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I find Ebay an absolute treasure trove for putting together my Eldar army without using any overpriced, easily broken, badly cast, Finecast miniatures. I don't care one bit if I have to strip them with Simple Green, and I actually prefer the 2nd ed style Eldar when it comes to OOP models, so I am actually shopping specifically for them.

My wife just bought me a squad of ten Eldar rangers in metal for Christmas, and paid $29US, shipped.

Last month I bought myself a squad of 5 Dark Reapers (including an Exarch) in metal for 18 dollars, shipped.

And those aren't bids, I only use "buy it now" services and purchase what I'm willing to pay for, because I despise the work involved in bidding.

Okay, so it seems there are two reasons to buy ebay:

- out of production miniatures

- you live in australia.

Doesn't seem to be worth spending all the time on ebay waiting and hoping for something otherwise.

You don't have to be some Ebay guru who spends every waking moment sniping auctions. I type "orks" in the search box once every few weeks and check the first few pages for deals. If I find one then great, otherwise it's no big loss.

To some people it's worth the hassle of spending 20 minutes to save $20. To others, it's not.

I've picked up some good things from there before, but one of the latest was 20 odd Cadians "Built and primed" for cheap (£10 with P&P).
That was 4 months ago.
I'm still trying to get the fething primer off.
It's like it's made out of rubber or something. I think I should have just sprayed white over it since it was decently put on.

I gotna full squadron of sentinels for fifteen quid last month. I know I know I know everyone on here hates sentinels but I love the sneaky lil devils. When they retail these dqys for eighteen pounds a piece fifteen for three isn't a bad thing.

There's another reason to buy from ebay; if you like fixing other people's mess ups.

There's something I find really satisfying about taking the really badly assembled, really badly painted rhino (which you get super cheap anyway). Stripping it, repairing it and making it look as good as the other kit bought rhinos on your shelf. That's very rewarding to me

 lunarman wrote:
There's another reason to buy from ebay; if you like fixing other people's mess ups.

There's something I find really satisfying about taking the really badly assembled, really badly painted rhino (which you get super cheap anyway). Stripping it, repairing it and making it look as good as the other kit bought rhinos on your shelf. That's very rewarding to me

True dat. I don't mind salvage and restore operations. I just never seem to be able to find any auctions with items like that. Or rather items with things like that priced at what they are. Instead I find terrible modelling and paint jobs, with the words pro painted and my loss is your gain plastered on them. Not only do those phrases make me want to avoid the lot, they are priced way too high for what they are.

Bought 42 Necron Warriors, a Monolith, 6 Heavy Destroyers, a Destroyer Lord and 8 bases of Scarabs for 60€ about 1,5 years ago. Sold the Monolith for 35€, thus paid...25€ for the package

Took me about 3-4 hours to fix broken stuff and strip the paint.

THAT's what ebay is for.

 Blaggard wrote:
I've picked up some good things from there before, but one of the latest was 20 odd Cadians "Built and primed" for cheap (£10 with P&P).
That was 4 months ago.
I'm still trying to get the fething primer off.
It's like it's made out of rubber or something. I think I should have just sprayed white over it since it was decently put on.

Some people do this deliberately to cover up the fact that your primed models are actually resin recasts, so don't be surprised if you don't see grey when you finally get that primer off.


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 Sigvatr wrote:
Bought 42 Necron Warriors, a Monolith, 6 Heavy Destroyers, a Destroyer Lord and 8 bases of Scarabs for 60€ about 1,5 years ago. Sold the Monolith for 35€, thus paid...25€ for the package

Took me about 3-4 hours to fix broken stuff and strip the paint.

THAT's what ebay is for.

Those deals aren't exactly common, however.

 -Loki- wrote:
Those deals aren't exactly common, however.

And if it's a really good deal the bids will rise as there's more people than you interested in it. I've bid on quite a few items where I didn't have the stomach to top the later bids.

Still, if you get something at a good price you can always trade it away again for something else. The Chaos Land Raider I bought from eBay and traded for ten Terminators with a guy on a local forum wasn't a bad deal at all.

Your average deal on ebay is not going to be too far flung from a discount retailer. Every now and again though, something on ebay will come up and it will be an excellent deal, I once picked up 3 leman russes, two imperial guard battleforces and 2 chimeras - basically an Imperial guard army in a box, for 100 quid, that deal won't ever come up again, but I happened to get lucky. Very lucky.

However, I don't trawl ebay non-stop waiting for stuff to show up, but if i want something, I check ebay, compare with the UK discount retailers, and see.

You live in Us you allready got super cheap prices

I adore ebay. I've had great success with it, although it does require monitoring (my old job gave me a lot of time for that).

I've picked up:
-3 chimerae for at least 1/2 price
- A LRBT for <1/2 price (although poorly painted, it didn't take long to fix up)
- 3 Valkyries/Vendettas for around 2/3rds RRP, one was magnetized for carrying and had the FW upgrade. One was beautifully painted that I just left as is.
- A ton of bitz ranging from a bag of random crap from IG boxes for £2 to specific special weapons
- A primed CCS

I've had one poor purchase and that was some "newly primed" Long fangs. Which on arrival looked like they had been dipped in house paint about 5 times. They were easily stripped over a weekend.


All in all, I've had good experiences with ebay, but you do have to keep an eye out. One or two looks and you won't find much. I don't mind spending longer to find good quality and cheap. I enjoy the hobby and find GW prices rather prohibitive to playing, so if sacrificing modelling tanks for paying 1/2 price, I'm ok with that.

Everything I've bought off of ebay has been assembled near proper if not proper.

I only buy primed/no paint models

I won't pay over 70% retail with shipping included.

Over the years I've pieced and sold armies I had bought off of ebay. Its a hobby in it's own right.

Set up some good search filters and you can have Ebay report new additions to those searches automatically. It takes very little time to keep updated each day and snoop for good deals.

I totally love to search for OOP minis e very once in a while. Right now I am checking in every so often because I am pondering getting an Eldar Towering Destroyer knight for my fledgling army.

I just discovered another reason for ebay.

I went down to my FLGS tonight and wanted to buy something. They didn't have it in stock. I asked them to order one for me and they did. I asked how long it might be until they got it in.

They said "well, our GW rep is pretty backed up right now, so it might take a couple of weeks".

I want two of what I wanted, so I put in the order anyways, and then went to ebay and bought one that will ship in 3 days. I figure I'll get another paycheck (or two) before my order finally arrives.

My FLGS closed recently so everything I buy is off eBay. Very often I'll find new in the box at 20-25% off and free shipping. If I can't find it, I wait a week and check again.

Pro tip: Buy a lot from the same seller and often they will give you great deals or help you get a product you can't find.

 Ailaros wrote:
I just discovered another reason for ebay.

I went down to my FLGS tonight and wanted to buy something. They didn't have it in stock. I asked them to order one for me and they did. I asked how long it might be until they got it in.

They said "well, our GW rep is pretty backed up right now, so it might take a couple of weeks".

I want two of what I wanted, so I put in the order anyways, and then went to ebay and bought one that will ship in 3 days. I figure I'll get another paycheck (or two) before my order finally arrives.

I have had my FLGS order something for me only to have it not show up from GW for over a month. With ebay stuff it usually arrives in less than a week. I really do believe that GW is their own worst enemy when it comes to selling their product.

when I was putting together my allied imperial guard for my sisters of battle. I managed to buy a Leman Russ tank for 7 dollars(4$ shipping made it 11). I constantly see "new in box" but without the box deals with a starting bid of 0.99. Put a 10$ bid on enough of those and you start winning things for really cheap.

Of course I haven't been on ebay for a long time so maybe those have somehow disappeared since I last made purchases. A quick look though and I just found 2 leman russ, a demolisher and a hellhound for 15 with 10 shipping. Assuming that triples since its an auction. 55$ for 4 tanks.

I sold my dark eldar and my tau armies on ebay. 1000 point armies both of them for 100$. Deals like that are why many people use ebay but you have to look around for them.

You can always find better deals on plastic kits at your online store like www.thewarstore.com

The money I save on plastic kits ($5 flat rate) pays for extra units or makes fliers actually semi reasonably priced. I got lucky and purchased a bunch before the last ridiculous price hike. I'll never buy another storm raven out of principal.

Of course you can always save much buy buying complete armies on Craigs list from people like me who occasionally get fed up and sell their armies after a price hike. I both bought my Dark Eldar that way and sold my Necrons the price hike before that.

Ultimately though, you just have to accept that this hobby is like a drug and can cost as much as any other addiction...

Ya... Take my advice and stick to one army if you can... This... This "hobby" gets out of hand very quickly.

When it comes to ebay I shotgun bid:
I rarely pay more than 25% retail for something, and when I'm after it I'm rarely in a rush, so I'll put in 10, 20, 50 lowball bids and just keep trying till one comes up for me.

The other one is grabbing bulk lots of bitz for 1-2 you actually want + a bunch of stuff that'll come in handy later.
Bulk lots of models to convert / trade.
Dodgily constructed or painted models - but again, real low ball bids (of only 10-20% retail max) to be stripped, ripped apart and rebuilt / converted...

IF you have the time to be patient, and the patience to do it this way, you can get fantastic deals (i.e. - 1 of my D.Fish got for about £3, 3 of my battlesuits - £1-3 each, 2 of my Broadsides £2-4 each, and about 40 gun drones I refused to pay more than 40-50p a drone for - often less.)


Though yes - a lot of peopel are crazy when it comes to ebay.
Yes it's often premade, but you're losing the bitz from the box, and people are bidding OVER retail for these things. (Back when Broadsides were £18.50, I regularly saw them going for £22 on ebay.)

I've found that Ebay is pretty good for a few things. Whole army deals, especially nonMarine and nonNecron armies, are usually the best deals. Granted, some of them can be in pretty rough shape, but here, patience is required to get the most for your money. A friend of mine got a hell of a deal when he started his Eldar army. A very rough army with over 2500 points, lots of tanks and old Wraithlords, but it had lots of unpainted aspect warriors and around 5 falcon chassis with alot of pieces to complete them, among other things. He paid about $150 US after shipping.

I find that bitz can be a bit overpriced, but sometimes its still the best way for that one piece you need to convert something...just make sure you don't go overboard.

Single minis are also often a good buy on ebay, but it really takes some work and luck. Just recently, I pieced together an all plasma cannon devestator squad for about $21. It was across 3 auctions, but the end result was a squad that would have been more expensive to piece together using the normal sets, and all of them were either unpainted or only primered.

Finally, ebay is the best way to get parts of the big sets like AoBR and DV. Why pay $100 US for Dark Angels when you can get the models you actually want for about $35-45 US. I had no interest in either army, but really wanted the mini rulebook, so I snagged it for $20. I've also abused ebay for the AoBR terminators and marine tac squad for a fraction of the cost if I had bought new boxed sets..

You think Australian prices are bad you should try Kiwi dollars. Taking into account exchange rates etc we're getting ripped to the tune of 30%+

The other issue I notice a lot is that a lot of the discount retailers really charge through the nose for shipping to Australia. A lot of shipping from eBay sellers is much more reasonable. This is only my experience however.

As others have said. eBay isn't all that great. You can find oop stuff and rarely a good deal but 9/10 it's garbage.

If your looking at saving money. Discount sellers are your best bet.

I got a squad of 10 metal wraith guard at a little more than half the retail value of the new finecast ones (same models but in more durable metal). They were built and primed white and were in excellent quality. I also got a Defiler for quite cheap (I think around $50), fully painted at pretty good table-top quality. There were also a bunch of OoP raptors for a good price off ebay. I have a few more models coming as well (some metal oblits, and a lord on a bike). I may have to strip them, but when you're paying so little for them, it's well worth it IMO.

It's really whether or not you're willing to do a quick search every couple weeks or so. It only takes like 15-20 minutes and you can get pretty good deals if you're lucky.

Ebay worked for me when I was looking for cheap Sisters of Battle, the out of print canoness is a good example and I got some seriously good prices on there.

My advice however is check your local listings. I use craigslist and kijiji (canada) and I got my friend an awesome gift once.

2 leman russ, 2 chimaeras, roughly 50ish catachan guardsman, Yarrick and a bunch of bits. All well built, but in need of a better paint job.

How much? 50$. The lady was moving and was trying to get rid of her ex-boyfriend's army that he had left at her place when moving out. Offered her 25$ at first to see if she'd accept, she counter offered and we settled on 50.

Another deal I made more recently? A baneblade, a forgeworld valkryrie and 2 leman russ for 100$. Sold back the 2 russes to a friend for 50$... so I basically got a Valk and Baneblade for 50$.

Local listing websites are the best if youre patient and want the best deals possible.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Greenizbest wrote:
I bought 4 NIB Meganobz for about $50 last month. You have to sort through all the "pro painted" and shipping scams to find the gems.

Yeah, but time is money. Does it really make sense to spend a lot of time sorting through the garbage to save $20 over just buying those models from any random 20% off store? I guess if you're on a really tight budget and have lots of free time maybe, but otherwise I just don't see the appeal for stuff that's currently in production.

I have to agree with generally it doesn't make sense but if you wade through occasionally you will find some real bargains. For example I got a Metal Hellfire Dreadnought (ML/TLLC) for 13 dollars and free shipping, and a land raider that needed repainting but i got it for about 35 dollars. However most of what you find is a rip off. If you doubt me look up cyclone missile launchers and how much that bit costs.

I was just able to build the new Dark angels battleforce, New on sprue (barring a speeder) from ebay for under 60 bucks. No stripping, no hunting for bits, nothing.