Yesterday, I started seriously thinking about reducing the size of my collection. Since the theft, a lot of my more important figures are just gone and I realised I am looking at years of trying to reassemble these armies. There's also a pile of unpainted plastic which fills me with something akin to dread. Worse, I am looking at two significant home moves between now and next September. One of those moves might be across an ocean or a continent.

Instead, I started thinking of "boiling down" what I have to three key themes and getting rid of the rest.

So...what's the best way to sell off a large collection of LOTR figures? Anyone done so before? Any challenges? Anything to watch out for?

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Dreaming of getting back to painting...any month now.

I'm no expert by any means, but I have watched ebay pretty closely over the last couple years as I've tried to build up my collection. And my observation would be that you will likely make more money by selling stuff in smaller pieces/groups rather than trying to list and sell as one big army/armies.

For example, if you are selling a Minas Tirith army, maybe list Boromir and Faramir together, then list the captains & banners together, then groups of 12 to 24 Warriors together, etc, etc....the main trouble with listing them all together as one big group is that you potentially limit your amount of prospective buyers because some people just can't afford a $200 lot and others may only want some of the pieces and don't want to pay for a bunch of stuff that they already have, you know ?

The only other advice I'd offer to you is to perhaps give it a good thinking over before pulling the trigger on selling. I'm very sorry to hear about your theft, as that's just awful, and perhaps you're just very discouraged at this moment (understandably so !), but think it over a bit and try not to do anything too rash that you may regret a bit later on...

Good luck with whatever decision you reach !

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T'was in the darkest depths of Mordor, I met a girl so fair..
But Gollum, and the evil one crept up and slipped away with her..

It's not just the theft, but the fact time's sort of getting harder to set aside to paint. I still love doing it, but... the days of just painting up stuff for the hell of it are long past.

I figure the moment you start thinking about long term commercial storage and then realise it will be an even longer time before you can come get the things, its probably time to reconsider.

Thanks for the tips. I was thinking along the same lines!

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Dreaming of getting back to painting...any month now.

Regarding finding the time to paint... My son and I bought the LOTR figures when the movies were out, and I would buy some more when I found them at reduced prices. My son got older, stuff went into boxes and he is full time into job/family now so he doesn't have time.

Now that I have retired, I pulled out his figures and have time to paint, do terrain etc.

Just a long way of saying, if you like the figures and they are a joy to paint with their detail, back story, etc. Find some way to store them for when you do have the time you won't regret that you no longer have them.

But do thin it down to a reasonable amount - just to keep peace with whoever keeps asking you why you still have them.

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"Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer."

One other piece of advice would be to try to sell them locally through kijiji or the like, as then you won't be giving a hefty % to E-bay.

Not a bad thought at all. Will look into it.

Part of the painting time issue is that I'd rather paint figures I either will really love or will get immediate gaming use out of them. I am looking at piles of my backlog and realising...eh, there's a lot that are neither. And since time is an issue, I'd sooner spend my scarce gaming hours doing that.

Also, if I sell a bunch of these things I can afford to replace more Haldir's Elves and Mithril Angmarean orcs.

I found some of my old pictures via a google search:


Miss those guys.

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Dreaming of getting back to painting...any month now.

I'm personally not into mailing things out, just haven't been comfortable with it, but have done it before. Instead of selling on ebay, I prefer local dealing through Kijiji, facebook groups, local community websites. You'll have a far better chance moving your figures internationally though rather than locally, too bad we don't live in the UK.

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My Lotr backlog: 305/952[][][][][][][][][][]32% completed
Painting Lineup: Mumakil x2, Rohan Heroes x8, Haradrim, SKoDA

Holy Devlan Mud, that's a lot of figures. Been tabulating them today. nowhere near done, but I have more of a handle on what is there.

Also a good way to cut down my painting backlog :p

As usual though, the theft tripped me up again. I was *convinced* that I had twenty metal High Elves. Utterly certain. Assumed they were in the second storage case. I had painted several. So there must be...a dozen or so left? Right. Nope. There were four. The other eight were in one of the stolen cases. humph.

Ah well. However, this feels very positive. A way of connecting to what I love about the hobby and a way of pushing aside some bad collecting decisions.

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Dreaming of getting back to painting...any month now.

Well, I've put some up on ebay:

http://www.ebay.ca/usr/gavin_bennett

That's all for the month, mind you.

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Dreaming of getting back to painting...any month now.

Bartertown is a pretty good place to sell as well.