Bartertown.com

So my mother is coming to Japan to visit my wife and I and I have been given a wifely decree to clean up the guest room. (i.e. model room) So, the models that I have not had in the closet already have been pulled out and dumped in the living room while the wife is out of town for a conference for the weekend. (She would castrate me if I did this while she was here. ) Anyways, this is roughly half of my collection. I could start a small shop if I wanted to. It really is depressing that I've accumulated this much unpainted stuff.

The last time we moved I had started to really organize things and then I stalled out and this stuff has been sitting in random boxes in the guest room while new stuff has been getting dumped on the pile. I really need to sell off some of this stuff, but it feels like amputating a limb or deserting a puppy. (Well, how I'd imagine those things feeling.)
Do you have a "Pile of Shame" at your house? Care to share? Make me feel like less of an idiot for accumulating all of this with no foreseeable way to paint it all in three lifetimes?

Well, you don't have to sell ALL of it...Valentines day is coming up. Sell enough to buy your wife something REALLY nice, make sure she KNOWS you sold models to do it....then you don't have to worry about the rest of it.

Actually, believe it or not, Valentine's day in Japan is totally backwards. Here, on February 14th women give chocolate to the men they like. The tradition is that if a woman wants to let a man she likes know how she feels then she gives him some sort of handmade chocolate on Valentine's Day. There's also a whole tradition of "giri choco," or "obligatory chocolate," that women are supposed to give to their male co-workers, but that's been disappearing. Recently there has been a rise in "tomo choco," or "friend chocolate," where the women give chocolate to their female friends. But I digress. Since women give gifts to guys on February 14th, on March 14th men are expected to present return gifts to the ladies. If a woman you were interested in gave you some real, handmade chocolate on Valentine's Day then March 14th, called "White Day," is your chance to show that you have similar feelings by getting a big return gift.

Well there is a big pile of blue and clear bags on the right side of the photo that I would be happy to take off your hands, and next month you could wait and see if I reciprocate the gift...LOL

Ya know, I could put that box of Warmahordes stuff in the background to good use. I promise to reciprocate with some stuff I don't use in a month. It will even be gaming stuff, too, instead of junk from random boxes in the basement.

If you got any attack bikes in that mess, you can always send them to me for "storage".

I am happy to say that I have very little in any sort of "shame" pile. : )
Years ago, I just had enough and decided to start liquidating. Every now and again, I go through and reprioritize. If I don't think the model has any chance of seeing paint in the next year, it goes bye-bye.
I've gotten past my "compulsive collector" mode and into the "Only what I expect to use" mode. It was quite liberating.

My pile of shame is big projects that I work on bit by bit and need to finish,scratch built thunderhawks,two more titans,,,big church lookin giant landraider to carry dreadnoughts,,,that sorta thing.

Remembering what I used to pay for 40k models when I lived in Tachikawa....I'm rather impressed by that pile. I'm also impressed your wife lets you keep that much! Every japanese girlfriend I had was quite against me even adding to my existing collections.

diriel wrote:Remembering what I used to pay for 40k models when I lived in Tachikawa....I'm rather impressed by that pile.

Which is why I NEVER buy anything from Japanese hobby shops unless absolutely necessary. (i.e. It's easier to get spray primer here than having it sent by boat.)

I was actually just talking about this with a trade partner. I can cut and paste it.

GW Japan's MSRP is nine kinds of insane. For example, the recently released Stormraven for the Blood Angels? In the US that model retails for $66.00. GW Japan wants 9,000 yen. At current market rate 9,000 yen is just about $110.00 USD. So yea, I could order two from overseas for a comparable price. Especially since there's one semi-famous e-tailer that offers free international shipping to wherever.

diriel wrote:I'm also impressed your wife lets you keep that much! Every japanese girlfriend I had was quite against me even adding to my existing collections.

Which is one of the reasons I married her. And, as I said at the beginning of the thread, it's more something she grudgingly accepts. She's not into it by any means. And, as I also said, she'd been 'encouraging' me to shrink the pile. Hence why I've been posting stupid good deals recently. So I can just get the pain of downsizing over with.

i would gladly trade you Bandai Hobby models for GW ones... the yen got so much increased versus the $ in the last year ( or actually the $ lost so much towards any foreign currencies...), that for me buying models from Japan is currently a no go

i understand the pile of shame, i moved 5 times in 3 different countries within the last 10 years...each time, i do a clean up of the pile, but strangely it reappears each time...
on the wife side, she married me and all my little friends, when i moved from Paris to Montreal, i had 36 kgs of models with me on the plane....

Good Luck with you sales

Oh you don't want to see mine. It spans my tiny apartment.

Worst part... is that I haven't been paying any sort of attention to it for a year. I am on what has been called a hiatus, i basically got so perfectionist and obsessed with every little detail of 40k that I HAD to think about something else for awhile. I left my giant pile of works-in-progress in exactly the spot I left it, then proceeded to find something to spend time on on my computer. In the void I created, i filled with Eve online, but thats another thread. When I left for my hiatus I couldn't even bear to sell it, so it just got ignored.

Surprisingly enough, what got me back to bartertown for my current stint was not the desire to sell it all, but the Eisenhorn Omnibus i bought on vacation in California. I'm halfway through Malleus and hooked, very impressed with Dan Abnett, in ways I didn't get out of the Gaunts Ghosts books. First person really suits his style, and hes very very good despite his choice of universe to write in. So, Dan Abnett saved GW a very spendy customer. He should get a medal, or a nice bonus.

I do think about BFG all the time. Eve online is a spaceship game so it comes naturally. Think I'll break out my massive collection and get some cool stuff done... start on converting the rest of my nids/necrons out of bits.

Long story short... I have a collection to match the craggliest veteran hobbyist's and the psychological problems that come with it. I'm too young for this crap...
-Zack

@HarlequinZero,

So... how's the pile of shame going?? I live vicariously through peeps like you!

My "pile o' shame" is my entire garage! Though that includes tools, and over-all life's fecal matter - not just hobby stuff. If anyone on these forums ever saw it they would strip me the title of "man"!

I can relate bro, I start collecting a faction and I just go 'apeshyt' bartering & buying... then, before anything is painted, I burn out and sell/trade it off for something else. How's that for whack? At least you have a plan to paint it all... in 3 lifetimes!

Anyway, let me know how that pile is going - inquiring minds want to know!!

connivingsumo wrote:@HarlequinZero,

So... how's the pile of shame going?? I live vicariously through peeps like you!

Actually, things are going pretty well. I got rid of 4 of my 7 Infinity armies. (I'm keeping my Nomads, Yu Jing, and Aleph.) A big Retribution army is gone and some more Warmachine is pending. I've also managed to get rid of ALL my Orks which was a huge chunk. Still trying to move some Dark Elves and Hell Dorado, but I'm pretty happy at the moment.

HarlequinZero wrote: Still trying to move some Dark Elves and Hell Dorado, but I'm pretty happy at the moment.

You shouldn't have any issue with Hell Dorado, since the game has been relaunched by a US company...