"Making Money on Ebay...(Mini article and pics) FOW" Topic

Here is a follow up article on my purchase last week of an FOW Platoon on Ebay…

combatpainter.com

Hey Dude I like that Japanese Bunker ya did !!!!

A direct link: combatpainter.com/?p=698

Did you rebase, or "save" the existing bases?

Did you rebase, or "save" the existing bases?

I took the existing bases and just added tufts here and there and did some drybrushing to blend it all together. Th static grass was laid down flat so it was lifeless. Will add the listing tomorrow but if I post here it may be breaking the rules.

Good stuff. I've done the same with car boot sales (Garage sales in the states?) you can find GW stuff which people almost always under price (unlike E-bay where people know what they've got) bought a dark angels army in a shoe box for £10.00 GBP tarted up and sold it for £150.00 GBP once.

I thought this htread would create some interest…. Hee, hee…Goes to show you how much I know.

Quick Update: Experiment has been proven! Someone is getting a sweet platoon for a very good price. So basically it takes just a few highlights and some groundwork to make neat armies more visually appealing. I encourage guys to re-examine their stuff and touch-up a bit before taking the stuff to the flea market. Eventhough it is old to you, it isn't to the next gamer and a little TLC can go a long way.

Final tally has been registered- Item was bought by me for $40 USD Sold for $113 USD

auction

Profit $73 USD

Time spend on it 3 hours
Materials hard to judge maybe $5 USD in paint, brush wear and electricity.
Paypal and Ebay fees $10 USD

$58 USD Profit after expenses

Roughly $19.33 USD and hour

I thought this an exciting experiment. I have talked about doing this as a workbench so people would follow the whole process from start to finish.

My time spent is where I have most of the problem because I didn't spend three hours straight-that is a guess. It could be less but I doubt it could be more. I need to sit and start a timer-get up and turn it off and so on to really do this right.
I arrived at three hours because I just can't figure that highlighting 40 guys jackets, helmets and faces could take more time than that. I tried to keep track but my method was not exact but rather I used mental notes. I need to do this again to see exactly how much time it takes to make the troops presentable.

In the end, I took an army painted by someone else and increased the value 3 fold simply by painting highlights-rearanging the basing and retaking the pictures.

Interesting discussion. I did something similar a long time ago and got a decent markup. I decided against doing it again as I still wasn't happy with the final result.

I also just sold a DAK platoon on ebay and it went for substantially more than I had anticipated. i realize it was probably a bit above the normal ebay standard, but having looked around on ebay the thing I noticed most was the abysmal quality of other auction's pictures, for the most part. Some auctions have a single distance shot that is sometimes out of focus and/or dark. That tells me either the paint quality isn't there or the seller is very inexperienced. It's a shame that some decent paint jobs may not be getting the right sale price.