Slowly Clearing Things Out

I don't know about you, but I find it hard to throw stuff out, or even to get around to selling it. I am not particularly enamoured of EBay these days either. It is getting more and more expensive to use, is not particularly friendly to the individual that occasionally wants to sell something and you hear more and more stories of fraud too. To my mind, EBay is no longer really an auction house and more like a department store. This is a shame.

Another problem I have is that I dislike selling my unpainted lead. You don't get back what you paid originally. This means that I tend to hoard the lead until the walls are fit to bursting and will rarely sell it off unless I get around to painting it. If I get around to painting it, then I have completed the project, so why would I then sell it? Tough problem!

So, I was looking at my collection and wondering about rationalising it again. I have done this in the past and usually wind up buying the self-same figures all over again at a later date when the enthusiasm resurfaces. This time around I decided to sell some Heru from the Wargods of Aegyptus range. I have two units that are painted and based, so my prospects for selling these figures ought to be reasonably good as long as I pick the right price point. Another consideration was that I only kept the Heru because I wanted the option of fielding them in a game, and I wanted them available as an enemy for my Typhon warband. I have no particular desire to field a Heru warband myself, but it is always good to have a spare warband in case you can entice others to play the game. I have other, unpainted, Heru in my collection and Wargods also allows for human contingents in each warband. These humans count towards the compulsory element of the warband. This means that I can retain a unit of Heru, add some humans and still field the Heru warband if I so choose. I don't need to keep these other figures and can use them as a means of earning a bit of money towards my wargaming budget, assuming they sell.

This leads me on to the next issue. How much do I list them for and how much do I rate my painting at? If I were to send these figures to a professional painter it could cost me £5 per figure plus postage, were I to use a UK based service. I could send them to Sri Lanka and get them painted for around £1 per figure for a basic paint job (more for a better job) but then I have to take the risk on shipping them around the world. Also, these prices do not include the cost of the figure. Surely other people consider these too when deciding to bid on an auction. Well, I hope they do but I suspect that most do not. They come to EBay with expectations of getting a bargain. This has been my experience in the past when selling figures. People do not want to pay the going rate. In the end, I have looked at similar figures on Ebay and worked out what the minimum I would accept is. I listed the figures at that price. It covers the lead cost and the cost of my painting without being as expensive as a professional figure painter in the UK would charge. Let's see if I get any bites.

On a side note, I did see that someone was selling Anubi warriors (basic warrior figure, which retails for around £20 per unit of ten) at £9.99 per painted figure. There were bids on those figures too. I wonder if I should have broken up my units and sold individual figures at that price instead. It would have massively increased my potential profit margin!

The figures I am planning to sell are a unit of Heru Archers (EBay Link):

and a unit of Heru with Polearms (EBay Link):