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I've thought a lot about what to do with my old miniatures that aren't really painted to a standard that I'm happy with these days. I could trade or sell them away, but that doesn't work since I have an emotional attachment to the things after all the time I spent on them. I could strip 'em and repaint, but that's not much better than selling them. I'll probably just keep them as-is, or touch up the paint job on them (thankfully I learned to do thin layers fairly early.)

So, what do other people do with the old miniatures they have that just aren't up to snuff anymore? I'm not really looking for advice on what to do, but rather I'm just plain curious. Do you put your old RT beakies that are covered in thick layers of cracked paint on the table with pride, or do you only put your absolute best work on the table? How about other people? If they have a range of models on the table that shows their progression in the hobby (whether it's intentional or not) do you get a little vicarious joy from seeing it or do you just want to get rolling dice?

I've some old 2nd ed Orks. They look terrible So they sit in a box. I've also got a second ed Trukk. I converted it up. If I like the look, I keep it. If not it's either converted or put away.

Why are you not stripping your old models and repainting them?

I stripped pretty much every pre 2000 metal mini I had a few years ago. This is the first box I go to when I want something and they slowly get back on the table.

The Necromunda gang in my sig is a good example. You cant beat a classic!

I've got some 2nd ed mono-pose marines as part of my battle company (2/6 of the tac squads) They don't see the table very often. Better looking/painted models get priority, and at the points I normally play at, it's not often I need to get that 4th tac squad on the field. But I still field RT beakies. They might not be the best looking guys out there, but they are retro, and I love them.

Once I get more marines painted, the 2nd ed guys are going to be booted from the company. There are two possible fates in store for them. One is if I go crazy and start a second company, they will be filler tac squads for them. Another option if being striped and re-painted as statues for terrain and/or objective markers.

It might be that I have low/realistic standards, but I don't think I have anything so bad that I'd be ashamed to put it on the table. Field -last- sure, there is a pecking order. I've only recently entered the world of stripping paint though. I'm using it right now to clean up some old Eldar that were painted as individuals, not part of an army. Also to change the allegiance of some old marines, to join the forces of the Ultramarines.

A good chunk of my Ork army are old-school. A fair few of them are even pre-pewter and still in constant use.

A ton of my grots are the old 2nd ed monopose auto-gun ones.

My regular warbikers are the old model ones.

I like the old orks.

My old DE on the other hand pretty much got donated. That line was but ugly and i happily switched over to the new models...

 Ascalam wrote:
A good chunk of my Ork army are old-school. A fair few of them are even pre-pewter and still in constant use.

A ton of my grots are the old 2nd ed monopose auto-gun ones.

My regular warbikers are the old model ones.

I like the old orks.

My old DE on the other hand pretty much got donated. That line was but ugly and i happily switched over to the new models...

I still use 2nd ed grots. Never found a reason to buy the new ones.

My 2nd ed warbike and buggy were converted into a bikerboss. And I still have the metal 2nd ed SAG.

Strip, clean and upgrade pieces where needed. It gots my 80's skeletons looking great!

I stripped some of them and gave them new life in a new army. Some I have still in their cases, and I break them out every so often. Others I like to have around as "loaner" armies, so if somebody wants to play and didn't bring an army, I can bust out my old Orks or whatever for them.

I keep them either for display or play (or storage)

If I was happy with the paint when I first did it I tend to still be happy with it even if I could now do better (If I want to do another of one of these I'd buy an additional mini)

If I'm not happy with the paint, for example it was done just to get a unit finished, or because I had to have one for a game(and think I'll actually re-do them) I'll strip them

Stripped my old metal stealth suits. I haven't done anything with them as they look kind of cool as is.

If metals and badly painted but I still like them, I keep them, strip them and repaint.

Plastics (infantry) get given away or binned.

Tanks get kept, regardless.

I keep roughly one from each year I have been painting starting with a rough looking Grenadier figure that I picked up when I bought the D&D boxed sets as a kid, painted up with 4 different Polyscale Enamel paints. Those sit on the top shelf of the shelf of shame as reminders.

The rest of them...it depends. If the sculpts are still good but the paint job isnt up to snuff, Ill strip and repaint them. A lot of figures from the 1980s and 1990s went into my smelting pot i the past 10 years though and became new figures because they just didnt stand the test of time.

Normally, a paint job on an army seems to last about 5 years before I decide I need to redo it, though that depends on how often I play with it and where it is located on my display shelves. I have a Samurai army I painted in the 1998 or so that I still am happy enough with though.

I keep my first example of any army/color scheme/game. I like being able to see how far I've come.

In cases where I no longer use them and they are unsalvagable, they get parted for bases or objectives or terrain. If they're decent, I'll keep em for a starter army for my kids/friends/demos.

Its cool to keep all your old miniatures, then you can lay them all out chronologically, plus don't any of you have any sentimental attachment to these things? You slaved away painting these things, silly to chuck them now?

What do people here have against old miniatures? I find them fascinating. The fact that they are sometimes a bit cheesy is the appeal. Even modern warhammer is a bit cheesy (: .

Old is the new new. Hipsters rule the world. Vintage is hip.

I've stripped a few, but most just get brush-dipped with Minwax Polyshades and used. My old paint jobs were pretty basic block painting, but were done quite neatly, so they're perfect candidates for a dip with maybe a bit of drybrushing here or there.

I have an entire 2000+ point Blood Angel army that's painted this way. Basic block paintjobs, green painted bases with no flock, etc. I've been trying for a few years to summon up the effort to decal, dip and flock them. It'd be a real easy job and would look nice, but there are so many other projects I'm working on....

Most of my old models are from when I started the hobby with the Lord of the Rings Strategy game, since I no longer play they spend most of their time inside various boxes stored in a cupboard. It's interesting seeing how bad I was at painting back then but nostalgia of starting out keeps me from giving them a touch up or total revamp, which prevents me from ever wanting to use them for what they were intended. having said that, one or two models (Trolls, Goblins,Shelob) have all made appearances in Role Playing games not based around Lord of the Rings which makes me wonder just what the rest of my collection could be put too if the opportunity arose.

Sad as it is too say I can't see myself ever selling the models on to anyone else, nor ever having the time nor patience to give them the attention they deserve, so it looks like individual models may get brief bouts of use but the majority are doomed to languish in a cupboard until I have children of my own and introduce them to the Lord of the Rings books and films

Subscribing to this thread for my LotR models. My warriors of Minas Tirith (or the fellowship, Gimli's alright, though) really don't look amazing, and I'm not sure if I can strip the paint off without damaging models, so I want to stick around and see if any tips on that pop up.

 KommissarKiln wrote:
Subscribing to this thread for my LotR models. My warriors of Minas Tirith (or the fellowship, Gimli's alright, though) really don't look amazing, and I'm not sure if I can strip the paint off without damaging models, so I want to stick around and see if any tips on that pop up.

There's alot of threads about safely stripping plastic or metal models.

My method is:

-buy "Purple Power" from your favorite auto part shop. It's cheap and is an industrial strength degreaser.
-Pour it full strength into a tub or jar.
-Put your minis in the jar for a day or two.
-Take them out while wearing protective gloves (I like Solvex gloves) and scrub them with a toothbrush
-Rinse and repeat.

If you used acrylic paints they will get clean almost like magic. If you used enamels (the sort that require thinner/mineral spirits for cleanup) then you may take a couple of treatments and they might never get completely clean.

If the models are metal you can use harsher chemicals. I use MEK (Methyl Ethyl Keytone) on stubborn metal models. It's highly toxic, but it cleans like nobody's business. It's available at the hardware store in the same section as paint thinner, Mineral Spirits, etc.

I don't have much left over from my days as a terrible painter. That being said I generally have 3 tiers of models:

New/current projects(these are like gold to me)
Future/long term projects (these will be on the shelf for years, but eventually I'd like to think I'll get to them, most are still NiB).
Past/dead projects. These models I either used to test paint schemes, got them free in a trade, or were from some project that didn't pan out.

Generally the dead models I let sit in a drawer just in case I ever need them, but usually I end up giving them to my kids to paint up when they ask. If I use them myself then I usually strip them in simple green for a few weeks(overkill I'm sure, but it works). I often test out new paint or techniques on these models as well. I have an assault marine that has at least 5 different layers of paint on it from trying out various colors and primers.

Old models? sell them on ebay. There's a decent market for OOP stuff there.

I just convert them into other things or reuse them.
Currently i am building some Judge Dredd minis from some battered plastic IG.

Old school models always get kept. If they need it, they'll get some restoration. But I like the RT era stuff. It promotes the illusion that I've been playing the game longer than I have. (Does it mitigate my duplicity that I'm honest about it?)

 Jimsolo wrote:
Old school models always get kept. If they need it, they'll get some restoration. But I like the RT era stuff. It promotes the illusion that I've been playing the game longer than I have. (Does it mitigate my duplicity that I'm honest about it?)

I know I get a certain perverse enjoyment out of painting models that were cast before I was born

I couldn't ever get rid of an entire army that I'd actually put time and effort into. I've got too much attachment to things I dump hundreds of hours into.

In anticipation of my Bones arriving sometime in the next month, I plan to pack up about 50 lbs. of crappy ancient minis that I will never paint, sort them into "contains lead" and "lead-free" piles, take them to the recycling center and just get rid of them.

I use my old stuff wherever possible. I have 1500 points or so of a 'generic' Space Marines chapter that is entirely composed of models that have been replaced or superseded in my other chapters - so old pattern Rhinos, Whirlwinds, Predators and the original RT plastic Space Marines.

Never sell/give away your oldies

A (relatively) quick repaint and they will be back to serve you with loyalty and passion.



You owe them that same loyalty



Et voila! etc etc!

I initial and date the bottoms of all my bases - and enjoy going back to a mini that I painted back in 1978 and going 'Dang! Glad that I do better than that now!' *EDIT* In my defense... I started painting minis when I was but a sprout.

Or looking at the minis that I painted in 1982 and comparing them to the minis that I painted in 1984.... (I stopped painting miniatures for a bit over a year, started painting again... and somehow gotten much better in that period.)

Or just looking at minis and going 'Boy, I sure liked checks or stripes back in 1990... and keywork in 1994....'

The Auld Grump

I refurbish them. Half of my space marine army, half of my iron warriors and half of my thousand sons were disasters picked up from feebay. A bit of pulling apart, cleaning, and picking off the superglue, and inventive fixing of parts and bits swaps, and the models got a new life. Chest-plate ripped apart, but permanently fused to a perfectly fine pair of legs? just grab some plasticard and green stuff and make it a Mk. 8 torso. Head went to the toilet? cut it off, drill out the neck, fill and put it a new helmet.... pose is slightly off? either swap out the weapons, or cut him off the base and make him walk an incline, or hopping over an obstacle or something... In most cases, torsos and legs can be easily salvaged on a space marine, and arms and heads are easily replaceable. Heck, even my necrons... The destroyers were in ghastly condition, a quick gentle sanding sorted them out right quick. Rip off the badly built gauss gun, and give each of them a custom made one instead, and it adds your signature to the army.

It's a lot more work than buying brand new, and naturally the quality of the models means they won't be display pieces, but, then I can't really paint to that standard anyway. If the best I'm going to do or bother with is tabletop or high tabletop standard, frankly, WYSIWYG is sufficient. I've rarely encountered models that were so bad they were unusable. I've seen at least 200 second hand models come through my hands, probably more, and I've worked on about 100 of them. Of all the models I've handled, only about 10 of them were worthy of the garbage bin. I've seen a lot of people get into grief, harangue and argue over the value of a miniature, because the paint-job is just tabletop standard. What's the bleeding point of buying someone's tabletop standard army if all you are going to do is repaint it to the same standard?

As for old models, they are the treasures of an army. They add the character. I'm looking at the new plastic CSM, and I've got some old metal CSM parts. The new plastics are fancy, but that's just it. They are nothing but fancy. The old metal parts were simple, with only one or two embellishments, but the design is really simple, and I think more effective than the flashy embellishment the new stuff has. It's also about the armor through the ages. It adds so much character to an army when, on the whole, all the models belong together, yet one can still pick out individuals out of the whole, either old dogs of the old guard waiting for the reunion round, or a chapter forced to press unreliable antiques into battle because that's all they have to issue. the simplicity of the older parts means that a painter can take other crative liberties, like making use of all of the open space. Pre-sculpted flames on pauldrons are handy, but they don't challenge me to become a better painter.

metal miniatures are my favorites. So long as someone hasn't, *ahem* taken creative liberties with the models, I am always willing to go near retail value, because after a quick strip, they are like brand new.

Ive been collecting other peoples "broken, over painted, and useless" models for years. I typically strip the paint off, and chip the super glue away. Those that are serviceable get rebuild and repainted. I turned the destroyed rhinos into some great ork trucks and battle wagons.

One of the beautiful things about the Bretonnian army is that the old knights can be re-purposed so wonderfully. Take the 5th Ed knights, remove the heads and put Errant heads on and use them as Errant Knights. The current version as KotR and when they are finally released (2018) the new Questing/Grail Knights as such. It really doesn't look bad doing it this way.