Musings & Meta

I was waiting for a friend to give him some free stuff, and musing on why I’m ok giving away some stuff but not ok with the deep discounts that folks are forced into to sell their barely used models. I’ve given away a ton of stuff – I once gave away an entire 1500pt Ork army! I haven’t done anything that big recently, but whenever I’m looking at something I don’t want in my house anymore, I have an internal debate about selling vs gifting. So what’s the difference between giving it away and selling it for cheap? I’m thinking about a few things.

I’m thinking about the value of things. How it the item valuable to me? Is it worth money to me?

Here’s a summary of a few items I’ve gotten rid of recently:

• Tyranid army. It still has value to me, although not as much as it once may have. I could play it again, but I’d rather have the free space in my apartment. I wanted money for it.
• Dark Eldar Warriors. 10 models, they don’t take up a lot of space. I spent a lot of time painting them and was really happy with them, and wanted to get a reasonable amount of money for them.
• Confrontation Orcs. I basecoated them years ago, played with them once and they’ve been in a case since then. As well, even if I felt I wanted money for them, they would never sell. I can either throw them away, or gift them to someone.
• A couple books and magazines. These would be worth money to me, except that I got them for free! After I’m done with them, I can either recycle them (and recycling isn’t as great for the environment as re-use is) or give them away. The next person has the same options, but now they’ve been used by at least 2 people, increasing their value/cost-to-make ratio.
• Ancient models from when I was 15. These have nothing but sentimental value to me. I took a few photos to remind myself of them and prayed someone would want them. No monetary value at all. I’m surprised I managed to give them away.
• Princess Acadia from Drake. This model had value – it’s brand new, it’s gorgeous…but it only cost me $7. Sure I could try to cost recover the $7, but that’s the kind of money that isn’t worth my time and effort.
• A model that I had just received free from another friend or tournament prize. Again, brand new, gorgeous models. I gave away an ork plane, a Seamus crew, a resin ork model. These things have no cost to me because they were free, but they take up space and I can’t see myself using them. At least not anytime soon. Whereas in each case, the eventual recipient assembled and painted the model immediately.

There is a decent amount of joy that comes from giving hobby stuff away. If you give it away, and it has value, then you are making someone else’s hobby life better. And that feels good. This is an expensive hobby, and people love getting free things.

You all definitely have a ton of models in your closet. Go open that closet, find some models that you’ll never use again and find someone to give them to! Your closet will thank you, your hobby guilt over having to many models will thank you and best of all your friend will think you’re the coolest person on the planet! (at least until you crush him while he’s using the models you gave him…:P)

I apologize if the person I’m quoting is reading this! This isn’t about you, at all. It’s about our community, and you just had a particularly pithy quote! This is a totally unfair opinion post, and I’m as guilty as anyone reading.

I’m a member of the local Facebook game trading group, and another one that is near identical but allows auctions. There’s a regular stream of people selling models. Lots of models, entire armies worth of models. How we all ended up with multiple thousands of dollars worth of things that we just don’t want anymore is a topic for another day, but I wanted to write about something I noticed on these public forums. This is a pretty regular post:

WargameX army for sale! Total of $1000 worth of models, but I just want it gone, so it can be yours for only $250!

I want to talk about “pricing ourselves to the bottom”.

This is an expensive hobby. I walked into a store and spent $60 on plastic and card and paint without blinking an eye. When I added up my Tyranid army, it came to about $800. I bought a box of Dark Eldar Warriors at around $45 some years ago. We avoid counting because it’s a really big number when you’re done.

Why do we have such a problem with paying an actual reasonable amount for models? This fellow hobbyist spent $1000 on those models, he lovingly clipped and glued them, he spent hours of his life painting them to a standard that he’s pretty happy with…and we repay him by giving him 25% of what it’s all worth, because they are “used”. Somehow these objects have lost value, even as we put time and work into them!

When you put an army up for sale, you can’t actually put up a number that is anywhere near what the original value is. Even if you saved your buyer 3 hours of work in clipping and gluing. Even if you’ve put a ton of work the paint job and conversions, and if they had been a commission you’d have made money on them, you only get 25% of your original purchase price. Does it make sense?

I originally put my Tyranid army up for $300, knowing that this was an outlandish number. The DE Warriors started at $35, because they were painted damn well. The Tyranid’s ended up selling for $230 after parceling them out, and the Warriors went for $20. I “just wanted them gone”.

Sellers! Take some pride in your work! Raise the value of what you’re selling – your models are worth money! You put time and blood into them, and you deserve more than 25%!

Buyers! You spent $100 at GW on a single model, you should be ok paying $50 for a $100 model! We’re all in this together, and that guy you priced down just wants to use your money to buy more models! Help a brother out!

(Of note: Like motor vehicles, models seem to lose value the instant they leave the store. I’m not saying try to get 100% back. Maybe 35%. And maybe give me a discount because I’m on your side! :P)