Goodbye Space Cowboy

I did something for the first time in my almost two decades of painting and playing 40k. I sold a whole army. Tau were my first in 2004. The guy I played with most played Blood Angels and wanted to get out. So I bought his army and started BA in 2005. Somewhere around 2007 I started Grey Knights as a small auxiliary force that grew into an army. After that I started Chaos, Necrons, Space Wolves, Orks, Genestealers, and Knights. Never sold an army.

Until now.


I said goodbye to the red Grey Knights. Retail outlined at the bottom of this post was almost $800. I spent more hours than I could count painting and detailing each mini. For all my hard work, the best I could get someone to do was $1,000 and that was after back and forth on Make An Offer on eBay (which in conjunction with Paypal, shipping and taxes will take 25% of that). All that work for $200.

I hate that no one wants to pay for paint. That a large, cohesive, painted, based and magnetized army holds no value. I know that most wargamers are not like me. Most seem to be WAAC, powergamers consumes with the new hotness and netlists. Hobbests are rare to the point of non existence.

This army should have sold for more than $1400. The time should have been accounted for, the skill, the cohesion, the attention to detail. I ran into the same thing doing commission painting. The overseas services that buy minis at a discount, assemble, paint and ship for close to retail seems very popular because people want three colors cheap and fast.

Lamentation aside, even though I miss the army, I have enough bits to assemble a small force if I wanted to and the printer could augment that. I just lost time and that may be the most valuable commodity of all.


Stern metal 30
Draigo resin, black, w/ helmet 30
3x Terminator Captain metal, black 40
1x Terminator apothecary plastic 13
1x Terminator Librarian metal, magnetized 40
1x converted Voldus from metal Terminator Chaplain 45
12x Terminators 170
1x Crowe metal, black 30
4x PA Captains 21
23x PAGK 161
10x magnetized jump packs
5x PA Psycannon metal 35
4x PA Incinerator 28
1x PA Psylencer 7
1x Dreadknight painted red and assembled 75
1x Dreadknight in bits 50

Packed in Battlefoam Sword bag with pull and pluck foam 70