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Made in gb
Mindless Spore Mine




UK

So i ve been considering buying a full army off ebay or other places, probably already painted as i enjoy building but hate painting (too much of a perfectionist) so id enjoy running a full painted army.

i have bought the odd model from ebay but usually heavily discounted and unpainted but was starting to look at finished peices.

So i was looknig for suggestions, opinions, general concensus' of what people wold pay or have payed for such things? as i know alot heavily overprice their models/armies when reselling or commision selling.

"An open mind is like a fortress, with its gates unbarred and unguarded" 
   
Made in gb
Angry Chaos Agitator





I've not looked to buy painted stuff in the past but a pointer if you're looking to buy second-hand stuff:

Websites like ebay and Trolltrader have a lot of stuff and pretty quick turnaround, but the prices tend to be high. You can get the odd great deal but it's pretty rare. The real good stuff is in local buying and selling groups, often on facebook. Also forums tend to have board for this sort of stuff. That's where you can often get the best deals, but it take patience for the right thing to come around.
   
Made in gb
Mindless Spore Mine




UK

shmvo wrote:
I've not looked to buy painted stuff in the past but a pointer if you're looking to buy second-hand stuff:

Websites like ebay and Trolltrader have a lot of stuff and pretty quick turnaround, but the prices tend to be high. You can get the odd great deal but it's pretty rare. The real good stuff is in local buying and selling groups, often on facebook. Also forums tend to have board for this sort of stuff. That's where you can often get the best deals, but it take patience for the right thing to come around.


thanks for the advice, sadly my local groups are very big and tend to be close knit (and heavily overcharge)

my question was more in regards to say a fully painted hive tyrant, new theyre £29 so would £60 be adequate? since its double the price? or an entire army for £2000 but it costs £40 to buy, is it worth 5x the cost?

i understand this has alot to do with "if i think its worth it" but seeing such sweeping 'buy now' prices vary massively for unbuilt/painted models id rather not take it as the gospel that "this £4k army is definetly worth the cost"

"An open mind is like a fortress, with its gates unbarred and unguarded" 
   
Made in au
Grizzled Space Wolves Great Wolf





It really just comes down to how well it's painted, and if it's a ready painted model someone is trying to get rid of versus a model you are actually commissioning to have painted.

If an army is painted poorly enough or incomplete enough that most people are just going to strip the models, they'll be worth less than new-in-box models.

If an army is painted well, and the WHOLE army is painted and ready to play with, it could go from anywhere like the new-in-box price up to several times the new-in-box price.

If you're actually getting something custom painted, places can give you quotes, but it usually comes down to them estimating the number of hours it'll take them to paint something and some hourly rate they want to be paid. If you want a custom painted Hive Tyrant even done to a poor quality, it might still take 4 or 5 hours to build, clean and paint, so expect to pay someone 4 or 5 hours worth of wages. If you want the same models painted to a high standard where they might spend 2 or 3 days on it, then expect to pay 2 or 3 days worth of wages to get it.

Commission painting is always going to cost a lot more than buying a ready painted model that someone is just trying to get rid of in order to clear out a spare room in their house. Some years ago friends and I bought off ebay a few fully painted WHFB armies, and they cost roughly the same buying those models new in box, but it was a fully painted army so we bought them just to play with them as-is, we had no intention of adding extra models ourselves.

But that was someone trying to get rid of the models, not a commission painter, for a commission painter there'd have been hundreds of hours involved in painting that many models even to a poor standard, so if we'd bought those exact same armies commission painted they'd have cost thousands of dollars more than the new-in-box price.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
 greavous wrote:
as i know alot heavily overprice their models/armies when reselling or commision selling.


Commission selling is a terrible way to make money. You might see something that looks overpriced, but if you think "how many hours would this have taken to do?", subtract off the price of the unpainted models, and divide what remains by that number of hours, most of the time the effective hourly rate is terrible.

I briefly considered doing commission painting many years ago (even though I'm not a great painter). I spent a few minutes calculating how much I could sell models for versus how long it'd take me to build and paint them and quickly realised I could make more money doing literally anything else, it was so bad that it made working as a burger flipper at McDonalds look like an intelligent career choice

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2023/01/25 02:08:19


 
   
Made in us
Utilizing Careful Highlighting





Tangentville, New Jersey

Rereading this thread reminds me why I only do painting commissions for close friends...


 
   
Made in us
Rogue Daemonhunter fueled by Chaos






Toledo, OH

Painting miniatures is one of those things like childcare that is both stupidly expensive for the consumer and pays extremely little to the person doing the work.

   
 
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