The Second-Hand Market for Oldhammer & Middlehammer Miniatures
An article about the current state of the second hand market for older Warhammer miniatures, the effect of The Old World release on it, where to find old miniatures and discussing recasts in the market.
With the approximate release date recently published for Warhammer The Old World (TOW) (Q1 2024, possibly February), it might seem pointless to write an article about the current state of the second hand Warhammer miniature market. TOW launching and Games Workshop rereleasing some older kits will have a big impact on the market, but even then I thought it might be interesting for fellow hobbyists to write about the current market and this can also serve as documentation of the markets history for the future. I will write about what I think the impact of TOW will be for the market, the state of the current market in various channels, my experiences with the market and the state of recasts on the market.
The Old World Launch & the Second-Hand Miniature Market
It’s very difficult to predict all of the effects of the TOW launch on the market, as we still have very little information about which kits will be released, the schedule etc., but overall I predict that it will increase demand and thus slightly raise the prices and make it harder to find specific miniatures. This is due to increased participation and interest in Warhammer Fantasy overall, even with Games Workshop (GW) rereleasing some older kits, they of course wont rerelease all the older kits and in addition to that we all know how much issues GW has had in recent years with their stock. It’s entirely plausible, that it will be difficult to buy even those kits that GW should be stocking as they are sold out, especially during the launch of that faction. From what we have been told so far, they will be releasing a couple of factions at a time so it seems that at launch only Bretonnia and Tomb King kits will be made available. The next rumoured armies are The Empire and Orcs & Goblins, the rumours say that they would be released during summer 2024. That would mean even after nearly 6 months after launch, GW would only be selling miniatures for 4 armies with a high likelihood that even those will be sold out. If there’s enough excitement and people wanting to jump in with TOW, they would have to look for alternative sources for miniatures and the obvious solution would be the second hand market. Of course some will turn to 3D printing and alternative manufacturers, but overall most hobbyists prefer to have original GW miniatures for various reasons. All of this means that it highly likely that it will be more challenging and expensive to purchase second hand Warhammer Fantasy (WHFB) miniatures next year.
Even after GW has released all of the 9 armies they will initially support in TOW and even if they manage to stock kits for all of those armies, there will still be a group of armies that they will release rules but no miniatures with the initial launch of TOW like Vampire Counts, Skaven, Dark elves etc. It’s likely there will be high demand for miniatures for those specific factions. In addition to all of that, if TOW is even a modest success, it will reactivate older WHFB players and in that group there’s likely many who might want to add to or recreate armies they had as a kid and for that purpose will want to acquire miniatures that are older than the “old” range GW will rerelease for TOW. Hopefully GW will do lots of extensive “Made to Order” campaigns and offer these older miniatures for sale directly from them. This would ease the pressure on the second hand market and importantly this would mean they would be manufacturing more of these superb classic miniatures to circulate in the market in the future, so future Oldhammer or Middlehammer enthusiasts will have an easier time collecting these miniatures as well.
It will be a very interesting time for those of us who have been in the market for a longer time, personally I’m happy that I’ve managed to acquire recently enough miniatures for decently sized Tomb Kings and Dwarf armies (around 3000pts) and also some for Vampire Counts and The EmpirewhichIfinancedbysellingallmymodernminiatures. With my style of painting that will keep me busy for years, so even if the market is totally cooked, I’ll be alright and I’ll probably be able to purchase some missing units directly from GW if they release kits that are old enough for my tastes which seems to be the case for at least my 6th ed Tomb Kings army.
Where to Look for Second Hand Miniatures?
This story only concerns so called Oldhammer and Middlehammer miniatures, so miniatures GW released during the 80s, 90s and early 00s. While some of the places I discuss are likely good for buying modern second hand miniatures too, the only experience with that is recently selling all my miniatures that were released after around 2005.
With that out of the way, where would I recommend to look for older miniatures? From my experience and based on what I’ve heard from other enthusiasts, the absolutely best places for this are Facebook groups dedicated for miniature trades, especially any local groups. There are also global Facebook groups for this and I had a very good experience buying from one of them. That group is called “Middlehammer Trading Outpost”, there’s also one called “Warhammer Fantasy Battles (SALES ONLY)” and also multiple other groups which are usually dedicated to a specific game or era like for example groups dedicated for trading Oldhammer miniatures. The one from where I’ve bought the most is a local Finnish miniature trading group called “Figukirppis” and I’m sure there are similar groups for most countries, a group being local of course makes it a bit more limited so it’s easier to manage to get what you want to buy and it also keeps the prices lower. Overall these miniature trading Facebook groups are mostly used by other enthusiasts who are not trying get the absolute maximum price they can get, they are happy that someone else will use the miniatures they didn’t have time to use themselves. There’s also the general Facebook marketplace where it’s possible to find decent deals, but if you want to look outside of your own region, it’s a bit difficult to use as there’s no global search and you have to change your location, it only has a max 500km range. Even with that limitation there’s sometimes people selling miniatures there who are not themselves hobbyists, so you might find a great deal (please do still offer a decently fair price if you see something that’s priced way too low). In these groups, the prices are usually around 3–6 EUR per metal model, around 15 to 20 EUR for a metal character model, around 20 to 30 EUR for a metal war machine and around 0,5–3 EUR for plastic models depending on condition. These are what you’d pay on average, but I’ve certainly had many unbelievably great deals as well, also being a known contributor and collector in the group helps you to get offers you wouldn’t otherwise get as enthusiasts much prefer to sell to other’s who share their passion. Currently EUR and USD have a nearly 1 to 1 exchange rate, so would be nearly the same in USD.
The next place I would recommend to look are any local general selling sites available in your region. In Finland we have a peer to peer selling site called Tori.fi and and auction site called Huuto.net, these sites especially have people selling their miniatures who maybe used to be hobbyists years ago or are selling maybe their loved ones old miniatures so it’s possible to find great deals. We also have an old local Finnish Warhammer forum website called Sotavasara.net, that has a selling and buying section where there’s always something for sale, I’m sure other countries have similar website that are worth to look into.
There are also some companies who sell second hand miniatures globally, I’ve purchased from three of them and had very good experience with all of them, especially one. Usually these are very expensive as they obviously have to make a profit on selling the miniatures, but they can still have decently priced miniatures and sometimes if you are looking for a specific miniature, these might be the only option. I have purchased from Trolltrader in the UK and from Totalwargame in France, both were decently priced and shipped very fast, they also have good customer service and I would recommend both of these sellers. The third one I’ve bought from is The Demon’s Lair based in UK and run by one very friendly hobbyist as a side business, his prices are very reasonable, clearly lower than the other resellers or eBay — very warmly recommended! There’s others which I haven’t tried so I can’t personally recommend them, but they seem above board. These are WHtreasury and Ouroboros Wargame Supplies in the Netherlands and Mindtaker Miniatures in Canada (selling in USD), I didn’t end up purchasing from Mindtaker due to high shipping and customs fees if ordering into Finland, but their customer service was very helpful so I’m sure they are good for North America. Both of the ones in Netherlands seem great, I’ve been in contact with Ouroboros and they were very friendly open and forthcoming so I would recommend them too. I’ve also seen some others, but I won’t mention those here as they seemed somewhat suspicious or maybe not in business anymore.
The last place is the obvious one, but unfortunately the worst option due to various reasons. That’s eBay of course and even if it’s the worst option, it’s still very possible to find good deals there, especially in auction but also with “Buy Now” listings. This is where I have bought the second most miniatures after our local Finnish miniature trading FB group, so I have gathered enough experience with it to have a decently informed opinion. The biggest issue with eBay is price as it’s a global marketplace and also the sellers on eBay mostly seem to be professional sellers who are looking for maximum profit, so there’s a tendency to list items with very high prices and other sellers looking at the listed prices and thinking they are the going prices. If you look carefully, you can still find decently priced miniatures but it will almost always be more expensive than all the other places I mentioned above with the possible exception of those second hand miniature companies. It’s usual to have to pay around 6 to 10 EURper metal model on eBay, some going up to 10 to 25 EUR. Character metal models are about 20 to 40 EUR, around the same 20 to 40 for larger metal models like Trolls or Ushabti and metal war machines around 50 to 70 EUR. Plastic miniatures seem to be very overpriced almost always and if it’s new on sprue or especially new in box, it can easily be 5 to 10 eur per model.
The other major issue with eBay is that there’s a lot of recast miniatures being sold as original or listed without any mention whether they are original or recasts, there’s also lots of recast metal miniatures out there so it’s not enough to avoid resin miniatures. It can be very difficult to recognize recasts based on the sellers pictures and sometimes the recasts are so good that you’ll never know, even when you have the miniature in hand. There are still ways to identify most of them, here’s a decent article on how to identify recast metal miniatures that helps with visually identifying them. In addition to that, you should look at the reviews of the seller to see if there are any negative reviews mentioning recasts or even positive reviews that are talking about “the quality of the miniature or cast”, which might indicate that. You can also check if the seller has sold multiples of the same set of miniatures or miniature in the past, it’s very unlikely even for a professional miniature trader to be able to acquire the same set of old miniatures many times in a row. From my personal experience this method is the most efficient way of identifying recast sellers. Also if you see miniatures that are priced significantly lower than others and especially if the listing has been up for a long time, those are very likely recasts as original older miniatures at a decent price usually sell right away on eBay. I have recently acquired around 150 metal Warhammer miniatures, out of those only 10 are recasts as far as I can tell and even they are of nearly identical quality to original miniatures so I will still use them to bulk up my unit if I need a big unit, but of course I would rather have had original miniatures especially as the recasts weren’t significantly cheaper than originals. Sure, there might be more than that among those miniatures, but if there are, they are so high quality that it’s impossible to identify them by look or feel, so in the end it kind of doesn’t matter although the collector in me would feel very bad if there were more recasts in my collection.
That’s it for this time, I have a couple of other stories under work currently so the next story will either be a look through all Warhammer Fantasy editions or an opinion piece about the direction Games Workshop should take with The Old World. Chronicling the editions is quite a bit of work, so if that’s the next one, it will take at least a week. Anyway, thank you for reading and please check back in!
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