Re: [eBay] eBay silliness

On Mon, 20 Aug 2001 16:36:27 -0400, adrian.johnson@sympatico.ca wrote:

>That's just insane if you ask me.  I've heard of
>serious historical gamers spending that kind of money on armies at
>Historicon, so maybe it's not so far off...

To be honest, it really depends on the number of figures and the amount
of
time it would spend to paint. A lot of people just don't have the time,
and
time is, after all, money.

Or, look at it this way. $1500 for, say, 100 figures (which is a bit
small for
an army of this price range) is only $15 per figure for a nice paint
job. If
it takes the guy two hours to paint a figure, that's not much better
than
working at Wal-Mart. $7.50 an hour. Oh, and that's assuming the painter
got
the figures for free. His "wage" is probably closer to $5 an hour if it
takes
him 2 hours per figure and there are only 100 figures.

(2 hours may be a little slow. I did two Pax Limpopo "pig stokers" last
week
in one night, plus the pig. It took about 3 hours total, not including
the
time to flock the bases and spray the figures. So, 1 to 1.5 hours is
probably
closer to the mark, though I didn't do any blending. 1 hour per 30mm
figure is
a pretty good rate, though, and the $5 per hour, at an average GW cost
of $5
per figure, still stands for 200 figures.)

$1500 for a wholly painted army isn't overpriced, certainly when
compared to
the cost of manufacturing a car. $1500 for Superbowl tickets, which
happens,
is insane! For that painted army you're closer to the wages paid by the
kid
slinging burgers at a fast food restaurant.

What it comes down to is the fact that the painter probably didn't make
as
much money painting those figures as he could have doing practically
anything
else. In those terms, the buyer got a bargain.

If you see the movie "Murder at 1600", the Bull Run battlefield
miniatures in
the movie (which was shot in Toronto) was painted by a group of local
miniatures painters. (I know; I was asked to help, but didn't have the
time
available.) The set up in that movie sold for about $50,000, if you want
a
comparison of what some folk think the figures are worth.

Allan Goodall		       awg@sympatico.ca
Goodall's Grotto:  http://www.vex.net/~agoodall

"Now, see, if you combine different colours of light,
 you get white! Try that with Play-Doh and you get
 brown! How come?" - Alan Moore & Kevin Nolan,