Buying Armies, 2017 Style

I had a flashback yesterday that reminded me of a serial killer who had been on the straight-and-narrow for some time, but fell off the bandwagon. As I drove away from my latest conquest, some part of me felt like I’d had a momentary lapse of reason and–at least part of me–was feeling remorse.

You see, I had all but stopped buying armies–anymore. I had been doing so good.

But when I see someone selling a large lot of models, I’m always inclined to throw out a lowball offer and then suggest that they don’t sell to me. When that happens, I typically wind up buying the models. I don’t know why my killer sales pitch of “don’t sell to me, because I won’t pay you what they’re worth” seems to work with resounding success.

This trip worked out a little differently in that I wasn’t the one that spit out the number. I showed up and let him know that I didn’t want any of it, but would buy it all if the price was right. His initial price was $700, which I felt was a tad high. He wound up reserving the Tyranids and threw in some extra stuff and called it $500.

Frankly, that price seemed reasonable, but the lack of haggling involved made me feel unsatisfied. I felt compelled to ask for something extra, but couldn’t think of anything else to ask for. For the record, my haggling strategy is completely open, so I voiced all of this to him: “Yeah, that price is a pretty good deal, but I feel compelled to ask for a throw-in. Even though I’ll probably just take it at $500.”

He was originally asking $810 for the lot, so $500 was a reasonable discount for it all, plus he wound up throwing in some extras: a valkyrie, a realm of battle board, a FAT mat, some dreadnoughts, etc.

We shook hands and piled the stuff into the back of my SUV, so I could take it home and unload it on a table. And there it will undoubtedly stand for a while.

I should mention that most of the pictures came from his original selling post, and I know that my photos (the ones with everything in the trunk or sprawled out on a single folding table) don’t do much justice as to what’s all in there.  I should also mention that he took relatively good care of the stuff.  The tanks don’t have any weapons on them, but there’s an entire shoebox filled with sponsons and such for them.  I can’t say for certain that it’s all accounted for, but it looks fairly complete.

Really, I should put it up on Ebay, or at least catalog what all I got, so I can make some semblence of what value I’ll get out of the deal long term. Frankly, the only things I really could see myself keeping would be the game mat, and maybe some of the vehicles to use as scatter terrain (honestly, the scatter terrain aspect was what originally inspired me to check it out in the first place).

We’ll see if I ever get around to either of those though. For now, I’m content to have a bunch more crap in the garage that I could potentially make money on one day. And it helps that the guy I purchased them from seemed like a pretty cool dude–I gave him an open invite to game night and possibly an Apoc game in the future. We’ll see if that works out–if so, having fresh blood in the gaming group would be more beneficial than whatever profit I might make off of the models.

By the way, anyone want to buy some stuff?