and I was prepared ... I had been reading Warseer for the past few months and following the Vampire rumors...by the end of November I started looking through my unused armies and noticed my Skaven were sitting around gathering dust, and I had no enthusiasm to paint them... and really never had. Perfect trade bait...but I had to act fast, before everyone wanted VC...what follows is a guide to acquiring miniatures with minimal cash.
Trade 1 (Local Friend): Check with your friends- Though I had an ad on bartertown...my first instinct was to check with my local gaming buddies...and sure enough one of them wanted to trade undead for my newest skaven:
He got: 20 New Stormvermin, 20 Clan Rats, A Couple of 6th ed rat ogres, 15 of my 4th edition plague monks, a few old metal assasins, a couple of ratling guns, and an old style warp lightning cannon!
I got: Corpse Cart, 20 ghouls, arms/heads/legs for 30 more ghouls, 10 grave guard
Total Spent: 0
Retail Cost of Goods Acquired: 116
My grave guard (Ebay)Thinking I was going to be done acquiring grave guard I ordered 20 more grave guard on ebay for 50 bucks...assembled without bits but still a respectable 41 percent off retail....
Total Spent: 50
Retail Cost of Goods Acquired: 200
Rounding out the Ghouls (Hoard O' Bits): Since I had bits (arms and heads) for 30 ghouls, I ordered 30 sets of ghoul bodies and legs from Hoard O'Bits for 40 dollars (they have an ebay site and an online direct site the direct site is a little cheaper
Total Spent: 90
Retail Cost of Goods Acquired: 275
Trade 2(bartertown.com): While waiting for my ghouls bits, I traded the elves from my old IOB box and an NIB pegasus knight (I wasn't planning this but I had the extra models) for 30 skeletons and 8 grave guard...after compensating my trade partner for some bits that were missing from my shipment...and paying for shipping:
Total Spent: 121
Retail Cost of Goods Acquired: 383.6
Trades 3 & 4 (bartertown.com): Were actually sales...I had a bunch of 6th edition clanrats (something like 170) and I sold them all for 68 bucks+shipping (someone got the better part of an army for under a hundred bucks!) and this brought me some very good karma in my next trade
Total Spent: 53
Retail Cost of Goods Acquired: 383.6
Trade 5 (bartertown.com): Major score! I traded a some Bret Knights of the Realm and a second pegasus knight for 10 grave guard...the person I traded with decided to just send me their entire VC collection (I will take every spare Bret Model I can find and send them as a gift)
18 GG Assembled10 GG Brand new
15 Skeletons assembled
10 skeletons on sprue (missing legs but thats only like 10 bucks)
1 varghulf
1 corpse cart
3 necrarchs
female vampire
new necro
Krell
a bunch of ghoul bits (don't need but hey)
Fur cloak vampire on foot
Old mannfred no horse
Total Spent: 53
Retail Cost of Goods Acquired: 678.6
Trades 6&7 (Bartertown.com) Feeling flush I bought a metal varghulf and a metal mounted mannfred for 56$ on Bartertown
Total Spent: 109
Retail Cost of Goods Acquired: 678.6
Trade 8 (Barter town.com) I traded a unit of chaos marauder horsemen, 4 old metal phoenix guard, an old box of space marine veterans (the original one) for 70 zombies!
Also I need to buy legs for one of my skeleton sprues for another 10 bucks
Grand Total Spent: 119
Grand Total of Retail Cost of Goods Acquired: 763.6
I'm still trying to sell a few items to pay for supplies (magnetic bases, trays, I ordered for the army, flock, primer...) but this will be part of another article
All told...I will be fielding an army of
66 Grave Guard
65 Skeletons
50 Ghouls
70 zombies
2 Varghulfs
2 Corpse Carts
A Bunch of vampires/characters all for under 120 dollars and a bunch of miniatures I did not need/want!
I'll discuss lessons learned and how they apply to people not swimming in miniatures, in the next article!
No comments:
Post a Comment