"Ebay miniature prices!" Topic

auction
£110.00 GBP!!!
auction
£180.00 GBP!!!
Are these really worth that much.

Things are worth what people pay for them.

The first auction painter seems to have 2 regular people buying from him.

There was a discussion about this on another forum and someone said they had sold a very large collection for £15.00 GBPk to non-wargamers who were just collectors.

Postage is free….

….if people want to spend that kind of money then that's their choice I guess. It's not as if Ebay doesn't also have a lot of nice figures at much lower prices as well.

It's a good question and I am sure that it's been asked before about similar auctions. Here's my two penneth on the subject as it's a quiet lunch time for me…
Basically Black Hat Miniatures has it right, things are worth what people are prepared to pay for them.
The price that you are paying is not for the intrinsic value of the miniature but for the time and skill of the painter. If you value this, you will be prepared to pay accordingly. For example, the second figure at £180.00 GBP looks expensive but at minimum hours rate of say, £10.00 GBP an hour, after deductions for the cost of the figure, paint, glue and basing you are probably looking at 17 hours work. Could the customer who buys this produce a similar quality paint job in the same time?
The painter is actually a well known and talented painter and has produced many miniatures for some well known miniature companies. His work is outstanding and I suspect that he is entitled to think that he can charge a higher hourly rate for his work.
Ask yourself how much you would pay (the hourly rate) a car mechanic to fix your car or come to that, a painter and decorator to paint your house.
Just to be clear, I am not a commission painter or pro painter as some like to be called but I do appreciate the work that some of these people produce and I can only aspire to try to do the same. It's a shame that the artistry and talent of these guys isn't more appreciated. Now if I could buy their skill….

If that took 17hours to paint I'd be shocked. Both of them are pretty average paint jobs certainly something I could replicate myself in a lot less time and I'm no great shakes with a paint brush.

There are some really top notch painters (oddly though they are almost always painters of fantasy or sci-fi subjects) out there who might be worth that sort of money…but not to me.

A lot of my enjoyment in this hobby is painting and modeling miniatures and scenery. Even if my efforts aren't world beating the fun is mostly in the journey and buying something already done would defeat the purpose.

Would I pay that much? Big NOPE on that.

Can I paint that well? Surprisingly, YES to the first one, NO to the second.

Does the painter have the right to charge/ask that much? Of course he does. Who can deny that right? But nobody is forcing anybody to pay that much.

There used to be a guy here that had a weekly "EBay outrage of the week" rant. It grew tiring.

you are probably looking at 17 hours work!
I dont see anything in the second figure requiring any skilful detailed painting that would take 17 hours!

I'm sorry, my point may have been misleading. I wasn't saying that it would take 17 hours to paint the mini, merely that if you were paying minimum wage of, say £10.00 GBP, then it represented 17 hours work. If you feel that the painters skill is worth more than minimum wage, say £20.00 GBP an hour, then we are looking at 8 or nine hours, and so on. The point that I was trying to make is that you are paying for the time AND the skill of the painter, not the mini.
We are moving into dangerous ground when starting to make claims about whether a person can paint as well or better than someone else and I can only see that hurt feelings will result. It is down to the customer to decide what he prefers and whether he will pay the price. As has been said, nobody is being forced to purchase the figures and there are plenty of cheaper ones out there.
If you are able to paint to that standard, then well done, perhaps you should value your time and skill as much as the seller on ebay does rather than deride it.

It all comes down to what someone is willing to pay. No one here knows how long it took to paint his figs. Material costs are negligible. If one could consistently get over 100 pounds a figure they could make a very comfortable living. His market is small but more power to him if he can get those prices.

There are a lot of people who are not interested in wargaming or who don't know that you can get 20-50 plastic figures in a box for less than $50 USD, nor do they care to know. They just want to purchase a painted figure because they like it! I've been surprised by various Facebook groups, Youtube channels, etc., where average painters have thousands of followers and sometimes sell their figures for quite substantial sums.

There are also a number of miniature designers who sell limited runs of fantasy and sci-fi figures, some of which get up to several hundred dollars each. I would never pay that much for a gaming miniature, but apparently there's quite a few people who will as many of the limited subscriptions sell out.

For a good benchmark of what the market will bear for painting services, Fiverr is a good reference point although most of the painters are focused on WH40K and related figures.

TBH I think the cost of the paint job is irrelevant, it's second hand goods and the artist has already been paid. If it were painted by a celebrity wargamer, a YouTube mini-painter, or had featured in a magazine or something, then you might pay wads of cash.

As a few have already said, at the end of the day it's the buyers choice :/

I still get a laugh when I see an item going for the mid to high hundred$, and they still charge exhorbitant shipping… ;-)

Don't forget you are paying for his years of experience… too many people don't think twice about paying callout charges and high fees for technicians, plumbers etc but then balk at the though of paying someone a decent amount for his work in the hobby. Personally I charge £20.00 GBP and do quite a good job… I charge that as I hate painting for other people but will do it for that. I have enough of my own to paint.

The point is they have no artistic ability at all, even the shields are transfer's.