Wednesday 25 January 2012

eBay - Sometimes you actually get a bargain!

So like many lovers of Praetorians I have been watching eBay for months now getting far outbid, on what I am prepared to pay, on individual models and big collections. I watched one set of 110 Praetorians go for over 500 quid! Now while I would admit that that probably is market value, it does seem incredibly ridiculous! 

My original plan was to use Victoria Lamb models for pretty much the entirety of my troops with some of the original models incorporated into command squads for the company and platoon. I had picked up around 6 or 7 models for reasonable prices considering, (Captain, Bugler, Standard, Sergeants and a couple of troops) but had given up hope of any large number of original troops. 

Then I spotted a buy it now bargain! 80 odd gents with heavy weapons. I wont divulge the details but these guys really were a bargain at less than half what I would have thought to pay. Some need a lot of cleaning but the first troops are ready to go and are below with the characters I already had.  I not trying to be smug, I'm just so happy and excited that I got these fellas after the disappointment of finding I had got rid of the few I had, and general depression of watching people pay far more than I was prepared to over and over again. I hope everyone else out there has the same luck, and if not, well at least you got one less person bidding against you!


This has changed the game for me, still not intending to field fully original Praetorians as I want a big Platoon, but now I can use them for veteran squads, an idea I had hoped to use them for but gave up on because of cost. So while I have not had the time for much modelling, just eBaying, over the last couple of weeks, its definitely paid off!



3 comments:

  1. Congrats! Massively happy for you! I do feel a little guilty having brought mine years ago at more reasonable prices. I use to clean up on a sale when people had incorrectly labelled them as just 'Guard' or 'Mordians' etc. I don't think I could part with any of mine, so it's good to see you can still get a bargain now and again. :)

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  2. Has anyone noticed that some of the lots posted on eBay recently seem to be copies of the original GW pieces? The castings I have noticed of late require much more cleaning than the original Praetorians ever did - and I have a lot of them for reference. Just curious if anyone else has wondered the same thing...

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    1. I have bought a lot off eBay now and I have never thought this, but I almost always buy prepainted models and then strip to save costs. My personal opinion would be if someone wants to make casts and sell them on ebay, I'm not bothered about it if they are still usable models, GW turned off the supply when there is still clearly high demand and prices are frankly ridiculous. If someone swamped ebay with usable counterfeits at least we wouldn't have to pay a fortune for them. I'd take a little extra flashing for cheaper models any day, but if you are paying top dollar and think your getting knock-off's I can see your point. Why GW doesn't do even a limited run of models is beyond me, they would collect a small fortune. But I'm almost at the point where I don't want them to as it makes my purchases a waste of money.

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