eBay Rescue Part 6: Repairs, repairs, repairs…

 

The best bargains to be found on eBay are often in a sorry state of repair.  From second edition marines covered in 6 layers of gloss acrylic paint, to crisis suits with arms / legs / heads / feet snapped off, thee items are generally consigned to the bottom of someone’s bitz box or painting drawer, until the time comes to abandon all hope of ever recovering the model and sticking it on eBay, to let someone else experience the horror have a go.

eBay Rescue Part 5: A builders work is never done…

 

As I have said before, sometimes very little work is involved in turning around a miniature for a profit on eBay.  The most simple case is when a bad photo or misplaced posting in the wrong section means no one else is interested or indeed understands what is on offer.  Sometimes though, a little more work is required and the model itself might need a good clean and a new photo.  There is a also, it would seem, a demand for miniatures to be assembled in a decent manner – especially those with a bad reputation for being ‘difficult’ to construct.

EBay Rescue Part 4: A bit of Character…

In the property trade, there are two kinds of houses that come up for sale. Those that people want to live in, and those that people want to turn a profit on. For the latter, the best way of turning a profit is to find a house that doesn’t need much work – the basics are already there, it just needs a facelift with the minimal outlay in time and effort to result in an increase in value.

EBay Rescues Part 3: The one about Lelith, the Sternguard and the Genestealer Brood…

You don’t always have to strip, repaint or even touch up eBay purchases to make a profit. Sometimes, as little as a good clean or even just sorting out a mixed lot into smaller batches can result in a decent profit being turned on somebody else ‘junk’.

EBay Rescue Part 2: Tactical Squad

Many of my EBay bargain bids have been for mixed lots of ‘stuff’, usually a mélange of plastic crack that more often than not contains space marines. The GW poster boys are after all the most popular 40k miniature range, and since almost every boxed set ever produce has contained them in one form or another, they are by far the most proliferate miniature on the EBay market. And of course, the one good thing about lots of supply is that demand is not there to meet it, so the price drops and bargains can be found!

EBay Rescue Part 1: Terminators

Since writing about my well documented problem with buying stuff from EBay  and coming to a decision to dispose of the vast amount of cheap plastic tat  grey gold stuff I have accumulated, i have managed to offload a number of items and recoup some of the money invested in them. Mostly, this has been at a profit, as the items I bough were rarely over the 99p threshold and reselling them has involved simple repackaging and sorting of random bits into groups that make sense, and taking decent photos, increasing the value with little to no work (it still amazes me the number of people who take awful photos for selling stuff on EBay).

In some case though, a little more work has been required to save the miniatures from the ‘paint jobs’ inflicted on them. Rather than just stripping them back though, i wanted to see if it was possible to improve the paint work and raise the quality of the miniature to a point where extra value could be generated. Hence, the ‘EBay Rescue’ title to this post