when my wife and i are out on the weekends, she lets me go into any hobby store thats close by.these local shops never carry figures i want like from strelets but sometimes ill buy a box or 2 of figures just to support the hobby and industry.

i have managed to collect figures that when i go on ebay they are selling for an outragious amount.i have no intention of selling them but sometimes when i get the sprue cutter out i just cant do it.

i just wish revell would reissue all its figures so i can get to playing with all my figures.

tom

Trust me, you'll never get rich selling you little plastic army men! I thought like you for awhile when I accrued many old Airfix sets several years ago, but my want to have fun with them won out so I carved them up & had fun! that is what they are for. not to be squirreled away for future profit.

I have bought & sold collectible toys for many years & I can tell you this inescapable fact; they are only worth something if someone will pay the price! that is never a given no matter what you see on Ebay!

While some figures are expensive on ebay we have to realise that this is a really cheap hobby. If you want to fill a table 20 feet square then it will cost, but think of all the really expensive hobbys that some people have, like bikes, cars and watching their favourite sports team. Compared to them a $9 box of figures sure goes a long way.

I couldn't even begin to add it up properly but I doubt if I have spent more than £1000 in 30 years of wargaming - if I were paid for each laugh (and occasional tears) I've got out of it then I would be quids in! Playing, collecting, painting, researching and just plain looking at figures (plus all the good mates at home and across the world) add up to one of the best hobbies imaginable. I owe this to being inspired by war movies, Airfix and Battle magazine that I spied on Charing Cross station way back in 1976!

Graham when you say £1000 in 30 years, does that mean a £1000 pounds every year or £1000 over the whole 30 years? I know that I have spent close to a thousand euros already this year on figures, Paints and other accessories

I mean a thousand over the whole 30 years. Never a great buyer of metal figures - when I did it was many years ago and mainly 15mm. Obviously, if I were to invest in whole armies from Foundry or Gripping Beast and the like then I would easily be spending £1000 a year. Some years I buy nothing and still have a backlog of painting - I can only paint when I am in the mood. Biggest single purchase was some resin WWII French transports for dragoons- must have been about 15 years ago £100 for 8 trucks - seemed a lot to me at the time but I had to have authentic stuff as early war French stuff is so distinctive. Typical purchase for me to produce an army - 2 boxes Strelets Normans, 4 boxes of cavalry (Norman and Breton) and a box of Norman archers (£35 the lot) - that will give me a year's painting and 2-3 years fairly regular playing. We tend to have year long fads in my club where we play only about one period and set of rules and then we get inspired buy something else. Thinking about it I have probably spent more than a thousand but certainly less than two - which is part of the reason I like plastics, they give me access to periods that I couldn't even dream of affording in 28mm metal.

You obviously don't have children then - I am sure3 I spend more than that a year in GW alone :-)

But yes, since making the move into plastics my spend has decreased to a couple of hundred pounds a year now, which keeps me in loft insulation for years to come

I used to dream about retiring early after I sold off my first-issue Airfix and out-of-production ESCI and Revell. On occasion I would put a few boxes on Ebay but there were never any huge bidding wars and it wasn't worth the trouble.
Now my boys have the "itch", and it's worth all the money in the world to watch my seven and ten year olds set up big battles on the basement floor with my "priceless" figures, and ask stuff like, "Who fought the Americans in World War I, Dad?"

Neither of my kids were into warhammer (or wargaming for that matter) so I missed out on being fleeced by GW - now if we want to talk about what my son has cost me in trying to help him out with his cars - which he invariably crashes - then we start to talk money!

"which he invariably crashes"
Graham, Maybe it would be cheaper to send him on an advanced driving course...

Cheers

Or move and not tell him where we have gone to!