Try e-bay. You can find some bargains in lot auctions.
Try "dungeons dragons miniatures lot" or if you don't mind painting them "Ral Partha lot" or any of the other miniature companies.
I don't use a large number of DnD miniatures. I use Lord of the Rings miniatures for my NPC player races and Warhammer miniatures for monsters. For around a hundred dollars I ended up with around a hundred minis.
These are tiding me over pretty well as I build up a more respectable collection. I didn't want to spend the time delicately painting everything, so every race is spray painted a different color (humans=blue, dwarves=red, elves=green, etc).
For the players' minis, they are encouraged to buy their own that they feel represent their characters. I'm not gonna buy everything for them (I just supply the books, pizza, character sheets, gaming mat, story, place to game...)
I shoot for a price of 50 cents per mini in the lot. If it goes above a dollar a mini, I quit bidding.
Hello all,
I just got the chance to DM for the first time. I wanted to add miniatures to my game.
What with the DnD miniatures becoming increasingly difficult to find (especially in larger quantities), and the Pathfinder Battle's miniatures still a few months away, I was wondering if anyone has any extra/unwanted pieces in their collections they are interested in selling.
Shoot me a message if you do!
Thanks for the help,
-Nate
I have hundreds of minis that I've been looking to get rid of. I sold all the rares on ebay, except the ones without cards, and have a ton of commons and uncommons and a few rares with no cards. The only issue I can foresee doing the deal off ebay is the trust thing. I've been ripped off on mini trading sites, and wouldn't ship anything without payment in hand. Meaning you'd have to send me payment and wait, which many would find sketchy. I would've messaged you, but paizo has no such feature. I can be reached at ghettowedge@yahoo.com
Check out my gaming blog for lots of suggestions on how to build a collection of usable miniatures for pennies per miniature.
Some highlights:
1. Do a search for "Mage Knight Miniature Lot" on eBay. Mage Knight miniatures are comparable in quality to D&D minis, are mostly the right size and can be had for ridiculously low prices. I got several hundred of them for less than $75. I did have to rebase them, but that wasn't that bad.
2. Go to a local toy or hobby store and buy bags of dinosaurs, lizards, bugs, frogs, wild animals, birds, horses, etc. Usually you can get a dozen decently sculpted minis for a couple of dollars. An exacto knife, some glue and some paints will give you a wide range of mythological beasts.
3. Check out some army miniature supply houses, many of them carry boxes of ancient armies, like Romans, Greeks, Bablyonians, etc. for less than $10 for a box of 30 or 40 minis. My local game store carries some of these boxes. Yes you have to remove them from sprues and paint them, but you can build up a nice collection in no time. I purchased collections of knights, Romans, Hittites, Anglo Saxons, and other ancient armies, most of which work perfectly well as soldiers or armored characters. Also, the place I purchased from also had boxes of orcs, goblins, elves, dwarves and undead. I picked up about 400 minis for about $70. (Plus shipping...)
And, of course, you can check out your local game shop for minis they sell on consignment. Our game store has three shelves full of D&D miniatures ranging in cost from a buck to over $40. Plus our shop has several blister packs of very usable minatures from different suppliers, I picked up a nice collection of elementals that way. And Reaper has plastic miniatures designed for Pathfinder that you can find there too.
Lots and lots of ways to build out a mini collection on the cheap and quickly.
Woohoo! Thanks to all for your help!
I've looked at a few mage knight miniature sets on ebay. Are they really similar in quality to the DnD minis? They look kinda bleh. SOOOO cheap though.
My experience with Mage Knight miniatures is that the quality is highly variable. Some of mine are as good as anything I ever saw from Wizards of the Coast. Some of them are quite lame though. But to be fair, there's a good bit of lameness in the D&D minis too. Overall though I would say the average quality of a D&D mini is slightly better, and the plastic they use is more flexible and less prone to breaking than the Mage Knight minis.
I don't see any deals like I got a few months ago, but that may just be timing. And as I said before, if you are willing to de-sprue, clean up and paint miniatures, your options expand considerably.
Well, I started my effort to expand my mini collection back in April or May, and was mostly finished by the end of July, but in that time I don't think I saw many, if any, D&D minis selling for fifty cents each. Lots of Mage Knight minis selling at that rate or less, but not D&D minis. As proof of that I offer the fact that when I expanded my mini collection from roughly 150 to almost 2,000 minis, only a couple dozen of those were D&D minis, and those were purchased to fill very specific gaps in my collection. And those few D&D minis probably cost me as much as all of my Mage Knight minis (around 600) or my boxed minis (around 400) put together.
The only D&D minis I saw selling at that rate were the most common minis, and usually of the less desirable factions. The average D&D mini I purchased was probably closer to $2.00.
One more bit of advice...
If you do purchase boxed minis to de-sprue and paint, be sure to take careful note of their scale. When D&D first started using miniatures in any sort of numbers, the average humanoid mini was roughly 24mm in height. That was usually called "1/72 scale" which means a 24mm mini represented a figure slightly less than 6' tall. This wasn't the same scale as the actual battle grid where a 1" square represents a 5 foot area, but that's only important to total obsessive geeks...
The important thing is that over time that scale has crept upwards to the point that those original minis now are dwarfed by the recent minis which tend more to be 28mm or even 30mm (which would correspond to a seven and a half foot tall giant humanoid using the old scale).
So try to find minis that are at least in the 28mm scale so that your elves don't end up looking more like gnomes...
Haha yup that's already a problem. The WoW minis are significantly larger than the DnD minis. I have a dwarf that stands a full head taller than a human guard.
It looks a little goofy, but it doesn't bother me. My players are all brand new, so I could easily convince them that he's a dwarf with giantism and rp him like Andre the Giant.
I definitely want the bases to be the right size, though, for obvious reasons. I spent a good hour and a half cutting off two hundred WoW bases (along with a few fingers).
We'll see if it was worth it. =)
Thanks for the advice.
Heh, I spent most of a day cutting off the bases from over 600 Mage Knight minis, and then gluing the minis to wooden disks I bought from a wood supply store. So I know what you mean...
For my smaller minis I did mount them on thicker bases to make them a bit taller. I've used them in several sessions intermixed with the newer sized minis and unless you have them right next to each other, it's not even obvious that there is a size difference, and even when there is, there's quite a bit of size difference even in D&D minis from the same time period. I have a D&D drow assassin that is the same size as my 24mm scale adventurers, while the D&D ranger mini towers over both of them.
It's not a big deal, at least not to me, but I thought I'd warn you anyway. I've got a bunch of orcs that I sometimes think I should just use as some tribe of warrior goblins since they are so much smaller than my Mage Knight orcs...
For Nate and the others that have emailed me, I will try to assemble a list of the minis that I have over the next couple of days. I'll post it, and we can go from there.
The list is a work in progress. I'm a little more than halfway through, but here's a link as I continue.
E-mail sent to ghettowedge.
Just to clarify, I'm not really interested in splitting up the lot. I'd accept reasonable offers for big chunks, but definitely not just a couple pieces. I should be able to update the list some more tonight. There are 283 unique minis listed so far, and over 600 including duplicates.
I've finished cataloging the cards and here's the final tally.
The list
There are 416 unique minis and 886 in total. I still have to do a visual check to make sure I have each mini. As I do, the checked column will fill up, and I'll figure out which minis I have without cards. Then I'll add those to the list.
Nate, and any others can send me preliminary offers. Paypal is preferable, but I'll consider other methods once a deal is reached. Since Nate started this, he has priority. I know this isn't ebay, but anybody looking for references on me as a seller, here's a link to my ebay feedback.
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I know this isn't ebay, but anybody looking for references on me as a seller, here's a link to my ebay feedback.
I can vouch for ghettowedge, i won a auction or two of his
Nate and I have worked out a deal. To everybody else that inquired, thanks for your interest and sorry. I am glad to say I will soon be free of my prepainted plastic miniature addiction.
The final dregs of my collection are up for sale on ebay. In this auction you will find a lot of over 100 figures. These are the figures with no cards, cards with no minis, damaged and factory rejects I had leftover. Which isn't to say there aren't some good minis here, most are in great shape and there are lots of rares.
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The final dregs of my collection are up for sale on ebay. In this auction you will find a lot of over 100 figures. These are the figures with no cards, cards with no minis, damaged and factory rejects I had leftover. Which isn't to say there aren't some good minis here, most are in great shape and there are lots of rares.
if I didn't have most of them I would go higher.... but it just hit the limit I'd pay for the minis I don't own
if I didn't have most of them I would go higher.... but it just hit the limit I'd pay for the minis I don't own
I appreciate it. It's fun to see your auction jump up in those first few days. If all the plastic I owned wasn't in there I'd send you a consolation prize ;)
if I didn't have most of them I would go higher.... but it just hit the limit I'd pay for the minis I don't ownI appreciate it. It's fun to see your auction jump up in those first few days. If all the plastic I owned wasn't in there I'd send you a consolation prize ;)
It's disappointing you won't ship to Australia. Can I ask why (just for interest - I don't know much about eBay)?
Shipping out of the states can be not-worth-it expensive. When I was selling individual minis I had some hassles with international bidders and just stopped shipping out of the country altogether. This is the last batch of minis I own and I'd like to be done with as quickly and painlessly as possible.
Shipping out of the states can be not-worth-it expensive. When I was selling individual minis I had some hassles with international bidders and just stopped shipping out of the country altogether. This is the last batch of minis I own and I'd like to be done with as quickly and painlessly as possible.
Cheers. I guess that makes sense, especially if you've been selling them individually. :(
Only a couple hours left to buy the last of my minis.
If it breaks $200, I'll throw in some DDM posters and other odds and ends.
Hey folks
Like ghettowedge I've a decent collection of DnDMinis that I'm looking to offload; there's a mix of rares, uncommons and commons. All are available with cards.
Many of them we're minis I was putting together for a now-defunt Kingmaker campaign.
Here's the LIST
I may well explore e-bay [don't have an account but know some friends who do] but also wanted to test the water here on the boards. I'd be willing to entertain offers for the job lot, likewise for shipping overseas [I'm in the UK but will be US for 3 weeks early 2012]
Cheers ahead o' time
Black Dow
PM: dmblackdow@gmail.com
Black Dow, that's a collection with some nice rares in it. I'm not even in the market for minis right now and I'm interested, so I'm sure you'd get lots of responses from an eBay auction.
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Black Dow, that's a collection with some nice rares in it. I'm not even in the market for minis right now and I'm interested, so I'm sure you'd get lots of responses from an eBay auction.
I agree, I have over 65% of the scuplpts for minis that exist, and there are quote a few on that list that I don't have (10-15 in fact) I would say ebay price for the lot would most likely be in the US$150-US$200 range. maybe a little more or a little less depending on the time of year you list it (at this point people are christmas shopping, I would advise you to wait until after christmas to list this on ebay, when people have gift certificate money to spend.
Cheers lads - savvy advice. Will keep you posted when I fire em up on ebay.
Black Dow. I will give you us$200 for those, and I will send the money to you before you ship the minis.
would you send them to Taiwan, if I paid the shipping for cheapest option?
I don't mind waiting.
Black Dow. I will give you us$200 for those, and I will send the money to you before you ship the minis.
would you send them to Taiwan, if I paid the shipping for cheapest option?
I don't mind waiting.
Taliesin - sounds a great deal. Could you PM on dmblackdow@gmail.com so we can sort out all the details?
Thanks again.
BD
I was unable to finance a deal with Black Dow, and his minis are still up for sale, as far as I know.
As mentioned above anyone interested can give me a PM on dmblackdow@gmail.com or post on this thread.
Anyone from the US whose interested I'll be over in Houston from 28th Dec - mid Jan, so am happy to post from there [saving on international shipping as I'm in Scotland].
Cheers
BD
Minis sold.
Cheers for the advice and interest from all.
BD