"Paint & Price" Topic

How important is price when you are shopping for paint for your minis?

Very.
A bottle of Citadel or Vallejo better be pretty darn good before I'll spend money better spent on craft paint.

The quality of the paint means more to me than the price per bottle. Its not like I buy that much of it.

I have pots of Vallejo and Citadel that are older than my daughter, so yes, quality is everything, and price really doesn't affect the decision (at current price levels).

I use all sorts of paints, craft and otherwise. Depends on what I am doing.

I use a lot of Ceramcoat craft paint for brush work, decent quality and cheap, but it does not work at all for airbrushing. So the higher quality stuff is sometimes worth it.

The quality of the paint means more to me than the price per bottle. Its not like I buy that much of it.

Seconded.

Price as such is generally less annoying than shape. I have a real dislike for the trendy squeeze bottles. Partly, that's a lot of time spent in microscale, where the smallest amount of the expensive paint I can squeeze out is about ten times what I need.

It's a secondary concern, but that said, I ended up getting heavily into Reaper paints because I found some huge lots at a great price on eBay. Now they are pretty much all I use, and if/when I add more or replace any, I'm happy to pay retail for more of them.

The paints I use next-most often are craft paints, which are best for terrain and such.

I need to break out the Humbrols that I bought a while back – worked with them back in the day. It had been years since I had done any painting so I started back in with Model Master and Tamiya.

Also have some Vallejo for metallics and some their other bottles from the clearance racks (second the dislike for dropper bottles).

At any rate, paint with good coverage and flow characteristics is preferable – the question is whether that necessarily is a function of price.

For figures it's Humbrol (very rarely Revell or Tamiya), so the price is the price.

For basing and terrain it's a mixture of craft paint (normally the good artist's acrylic stuff) and Dulux emulsion – and I sometimes buy the small 250c pots you can get made in shop to almost any colour. These latter cost about £4.00 GBP each – which is still very good value.

Quality defines what I buy, more than price. For figures, I use mostly Vallejo and sometimes Citadel. I use craft paints for scenery projects.

Very. I use craft paints mostly. I do have some Citadel paint from the '80s that works better than the stuff they sell now even 30 years later.

For paint, it's simply the quality of the product. Price is not an issue.

For me, quality of paint is obviated by quality of painting, so I buy cheap craft paints. I don't really consider the price, since they're cheap craft paints. I use the same paints on my terrain and vehicles, so the bottles do get used up.

Very important. Since retirement my hobby spending is drastically reduced. The craft paints by and large fulfill my painting requirements. One in a while I'll buy a pot or two from one of the hobby lines if I can't otherwise find a color.

A mix of craft, artist colors (Liquitex) and model paint. Bought mostly for quality and color.

Price is not important for paints for the brush. I like the Vallejo-style squeeze bottles, because the paint does not dry out as quickly as in ordinary paint jars -- so I save money because I buy less paint.

Price is a little more important for spray paint. I usually use ordinary Rustoleum or similar hardware store primers for flat black, white, gray, and rust, and I use those cans up pretty quickly.

For other colors, I use Citadel, Army Painter, Tamiya, or other expensive model paints, because they spray on well and the spray cans work properly. My experience with craft paint is that I got less than I paid for. It was just not worth the cost savings to have paint glop and spurt out of the can and make a mess that had to be cleaned up and repainted.

I tried a couple of cans of very expensive spray paint from an art supply store. The colors were perfect for what I was doing, and the finish was very matte. However, each coat was far too thick for 25mm figures, no matter how far away I held the can.

If I'm buying a single paint that I will frequently use, price isn't that important. At least at 28mm metal, the price of a bottle of paint is the same or less than a metal figure. Additionally, most paints I don't use the entire bottle, so the larger size of a craft paint bottle doesn't add any economy.

I do wish Army Painter sold its Strong Tone in larger bottles, though! That wash I use more than most of my paints!

I have a mixed bunch when it comes to paint.

You name the rand, and I have it. From craft paints to the good stuff, its all there.

Heck, I have about 25 Polly S paints that all I have to do is get the lids off(the old metal lids. All I have to do is use HOT water, and plyers.

But I love Polly S. My wife asked why I still have them, I love Polly S.

Are they still being made?

As has been written above quality comes before price, every single time. It's not like I spend much on paint per year anyway. I guess I run out of about half a dozen bottles a year.

The only significant paint expense I had was switching over to acrylics from enamel and needing to buy about 30 bottles in one hit, but I got a good deal at a show on those.

I mainly use Vallejo with a few other makes for specific colours that I like. Since I use steel bases I prefer to stick to car primer and enamels for those.

Depends on the color I need. Paint is not expensive enough for me to consider price.