the part sold off much more often than the primaris half, so there's a glut on the market that drives down prices. That's another factor to consider in selling minis since the secondhand market is very susceptible to changes in supply and demand.

no bids because your prices are far to high....those are very basic paint jobs on very cheap miniatures.

Honest opinion.....you talking a $5 miniatures with like a $5-10 paint job at most. Doubt anyone is going to pay $40 or even $20 per model for those.

Because you're listing a frankly sub-par paintjob on a cheap model for a ludicrously high price.

Understand that I'm not trying to be nasty in saying that, but there's no point in trying to sugarcoat it. As far as I can tell that's a handful of base paints with some minor drybrushing. The detail is irregularly picked out, there's little highlighting, and certainly no blending, washes, airbrushing, or any of the many other touches that would indicate even a competent painter, let alone a 'pro-painted' one.

Generally speaking unless the model is painted to a very high standard and the scheme used is one someone wants (most often you'd probably get more hits painting an official GW style scheme rather than a unique one) then most people buying painted miniatures are expecting to strip the paint and start fresh.

So you won't get much and if anything a painted model will sell for a bit less than an unpainted* and an unassembled model will sell for a bit more than that (because then the buyer gets to build it to their desires)



*because they've got to get the stripping chemical; spend time stripping and cleaning - and even after all that might not get every bit of paint out of every crack and corner of the model.

Unfortunately.. what they said... to be honest, I'm NOT a good painter, but I could do better, so $50 is a non starter.

I quite like the idea of a some more Foetid Bloat Drones, but there's a better paint job online right now with 99p and no bids....

Sorry to rain on your parade, but that's my honest opinion.

Charitably, those models look like they've had a basecoat, quick drybrush and wash.

Most people buying painted models do so for one of two reasons:
1) It's markedly better than they can do
2) It's cheap enough to offset the time and effort put into stripping them.

I'm afraid I honestly can't see the first option applying here.

In the second case your price is too high for reasons outlined - these models are easy and cheap to get hold of in bare plastic.

Drop the pro-painted from the listing. I'm making an assumption here, but with the work on display I doubt yu make your living from being paid to paint models and I doubt these were commissioned. As such it looks like a bold-faced lie which rankles with people even if the price weren't putting them off.

As someone who makes side money doing eBay sales commissions (basically clearing out peoples old armies for them) you're asking far too much for the paintjob.

Generally speaking unless you paint really well, you're never going to get much more than 10-15% over the cost of the actual mini, far less if your paint is poor (as the person buying it is simply going to strip it down - and is basically going to spend more time/money getting rid of the paintjob just to have the model).

It's akin to when I used to sell cars...people think that modifying a car somehow increases its value, but it often decreases the value exponentially.

The models you're selling would sell around $12-14+shipping if you're lucky. Not much more.

Yup.
Too expensive.
I could get work commissioned to that standard or actually far better for that price.
I'd also be able to choose any specific colours/basing I wanted.

Yeah, you've pretty much fallen into the "pro-painted" trap. On eBay, around 80% of the time pro-painted means "about as good as I could do myself, often worse" with only the top 20% actually being painted to a high enough standard to warrant a premium price.

Your painting isn't good enough to justify such a high price, unfortunately. And where the painting isn't good enough, having the model painted is actually a disadvantage since most people would prefer an unpainted model instead.

I can get whatever I want from my local stockist. I buy a lot from ebay, but if I order it in, I can get it for 20% less than retail or 10% less if it's direct only.
That's my baseline for ebay shopping, if I'm paying more than that, I'm short changing myself.
If it's OOP, I'm willing to pay extra [Like my quest for Rough Riders, recently.] otherwise, what's the point?

I'll only ever pay more if I've fallen in love with a paint job, and then it doesn't work for most armies. For example, half a dozen oddly painted guardsmen, no matter how beautiful, look stupid. One Inquisitorial Henchman looks fine. A pro painted Celestine will blend well, half a squad of pro painted sisters stick out like a sore thumb. So even if the model is perfectly painted 75% of the time, the paints still worthless to me.

People who want large segments of their army painted by someone else will just commission the whole lot.

As everyone else has said. It's a valuation issue.

Personally it's about the paintjob. I hate stripping plastic models and unfortunately the paintjob on those isn't very good I'm afraid.
The paint is too thick obscuring a good amount of detail (I actually had to check the GW site to see what the model should look like), it also lacks any depth or highlighting.
Add to the fact that buying the Dark Imperium box nets you the rules (£35 value) and two armies (£30 each) and paying £30+ for a single model that would need stripping just defies logic (plus the Nurgle Lord of Contagion you have for $40/£28 I can buy unpainted on ebay for $5.50/£4)
I'm sorry dude but I doubt very many are willing to pay seven times the amount for a miniature that they'll just strip.

I'll agree broadly with everybody's points so far, but I think it's less about the quality of the paint job than it may seem.

The price of any good is based on supply and demand, how much of it exists, and how much people want. The DG characters from the DI box are a high supply, low demand item. Everybody bought the box, and sold the Chaos half. Even the people that want multiple chaos halves don't want more than one or two of the characters. So, the models have a fairly low base value.

Even then, the most in demand examples of those characters are the truley amazing paint jobs and commission jobs. After that, it's probably high end, clearly above table top quality paint jobs. After that, it drops to new on sprue, than built, and finally primed/painted. in the final tally, nicely painted examples in the most common scheme might do as well as built, but that's up to buyers.

You can see this by searching for "Malignant Plaguecaster" and then looking at sold listings on ebay:

https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_sacat=0&LH_Complete=1&LH_Sold=1&_nkw=malignant+plaguecaster&_sop=3

Somebody was willing to pay $155 for a commission piece to the quality pictured. After that, there's a nice run of painted pieces. All in all thought, this guy sells for less than the primaris Lieutenant from the same box. There is the same supply, but more people want primaris.

If you're wondering why the paint job doesn't get the premium, let's look at an example that sold for ten bucks less than you are asking:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Warhammer-40k-Death-Guard-Nurgle-Malignant-Plaguecaster-Great-paint-Job-/272958288898?hash=item3f8d94f402%3Ag%3AowoAAOSwO7haHMqR&nma=true&si=02upJ1K%252BY6v3sPcktfWxBeLassc%253D&orig_cvip=true&rt=nc&_trksid=p2047675.l2557

Some stuff is subjective (for example, I find the colors on this piece less jarring than on yours), but this example is tighter and neater, with much more subtle highlighting, and crisper detail. In particular, if you look at the teeth around the "guts," yours blur together while this piece has sharp black lines.

Overall, I think you're just misreading the market. Your paint jobs are fine for table top players, and you will find people willing to buy, it's just going to be at a fraction of what you're asking.

I have redone them and took new pictures. I am still looking for advice on what to do to sell these. Thank you.

Firstly, the new pictures are far better. A big improvement.

However, you've seemed to ignore about every other post/point in the thread thus far. The level of quality you're providing does not justify the price you're asking. An example, you're asking $79.50 or so for five plastic Primaris Intercessors. They're painted to a slightly low tabletop standard. I'm selling a buddy's Primaris models at the moment, painted to a nicer standard for $29.95 for five - and even those aren't grabbing a ton of attention.

You're wildly off the mark with what you're providing to the consumer. You need to either increase your skill (and hence the time/effort/materials on the models), or charge less... a lot less. The vast majority of people selling painted stuff on eBay are not selling it to make money, they're recouping some lost money when they're moving to a new product.

The few who make genuine money are painting at a much higher level than you are at the moment. This includes some quality fast-paint China shops which are providing reasonable/good paintjobs for half your price.

The bloat drone you have, for example. Nice tabletop paintjob, would sell almost immediately at $29.95 or even $34.95. $50 is pushing it. I'm saying this as someone who's cleared $4,500 in the past six months for fellow gamers (I take a small commission cut from each sale).

The paint on this mini is way too thick. If you gave me this mini, I would throw it away. $45 is too much. Retail minus 25% at best as you ruined this miniature.

Thin your paints. Get better.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/253411532301?ssPageName=STRK:MESELX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1555.l2649

The minis are tabletop quality and will go for about the same price as unopened minis or less :/

 kronk wrote:
The paint on this mini is way too thick. If you gave me this mini, I would throw it away. $45 is too much. Retail minus 25% at best as you ruined this miniature.

Thin your paints. Get better.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/253411532301?ssPageName=STRK:MESELX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1555.l2649

At first I thought you were being sarcastic, then I thought you were being mean, and then I clicked the link.... that's simply a bad paint job.

That is literally the type of auction that makes people laugh at the term "pro painted."

Perhaps I was blunt, but sometimes I just go with my gut.

TheContortionist, I don't know what else to tell you that hasn't been said. You're asking too much. You should stop trying to sell minis, practice painting miniatures, watch youtube videos and other tutorials, and come back to trying to sell minis in 2 years. Maybe.

You are pricing yourself out of business.

Aim low, really low, on eBay and take what you can get for those. No one is going to bite because they require a lot of undoing.

I mean to give you an example: Here are two of my models, a WIP of Magnus and a Wraithknight in a Harlequin theme. Are they good? Maybe....but I would never attempt to try to make money with Ebay on the basic skills that I have.

So you asked for advice, then pretty much ignored what was said? Again, not trying to be harsh, but the comments in this thread have universally told you your paintjobs are not worth the price you're asking for.

As a practical example of this using the Captain in Gravis Armour model, I note the following problems:

1. Paint too thick, which obscures details and seems to have also led to a grainy effect in places, particularly on the white parts. My most recent army is predominantly white so I can say with some confidence this is a result of not thinning your paints properly.

2. Mould lines visible. This is a cardinal sin in any "pro painted" model. There's a very obvious mould line on the ammo feed. This makes me wonder what else is wrong that I can't see.

3. Various instances of paint splashes not being corrected. It looks like there's errant paint on the left knee from the scroll of the purity seal. There's also the same problem on the sword hilt and shoulder pads. That's fine in a random auction for a bunch of models I'm going to strip/repaint, but when something's labelled as pro painted that's a problem.

4. Minimal highlighting/shading. There's a bit of highlighting and shading but in general it looks like it's mainly just flat colours, especially on the gold areas. The quality of the pictures doesn't really help either.

This really isn't rocket science: you're charging a lot for models that are extremely common and expecting a premium price for an average paintjob. I'm not saying I'd be ashamed to field an army painted to that standard - it's absolutely fine IMO. However, I'd expect to pay substantially less than you're asking to buy such models.

Also, I'm not from the US, so maybe this is just me not understanding the market over there, but your shipping seems quite high, especially considering these are fairly solid plastic models that won't need much in the way of special protection.

If you want to sell more you need to charge less. If you really want to know what the value is, change the listings to actual auctions, starting very low. That will give you a baseline to work from.

He's got free US shipping - so if eBay is showing international shipping then yes, our international shipping is friggin' expensive. I think the "cheapest" option for a lightweight, small package is now around $19.50 to the UK.

We have no subsidization of our international shipping, we pay the whole hog.

as others have said prices are much too high. Typically I would expect to pay less for painted models, unless they are too a high standard and I was going to have my whole army to that standard. I don't think your painting is awful, but it isn't any better than I can do myself, and I would need to try to match it if I was going to use those models. Or strip the paint off of them, at which point why pay for them to be painted. IF I look at your price for say the intercessors I could buy 20 models for the price of what you charge for 5. Why would I do that unless I really wanted to paint job? Honestly you would have made more money not painting the minis. As is I think you would need to sell your 5 inceptors for about $15.00 with free shipping for them to sell.

What are you doing wrong? Really? You really have to ask... OMG

Well, ok. I sold some painted miniatures baaack back then (some 10-15 years ago), so i think i could give you some advices.

When you sell miniatures, its value depends on the status of each miniature. Usually you can get more money when they are closer to the condition you can expect from a store (new in a wrapped box). From that point on, you get less and less money for them. So you get less when they are in sprue (without box), less when they are in pieces... The worse condition is a model assembled and painted. Badly.

You can only expect to sell miniatures for prices above RRP when they are really really WELL painted. And even then it is difficult, very difficult. To sell a painted miniature you cannot put in the title "pro-painted", that is a viewer discretion assertment, and you cannot sell them with "Buy it now" fixed price. You have to have an auction with 1$ as starting price. If your mini is really well painted it will be sold for a fair price if you chose a model with high enough demand. As i said, i sold some models for 40 - 50 € each, but they were extensively converted (one or two fully sculpted models) and carefully painted miniatures. And they needed a lot of work of "advertisement" in many forums, web sites, etc. And list them in ebay several times each one... So, even when the models are truly good and beautiful, it is really difficult.

Now, your minis?

I'm afraid your minis are not good... First of all, your miniatures are shown in very poor photos, but that is a minor inconvenience. Truth is, your miniatures are badly assembled and awfully painted. I can see mould lines, parts badly glued, and then the paint is thick, the colours are very flat and everything looks so dirty and messy. Sorry to be blunt, but it is really awful.

You cannot expect to sell them for more than the RRP, never ever. Almost anybody can paint to that "standard" easily. People looking for painted miniatures look for way better paintjobs and way less price, and people who are looking for miniatures look for the cheapest and easiest option. With that i mean that a lot of people who might buy your minis (in case they would be fairly priced) they would strip the paint, unassemble and clean them themselves, so it is an extra work needed for that models... It would be much more easy to buy the sprues, as well as much much more cheap. There is nothing to appeal somebody to buy your minis. Really.

So, if you really want to sell them, make them all auctions with 1$ as starting price. Then you will see that people only will buy them if they can get them really cheap. As i said, those models require extra work.

Alternately, if you really want to sell them by those prices, you will need to strip the paint, unassemble the models, clean the mould lines and assemble them properly, then prime them properly and then paint them properly. And then make good photos and display them with a nice background.
If you want to follow this route, first of all ignore the "GW painting system", it just cannot give good results. To achieve rich and nice results you have to MIX the paints, and you cannot abuse of drybrush or washes or any of those "dirty" techniques. Then you have to apply a proper primer, a spray primer or a primer via airbrush. And then the paint you use has to be properly thinned down and learn how much you have to apply and how much to load the brush... And then you have to learn a bit about theory of colour and how the light works, to know how and what colours apply and where in the model... Learn to paint, basically.

In short: Those models are too expensive and too badly assembled and badly painted to be purchased by anyone. Make them auctions with 1$ as starting price if you want to sell them at all cost. Alternately, learn to paint well before trying to sell painted models.

Greetings.