Dead Marsh Spectre wrote:
There are plenty of people out there who will buy painted miniatures and pay well for them
DMS is right on the money here, there is certainly value in well painted minis. I know one regular opponent who (I think) has never painted a mini in his life and yet has amassed a huge collection of minis via commission work and has paid quite a high price for them.
I think the issue would be finding a buyer, most of the people willing to pay for painted minis would probably go down the commission route to ensure parity in painting style/basing etc. Your odds of finding a buyer (or ideally several to make a bidding war on eBay) within the confines of a 7/10/30 day listing are relatively small. Once again though I agree with DMS that the whole EFGT set would be more attractive to a buyer than just the dwarves for the reasons above. I think if pinted to a high quality each of the dwarves could command around £10 a figure, you just might have to wait a while to find someone interested in buying a painted company for that cost.
As to how rare they would be I have to agree with the majority that it wouldn't be much, ebay's already saturated with the sprues (although I think Southy's slightly undervaluing them, The sprue can comfortably sell for £25 in a BIN auction) and there's no sign of that letting up for at least another 4 months.
If I were you I would keep the sprue mint to maximise your options and then, when you think they've become a bit rarer, offer it up as a commission where you can paint and base the minis in the style specified by your client, for which they'll certainly be willing to pay that much more.
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