A Mini Called Wanda

I love this set of miniatures and I have most of them. If anyone has Johann spare I'd love to take it off your hands as he is the last of the main characters that I need now! 

I have written about the large prices that some miniatures can sell for online. I am not talking about the silly 'Buy It Now' prices that confuse so many collectors and help create the 'myth' that old miniatures are always worth a fortune. I am sure you have seen plenty of ridiculous prices bandied about in your time, perhaps you have even fallen to temptation in the past (I know I have) and have paid a little more than you should have done for a particular miniature. Perhaps you are even guilty of listing minis with very high prices. I have always been a believer in the 99p starting bid, and that a miniature (or a lot of miniatures) will reach the price they are truly worth. Its a live and let live attitude that I shall always stick too. I am pleased to note, that there are a number of very experienced sellers out there who share a familiar philosophy, most notably bridgendsteve (are very own Steve Casey) who seems to have no end of rare and unreleased models to sell on eBay. 

For many years I had a strict £4 rule for buying single cast miniatures, and that price had to include postage. It was very simple to keep to this budget in the pre-Oldhammer days, when I was buying up RoC miniatures in droves for a couple of quid each. I once bought two Palanquins of Nurgle for £10 for the pair (and what a prat I was for selling them on, when one will set you back about £50 in 2014) and won 16 chaos beastmen for £20. I am sure many of us collectors can sit back in our chairs and swap success stories about bidding victories but that isn't really what I want to talk about today.

I have said before that I feel that eBay, and sites like it, are just the 21st century equivalent to the blister racks of yesteryear. You must remember them? You'd walk into Wonderworld (my store in the '80s) and the first thing that would hit you (apart from the smell of damp and cigarettes) was the wall groaning under the weight of blistered lead. Rows and rows and rows of the stuff. The card backings were all in different designs, often with paintings by John Blanche on them, and within the plastic bubbles lay a thousand possibilities. Your imagination would race. The pulse would pound. And you'd dived right in. 

The trouble is, back then the prices were set. You'd look at the price label or browse the funny code wall that some shops used. You 'knew' what something was worth and occasionally you'd be lucky enough to hit a sale and get that Landraider boxset even cheaper than the RRP suggested. These days, there are no price lists for the OOP models that all of us collect. We have our own vague price ranges in out head, one that seems to fit in with my £4 rule of years back. Average models are about £2-3, pop a quid on the top for postage and off you go. 

But what about the more 'collectible' models where the £4 rule isn't going to apply? 

So I come on to Wanda, illustrated above at the height of her fame in the Shadows Over Bogenhafen ad for Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay. There is no doubting that she is a lovely model. Even my wife likes her and expressed her opinion that she is one of the best miniatures she has ever seen. 'You should paint more like her!' she states without understanding that female figures in the world of Citadel (Old and New) are a rare breed indeed, especially ones that are realistically proportioned and clothed. It seems that many other people agree, and it took me many months to actually win an auction for her.

However, the auction process lulled me into a false sense of what she was 'worth'. You see, the first time I tried to get hold of her I just put a tenner down and walked away. If I won, great, if I didn't I'd have a pretty good idea how much collectors would have to pay. That auction ended with Wanda selling for £38.

Wow! I thought, that is quite a bit of money for one, small metal miniature that wasn't even that limited! Still, I wanted her and was happy to flog off the lead I didn't want to fund getting hold of her. A few weeks later, she arrived once again on the eBay scene. It was a simple 99p start so I was pleased to find a seller who followed a similar set of rules as I do. Learning from my previous experience, this time I put £30 down as my starting bid. In my mind, this would be enough to be in a strong position throughout and I like to win things for less than other people - who doesn't. This strategy paid off until the final minutes of the auction, when someone sniped me for £40. My wife, who was watching the auction said, try £50 and with spousal permission I typed in the amount with about a minute to go.

I was outbid by a pound.

I left it at that. Rather disappointed that I had lost out on her. Still, I had saved myself some money but I kept an eye on eBay for similar figures. A few weeks later, a Wanda model popped up as a 'Buy It Now' for £29.99. Oh, I thought, that is a good price! The trouble was, I was at work when I noticed the auction and had to wait until I got home to buy her. All day, I imagined other collectors noticing the lot and snapping her up for a bargain price. After work, I got home and raced up stairs to grab the KindleHD Fire and loaded up the eBay app. Wanda was still there! Phew, I gasped and I was just about to click the buy button when I noticed ANOTHER Wanda.

This one had a starting bid of £9.99.

Not wanting to drop £30 when I could spend a tenner, I put a healthy bid down on her. £20 to be precise. I hoped that having another example of the mini up would reduce the price for the listed auction version. Incredibly, and following on the rule about buses, another Wanda arrived on the site a few days later. This one was listed as starting at 99p. I was overwhelmed with Wandas!

Anyway, nothing really changed in the coming days. A few bids were made for the 99p Wanda, pushing her up to a couple of pounds while 'my' Wanda remained at £9.99 and a single bid. In fact, this remained this way until about 45 seconds until the end of the auction, when someone dropped in a sneaky 'sniper' bid taking her up to £17.00. It was too late though, my initial £20 sailed through to victory and ensured, finally, that I had a copy of the sculpt in my collection. What struck me was the variation in price, especially when the the other Wanda sold too. Have a look what I mean...

Wanda #1: Sold for £38.
Wanda #2: Sold for £51.
Wanda #3: Sold for £17.
Wanda #4: Sold for £21.

Calculating an average of these four amounts gives us a average price for the Wanda miniature, namely £31.75. Now that is a lot of money for a single cast model that was neither particularly limited or unreleased isn't it? Yet, looking at the bidding history over the last couple of weeks you can see how the price of the same item varies enormously.

Strange isn't it?

To conclude, I have learnt an important lesson during this little journey. Namely, Citadel Miniatures are not always worth as much as we think they are, and often, price can be determined by availability. You just watch the price of the Ass Cannon come down when five people list them all in the same week!

Before I go, I am am interested in asking you lot if you have had any similar collecting instances where you see a model you have been after for a while soar in price, only to be snapped up by your good self later at a opportune moment for much, much less. On the reverse of that particular coin, have you ever forked out big money on a model and then regretted it later?

I await your experiences with interest!

Orlygg.

My beautiful Wanda!