Best Ebay Purchase

cooper101183 · **Posted:** Wed Apr 30, 2014 1:12 am

Over the last few months Ebay has become my new best friend as I attempt to acquire all the models in the LOTR range. Ive made a few great purchases and a couple of questionable purchases. Yet at the weekend I won one auction I was really proud of. Through a combination of luck on my part and lazy marketing on the sellers part, I won a great auction. It was for more than 50 Riders of Rohan, most still on sprue, for the princely sum of £29.44. To put that into perspective, if I walked into a GW store I would be lucky to get 12. The seller maybe happy with my £29, but not as happy as I am with his 50 plus riders.

I was wondering what purchases you guys are most proud of? The one you will struggle to rival

JamesR · **Posted:** Wed Apr 30, 2014 1:38 am

I haven't bought much from EBay. My personal favorite was getting Boromir Captain of the white tower Ft and mounted plus Durburz for $15 USD or the Spider Queen plus two giant spiders for $25. Both are good savings I've just never made a huge EBay purchase

cooper101183 · **Posted:** Wed Apr 30, 2014 3:39 am

Boromir with the White Flag is a model which has thus far eluded me. It's one of the better Boromir sculpts

rigg1313 · **Posted:** Wed Apr 30, 2014 4:31 am

I luckily somehow got 35 Knights of Dol Amroth on foot (metal), 7 Knights of Dol Amroth on horse (metal), 15 Men-at-arms of Dol Amroth (metal), 24 Rangers/Blackroot vale Archers (plastic), Imrahil foot and mounted, Mounted Knight of Dol Amroth with banner, Radagast, Gwairhir, Aragorn foot and mounted (ranger form) plus a whole lot are random add ons the guy threw in like warhammer fantasy stuff and some spare parts.
This all came in a GW large army case.
I got this all for $140AUD including postage! It is roughly 75 pounds.

This was the reason i got back into the hobby, it was just such a good deal! It is almost $1000AUD in retail value.

cooper101183 · **Posted:** Wed Apr 30, 2014 5:06 am

That was a great win rigg - Ive noticed that there is a certain threshold that the majority of buyers just will not or can not cross, which means those who are willing to cross it can pick up some great deals. I suppose the real question is why are the sellers selling in huge lots instead of breaking the items down. They end up getting not much more for a huge joblot than they would from 1 or 2 figures. To me it is simply lazy marketing, this also occurs when you see a huge joblot, with only 1 photo and the seller doesn't even bother to list the numbers or even the races of the figures, so obviously people are going to wary. I suppose there loss is our gain : )

rigg1313 · **Posted:** Wed Apr 30, 2014 5:10 am

cooper101183 wrote:

I suppose there loss is our gain : )

Exactly! This guy just seemed to be selling off his Dol Amroth Army and I was happy to oblige.

templar_tony · **Posted:** Wed Apr 30, 2014 5:49 am

Unpainted mordor army for under $100 Aus/55 BGP(approx).

72 mordor orks
2 orc captains (metal)
2 banners (metal)
2 Grishnakks (metal)
dismounted gothmog (metal)

Approx Aus retail $330

Still sitting in my wardrobe unpainted along with to many other opportunistic bargains. Last time I purchased a miniature from a GW store new was just after the Two-Towers came out and was a pack of uruk-hai berserkers.

That was over a decade now and I own 32 berserkers ...

Delirivm · **Posted:** Wed Apr 30, 2014 8:24 am

The entire bgime collection including balin's tomb and King Elessar.
Most still in blister or on sprue.
Only the uruk hai and goblins were painted.
For 250 euros.

More recently a friend and I purchased some models for a fairly decent price as well.
Metal orcs for 3 euros a piece.
Faramirs rangers (metal) 3 euro/piece.
Metal OOP fellbeast (slightly damaged) + frodo for 15 euros!

Batman of The Shire · **Posted:** Wed Apr 30, 2014 8:32 am

Weathertop!

templar_tony · **Posted:** Wed Apr 30, 2014 8:54 am

Dat Weathertop...

J.R. · **Posted:** Wed Apr 30, 2014 2:16 pm

Delirivm wrote:

The entire bgime collection including balin's tomb and King Elessar.
Most still in blister or on sprue.
Only the uruk hai and goblins were painted.
For 250 euros.

I just bought those for 100 euro's along with the rest of his collection inlcuding treebeard and metal trolls

although this was on another auction website, it has been my best buy, since I was busy for two days to sort out all the stuff I got :-D

Some people who are quiting the hobby just throw all of their collection in a big box for sale on the internet, I have been very lucky.

Sithious · **Posted:** Wed Apr 30, 2014 4:30 pm

I have used Ebay a lot, as a seller and buyer. And I hate it with so much passion that I wish it never existed. But that is another topic.

Best sale was my Minas Tirith gate/wall set sold for $150 and I had paid $37 for it. I don't think it was worth the $37 I paid, so I feel sorry for the buyer (MIB as it was). But most often my sales are at a huge loss and I make way less than I paid for my collections (star wars, GI joe, and many others). Ebay buyers are too smart and the bids just stay way below retail and way below what it is worth. Scam. I have sold many items on there though which at least gets items out of storage boxes and into a collectors hands that may appreciate the items. for that I am happy to sell what I sell. but much prefer private sales for real prices, not over or under.

Best purchase was a bunch of metal orcs and some Scouts from FOTR that I got for about retail price. I always expect to pay what the item is worth and this was perfect. Most time when I try to buy things the experienced sellers have priced the items amongst themselves to be way above what the item is worth, and I am not in the business of putting a hobbyist through college with my purchases nor help someone who scammed some seller out of a collection with low bids then broke it up and is reselling it at way over MSRP.

thatguy513 · **Posted:** Wed Apr 30, 2014 5:12 pm

I actually recently bought a NIB Helms Deep, about 30 Uruk Hai warriors, 12 Riders of Rohan, and the Warg Attack set for $40USD TOTAL off of a local Craigslist classified ad from someone who just had it sitting in their closet for years and wanted to get rid of it.

I was really happy to get the Hobbit Gwaihir for $15 off of EBay as well as two of the rare bow-up Lurtz for about $5 each.

Wise Old Elf · **Posted:** Wed Apr 30, 2014 10:12 pm

About a year ago someone was selling what he advertised as a 'box of bitz' (40K, WHFB, LOTR SBG, and some things I didn't recognise as being GW). It was a WHFB High Elf Dragon box literally full of spare parts and I got it for about £5. My guess is they'd inherited it and just assumed it was junk so sold it thinking it wouldn't be worth anything. No veteran or even anyone with minor GW knowledge would have sold that stuff for less that £30 at least. I later sold it again on eBay for about £45-50. Even that was a bargain, there must have been so many parts you could easily build half an army. Most of the bits weren't even spares, there were fully build Space Marines, half-painted Khazad Guard and all sorts. Fantastic!

aranel7773 · **Posted:** Thu May 01, 2014 12:37 am

I got really lucky with a lot of used figures. it was listed $45 buy it now plus $11.30 shipping, it was a large flat rate box filled with plastic figures but no inventory and poor photo of everything in the box, so I took a chance and bought it.

Then the adventure begins......the tracking information said it was delivered but it never arrived at my house, I went to the post office and the manager said it must have been delivered to the wrong house!!! I had to open a claim with the post office to try and get my money back but I really wanted the figures, so I went down the street and knocked on everyone's door to ask if they have received my package....no luck, then two days later it magically appeared on my door step......OPENED!! I guess they had no idea with what they had or what to do with it

When I started to go through the box I was shocked at what I had bought and the price I paid, the lot included......
10X mordor orcs seige crew
mordor orc commanders set
orc captains
gothmog on foot
witchking on foot
haradrim cheiftain mounted
sharku on foot
rare(ish) lurtz with bow
golfimbul on foot
2X giant spiders
2X bat swarm
paladin took
6 warg riders
6 umbar warriors
47 plastic uruk-hai scouts
92 morannon orcs
72 mordor orcs
59 uruk-hai warriors
plastic mordor troll

all the figures are poorly painted but only a few were broken and all the heroes are metal!!! some of the duplicates were resold in e-bay lots or in my trade list (which is seriously outdated)

so take a risk! sometimes it really pays off

J.R. · **Posted:** Thu May 01, 2014 7:34 am

That is a great find Aranel! I totaly recognise the shock and wondering while going through a treasure box with unknown goods. For me it brings back some childish feeling when gifts where actualy a suprise :-D

cooper101183 · **Posted:** Thu May 01, 2014 11:26 am

Wow, some great bargains have been had. I have just bought an auction on buy it now for a War Mumakil AND a metal balrog for £39.99, needless to say I didn't think long before swooping in.

aranel7773 · **Posted:** Thu May 01, 2014 10:01 pm

I also was able to snag a mounted legolas in the fall for only $5 (buy it now and free shipping)

jdizzy001 · **Posted:** Thu May 01, 2014 11:10 pm

I scored a frodo and sam deguised as orcs for 0.99 cents.

cooper101183 · **Posted:** Fri May 02, 2014 1:16 am

jdizzy001 wrote:

I scored a frodo and sam deguised as orcs for 0.99 cents.

Impressive. Sometimes I have won great auctions for a few pounds and have wondered why the seller continued with the sale. Personally their is no way I would send something if I had only received a fraction of its value. But then again I wouldn't start the auction at 0.99p, I suppose they learned the hard way that they may have saved on the listing fee but they lost out on the value. I would never ever start an auction at 0.99p unless it was worth 0.99p

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