Finding a new owner for Large Napoleonic Collection

I am making progress in my latest project of finding a new home for my 18mm AB Napoleonic collection.   I am still at the planning and research part of the project, and in particular photographing the collection.

I have long recorded my 1813 campaign by photographing all of the many wargames.   I also have a weekly blog of our hill walking activities, and these have many photographs of each walk.   But I am no great photographer by any means, nor do I possess a camera of sufficient quality to photograph large quantities of 18mm figures.

I think the photographs I have taken give a reasonably good illustration of how the figures look on the wargames table.   But I am very aware that they do not give a good impression of the standard of painting.

When anyone mentions selling wargame figures the response is always based on “the standard of painting”.   How can I determine whether my standard is good, bad or reasonable?   The phase “a good wargame standard” is often used.  But my good wargame standard may be far below the prospective buyer.

So this week I have been trying to take clearer close up photographs.   On this blog you will see my initial results.  I hope that you will agree that they do at least show the detail?   I am a little concerned that they may show too much detail.    Given the size of these figures you, or at least I, could never see  them in such detail with the naked eye.   And that is how they will always be viewed.   Mostly they will be seen on the wargames table, which my earlier photographs do quite well.   Or you may pick them up and look closely.  But I doubt you will see much more details that in my earlier photographs of groups of 4-8 figures.

I have used a dice to reinforce the size of the figures, and to remind everyone that you will never actually see them this close unless you use a magnifying glass.   I just hope that showing so much detail does not detract from the actual impact of them with the naked eye.

I must now turn my attention to price, packing and postage.

Once more I am very grateful for all of the advice and encouragement I have received.   In particular to Lee Gramson, who has given me lots of good advice.   Many of you will know Lee from his blog “A figures painting therapy project”.   He is a prolific and gifted painter of many different scales.   I have followed his blog for quite a few years, and am fascinated by the wide range of projects he takes on.   Until recently most of them had the objective of wargaming, but once completed he seemed to lose interest and move on to the next project.   I was particularly interested to see that he seemed to be able to find buyers for the painted figures for the abandoned project.    He has also painted figures commercially for a few customers, and has now expanded to commercial painting full time – at least at present.

Lee was one of the first to write and offer assistance in the project, an offer I was quick to take up.   He suggested an asking price of twice the current cost of a casting.   At present AB are £0.80 for foot, £1.55 for mounted and £3.80 for a gun model.  It is a long time since I bought any wargame figures, and I was quite surprised they are so expensive.   But I would be very pleased to get £1.50 for foot, £3.00 for mounted and £7.00 for a gun model.   Slightly less than double the casting price, but more than I anticipated when I started the project.

Not sure how I will tackle packing.   My initial thoughts are to use plastic storage boxes which you can buy in all of the Chinese shops here in Spain for a couple of euros.   I will have to see what packing material is available, but I would probably prefer bubble wrap if I can find it.   In the past I have always removed figures from the stands, which helps to avoid damage and results in tight packing.  I am not sure that prospective buyers would be happy with this suggestion, and may well prefer them with the bases.

Finally I will have to find out the cost of postage from Spain.   I would hope to be able to offer them throughout Europe, and perhaps USA and Australia.   But that will depend on the cost of postage.

So plenty more research to do next week.   Hopefully within a couple of weeks I will have solved all of these problems and be able to offer them for sale.

Any thoughts or suggestions very welcome as always.

How difficult is it to sell model soldiers

 

 

British army

When I reorganised my model soldier collection many years ago, I did so in 28mm and 18mm.   My aim was to fight the larger battles in 18mm and the smaller ones in 28mm.   I soon realised that I preferred to use the 28mm, and the 18mm have sat on their shelf ever since.   Unused, but not really unloved.

Over the years I have considered attempting to sell them, but I have always been put off by the sheer size of the problem.   To make matters worse I live in Spain, so postage would be an additional problem.

So I have just put it off, and feel guilty about the sheer waste of it all.    

 

British corps

The figures are all AB miniatures.   I have had little experience of mixing with other wargamers, so I have no idea what sort of painting standard they are.  But the photos should give some indication.

There are 1152 infantry, 144 cavalry and 144 gunners with 36 guns.  

They include most of the nations of the Napoleonic Wars.   There are Austrian, British, Prussian, Russian and Spanish armies.   There are also four French armies, including most of the French allies such as Bavarian, Polish, Westphalian and Italian

They were bought as groups of 16 infantry, 8 cavalry and 1 gun with 4 crew.   However they are based for use with my 1813 campaign.  Each army has four corps.   Each corps has four infantry brigades of 8 figures, one cavalry brigade of 4 figures and one gun with 4 crew.  In addition there are a collection of skirmish figures and odds and ends such as an ambulance crew.   There are also about 100 home made buildings based on stands of 4, and a similar number of paper buildings also on stands.

 

Highland brigade

The purpose of this blog is to ask if any of you can give me any advice about the best way of selling them.   I have not sold any figures for about 20 years, and I am not even sure if there is any market out there for them.  

But I would like to find a good home for them where they will be appreciated and used as they are supposed to be, and not just sit on a shelf collecting dust.

Any advice you can give would be much appreciated.   Either as a comment on the blog, or better still an email to paulleniston@hotmail.com