My tips on Buying / Selling / Trading Warhammer Miniatures

Transcript

I have two hours. I’m gonna get a ton of hobbying done.

Today I want to talk about hobby pressure and what I’m going to do to deal with it. There’s no way around it. There’s just way too much stuff in here. I come in here and I sit down to hobby and I’m just sitting here spending my time thinking about what I’m going to hobby on but not actually hobby anything, you know. And it doesn’t feel good at this point. It’s just like a monument of a short attention span really. So, I’m going to do a purge.

Okay. So, this is going to be North America focused just because that’s what I have the most experience with. I used to do a lot of stuff like bringing it in from the UK and Europe, but with tariffs, it’s just not worth it now because I’m just not going to pay it.

So, there’s really three options to buy, sell, and trade that are safe and work. And save a ton of money too, right? Or actually four.

First one is eBay. It’s a great place. It’s very easy to post auctions. And when I post stuff later today, I’ll record that process and show you how fast you can do it. And it’s very easy to get started even with zero feedback. Like you just post it and if you post good quality things, eventually people are going to buy it. So it might just be like a waiting time.

The other one is Reddit r/miniswap. That is a great place to find great deals on like abandoned projects usually. There’s some people who you can tell have stores and they throw some stuff on there too, but you can usually get a really good deal there if you’re buying.

Only ever use PayPal Goods and Services. And that applies to the rest. Never purchase anything that’s not using PayPal Goods and Services because that’s how you protect yourself. If somebody asks you to use something other than PayPal Goods and Services or to use Friends and Family, they’re scamming you. Period. The end. Like don’t do it. You’re going to have that thing like “this deal is so great, it’s too good to be true” because it is. So do not use anything other than PayPal Goods and Services.

Then you move into specific game community Discords and Facebook groups. So like there’s a great one for Warmachine for both Discord and Facebook groups where you can buy and sell and trade. I’ve done a ton of wheeling and dealing on those. You just go to Discord, find their trade forum, and you find somebody who has the things you want and you trade them the things you want or you just buy them outright. It’s a great way to get deals.

The thing that I want to emphasize on trades—and I actually don’t really like trades for multiple reasons—it’s very easy to get scammed on trades. And the only way that I’ll do a trade, which makes a lot of people not want to trade with me, which is fine, is if we’re trading armies and say our armies are worth 500 bucks, I will PayPal Goods and Services you like 500 and whatever the fee is, and then you PayPal Goods and Services me 500 and whatever the fee is. We both—it’s a wash on the actual money and then we ship each other our armies. So instead of a trade, it’s like we both agree to buy our armies for the same price. That’s the only way you’re going to be protected because if you just ship your army out, maybe they never ship theirs or maybe they ship a box of rocks.

And then Facebook Marketplace just in general—like not throwing it up in a group—usually that’s kind of like scalper territory because they’re not actually members of the community. So, I avoid just like raw Facebook Marketplace purchases because they’re usually overpriced or they’re usually scammers. If you post raw to a marketplace, you’re going to get a bunch of bots hitting you. But if you go into the specific groups and communities and make a post or deal with the people there, it’s usually people who are like cutting down their piles of shame or who are just trying to give back to the hobby. So, it’s not people who are doing it for a business.

And that’s what I like to do. Like even though I sell a ton on eBay, I don’t do it to make a huge amount of profit. Usually I’m just like I got the stuff I don’t want anymore and I got something else that I want. So I put it on eBay to sell it to go buy that so I don’t have to dip into the actual bank account funds. And there’s a lot of people—it’s kind of like a “use the hobby to fund the hobby” situation.

So I’m going to start posting a bunch of stuff on eBay. I don’t think I’m going to mess with the Discord. Like I just don’t like going back and forth. I just like posting it on eBay. I set a Buy It Now price for the longest term and I accept offers. I put in the lowest amount I’ll accept. I cover—I just include shipping in the cost. So I offer free shipping. I ship Priority so I don’t have to buy boxes. Bubble wrap does get expensive though. So include the cost of bubble wrap if you’re going to send a lot of stuff.

And then some people will be like, “Can you lower shipping and ship this way so I don’t have to pay as much as Priority?” Then you got to go buy a box. So you got to include the cost of the box, right? So it’s not like—it might be cheaper for them, but it’s not going to be cheaper for you. Like don’t just think straight up, “Oh, I’m just going to pay whatever shipping they want to pay.” You got to go get a box if you’re not doing Priority shipping. So I just use Priority shipping, usually mediums, because I sell a lot at a time where I try to post lots.

Look, a lot of people will tell you you need to take good pictures and like well lit and all that stuff. You don’t. Look, I just cleared a hole in my mess of a project’s past right here. And I’m gonna take a picture.

One thing I will say is you want to make sure you don’t have anything else in the picture other than the specific item you’re selling because you’ll get people who come in and say they thought they were buying the other stuff too. So just make sure only the item that you’re selling is in that photo. And now instead of going back to the computer, we’re just going to stay right on our phone with the eBay app.

So those are my pro tips on buying, selling, and trading.