Hi
Please see my lot here - happy to discuss outside of eBay for buyers outside GB
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20 warriors, 2 foot characters, 2 artillery pieces = 2 spearheads = 72.80 *2 = Ā£145.60
1 Daemonsmith = Ā£20
2 Bale Taurus = Ā£78.40 *2 = Ā£156.80
2 Hobgrot Vandalz = Ā£30.80 *2 = Ā£61.60
There are no bull robots from the spearheads in this listing, but the trains are printed (?), so letās say those two elements of price cancel out
Total NIB = ~Ā£384
So, implicitly, the contention here is that the books, paintjob and addition of shields/banner to the models constitute about Ā£540 of the price.
ā¦Ok? Youāve done a lot of secondary school maths here, then made a statement but not any conclusion
What are you saying exactly?
If we say my time is worth Ā£15 an hour, a little over minimum wage in the UK- then this 36 hours worth of painting.
Can you build, convert and paint this force to this standard in 36 hours?
Ah well I saw you were replying @chitzkoi, but it seems that you may have elected not to reply, or, to think more carefully about your response.
Opinions are wonderful things, but not when they are unasked for. I assume you donāt walk in to restaurants to tell the owner how much it costs to produce a meal you have no intention of buying compared to cooking it yourself with the constituent ingredients at home?
It often amazes me how brave, and stupid, the internet makes people
Have a restful day 
Gonna step in here and ask you to watch your tone.
Have a look at the forum rules or contact me or another Moderator if you have further questions.
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Reread the comment and you will see that I make no judgement in the comment. The value of the books are hard to quantify; print costs are a wide spectrum depending on individuals; the value of paintwork (and associated time saving) is subjective, all of which are inherent parts of selling any complex lot.
The main price records the market has are eBay sold listings and Troll Traderās Army section, neither of which create any real consensus on price. This is especially true for a young, in-production range like Helsmiths.
Ultimately, seller feelings about price are material only insofar as, in the modal form of marketplace, the seller must declare a price in order to create a listing. I have often thought that this is a poor fit for the task of selling an army, but the infinite patience required to display without a public price and sell for a privately negotiated price is not always available.
Every seller is differently motivated, but all buyers are the same; they have access to the money and want the product. How they conceive of value on their journey to wanting the product is simultaneously ephemeral and essential, a phantasm of desire (atop and inextricable from a necessary iron core of actual access to funds). And yet, for all it is insubstantial, it is at once the only determinant of whether an item sells or not.
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I do not know you friend. So I will say this with kindness. Art is subjective you took your time and made something very nice. Now you wish to profit. Thatās very fair and like minded. But there is a problem. Art is worth X no one exactly agrees what X is. So when some one tells you its Y, dont get upset. Breath deep and explain with passion (not vitriol) why you think its worth X. Let facts and your heart guide you to a better deal. NOT a new grudge.
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Fine, Iāll say it then.
The quality of your paintjob doesnt -in my opinion- even remotely justify minimum wage, which is what youāre expecting to be paid extra for it.
I dont know where this idea of āI spent x time of hobby time therefore I should be paid AT LEAST x of minimum wage plus the models priceā came from to be honest.
If I buy a model, assemble it, and then try to sell it, I wouldnt even dare suggesting an extra price for my assembling efforts.
Again, my opinion.
Free market I guess. For me personally, value of a model goes down from NIB. But I know for a fact that there are people who do not like to assemble miniatures, let alone paint them. Logically that means for them the value of an assembled and/or painted model would go up. Since commission painting services are absolutely a thing, paying someone to paint and probably also assemble your miniatures is a market, where the provider of the service has to charge for his time investment too. Look at prominent places like Den of Imagination. The rest, i.e. the rate and painting standard etc, is then subjective of course.
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Right. There will always be vastly, vastly more people not buying something than buying it, and for painted miniatures, time and again we have this conversation. But thatās because sellers think their opinion is relevant and it isnāt. Only the buyer matters, whoever they are. I think the reason this has so many clickthrus and yet has prompted this discussion is that there is underlying interest in the lot as it is described, which then hits an organic wall on seeing the list price and the pictures. It will only take a single buyer to overcome those two hurdles for the matter to be closed in favour of the seller, but the question remains, will that person ever come?
Itās important for me to state in hindsight that my reason for posting the breakdown as I did was the flurry of DMs I got after this listing. I appreciate the unofficial position I have in matters of pricing, which @ChaosBlack need not defer to or heed or agree with or particularly believe me about - it has emerged organically because of my own financial context, personal interests, and role as buyer, seller, market disruptor and, finally these days, disinterested broker.
It honestly saved me time to write the above down in a comment and refer people to it rather than re-litigate the conversation. I am in dialogue with those people, not the seller, and will continue to remain so regardless of any further outpourings of emotion.
Friends from the covid era will recall the Ā£800 Chaos Dwarf Juggernaut which never sold and the listing for which is at this point older than my son. It remains listed to this day, at Ā£380. With Ā£2 p&p.
There is so much to say about that lot which seems immaterial to this discussion, to do with demand and supply and perceived scarcity and aging markets, and thatās just for bare hobbyable metal.
It is a fact hard for so many sellers to understand that assembling and painting a model removes customers, but it is an undeniable fact borne out by the price of bare sprues versus built and primed models, easily visible on Troll Trader for anyone with 30 seconds to view. Louis does not run a huge international business and do that mistakenly. The hope is that despite the reduced customer base, you are replacing āthe man on the streetā with a smaller, wealthier customer base of cash-rich, time-poor bastards who inflated hobby prices to begin with, like me. But to court that market it is a lot more like selling art than selling models, and the vast majority of sellers have never sold or bought art for large sums. It requires you to sell to intelligent people for whom a statement like the one in my top comment takes three minutes of pattern recognition and elementary school mathematics to determine. The question therefore turns to taste, and in matters of taste the customer is always right.
In the past, I corresponded with OP briefly when he offered to sell a job lot of paid prints of an army aesthetic he had lost interest in. He seemed to think that what he paid was relevant information for me as a buyer, but it justā¦ isnāt. He similarly seems to think that the time he took and UK minimum wage are relevant information for us all here. They are not. All that matters is the customer.
I very much enjoyed the #online-deals discord chat last night about the Ā£3000 Hobgoblin listing. Strongly recommend anyone who is interested in high value army purchasing to check it out.
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