"From my cold dead hands - Last army you will part with" Topic

As a counterpoint to armies you regret selling.

Since retiring in 2018 I've been selling off unused figures, games and the like.

It's amazing how much I've sold and still have not put a dent in storage. That may be because most sales result in new purchases.

Up until two years ago, I had not sold anything from the core collection.

Just last year I sold off my khaki colonial collection (British, afghans, second Boer war.

So, the question remains:

What would be the last army/war collection I would part with?

For me, it would be the Zulu war collection. Although, others in the running are fantasy, Zombies, Rhodesian, and (current project) Irish rebellion 1920's.

What are your last troops out?

I don't have strong feelings about this, and I notice that my attachment to a collection can change over time. I may not be able to accurately predict what I'll keep all the way to the grave.

I made a deliberate decision in 2012 to start going through all of my gaming stuff, one collection at a time, and either finish it or dump it. That has lead to both selling and shopping. I've dumped a lot, but also increased the footprint of the sum total. I think it's also made it harder to get rid of the remaining collections. I notice I am most attached to miniatures I painted and based, but quite mercenary about anything I got in a flea market. I appear to be suffering from Sunk Cost Syndrome.

I've kept my 1/2400 Napoleonic sailing ship collection since I made it in the 1990s, despite falling out with the genre as a gaming topic in the early 2000s. I love the miniatures, I worked hard on them, I want to play the period, I have Big Plans™ to refight whole wars… but they've been collecting dust for 15 years now. They seem like they'll go into my tomb with me.

OTOH, I actually tried to sell off my huge 1/6000 WWI naval collection a few years ago. I painted and based them all, designed the storage system, developed two entire gaming systems around them… that's a lot of sunk cost. I was still willing to let them go for a minute there. But, I had a very high asking price and there were no takers, so the whole kit came back home with me, and subsequently I expanded it and began playing with it again. That was a dodged bullet.

- Ix

Depends entirely on circumstances. Living in my own home or reasonable facsimile and with a group of friends showing up every Saturday for a game, it would be 28mm individually based--probably horse & musket. A room in a "retirement center" shifts that to 6mm--probably WW II. A shared room or ward in such a place might be 2mm Napoleonic. Some armies were built simply because I can't tell how bad things could get.

Don't we have a more cheerful topic?

You don't find stoic perseverence even unto death to be uplifting?

For decades my answer would be my 28mm ACW collection, but I have recently started to think about putting it on the auction block.

Like Robert said, some things are situational. I have a collection of 60mm John Jenkins F&IW that I have about 7 grand in, so I would never rebuild that project if I sold it. On the flip side, when I retire retire, I can sell it off and put a couple of grand in the bank if I want to. I anticipate liquidating most of my book collection before I worry about selling my large figure collections.

My 1/3000 Napoleonic Sail

The latest ones I'm working on.
Apparently in the past, my hands were plenty cold. 🤷

"You don't find stoic perseverence even unto death to be uplifting?"

I'm not sure clinging to things you can't ever use again is a particular virtue, YA.

Circumstances. If I'd been asked this question last year the answer would have been "30mm Napoleonics, painted and based for CLS." Some of the regiments had been with me for half a century, and I wrote the last rule revision. Then for family reasons, I wound up having to move to Lincoln. No friends, no group, no 5'x9' table, which is the CLS minimum. I still technically own about 4,000 of them, but I left them in Pendleton, IN as part of a vast CLS force there, even rebasing an old and beloved regiment to rejoin them. They'll be well looked after and gamed with regularly, which is better than them being in boxes gathering dust in a garage here.

Anyone who thinks he knows what armies he'll still be able to use at the end of his life is spending money on fortune tellers which ought to be saved for troops and paint.