This blog is about the world of gaming miniatures, as seen from my perspective. I've been collecting and painting for over 30 years now, and while my primary focus is miniatures for D&D, I also enjoy many other games that use minis, so we'll be covering those as well. Thanks for stopping by!

Monday, March 14, 2016

Lead Market Report, January/February 2016

And here we go with the first LMR of 2016. I know it says January and it is now February March, but what can I say, I procrastinate with the best of them. I can usually gauge how busy I'll be working on a LMR depending upon how fast my watch list fills up after I finish the previous report. It filled up pretty damn quick this time around! Enjoy.

ARCHIVE
The beginning and final bid for this Sharkadillo (coughbulettecough) was $22.50.

CITADEL
We had a small assortment of ADD series minis this month: eight Blink Dogs in two lots of four at $6.50, $6.38, $3.25, and $3.25; and $4.59, $4.04, $1.88, and $1.50. Three Drow at $5.58, $3.25, and $2.25. One Zombie at $6.49. A complete set of three stage Female Fighters sold for less than the $35 asking price.

George the Giant sold for $47.80, pretty good for one of the more popular Citadel giants. A C28 giant went for $31.85, too much for me but I was tempted - I wanted the head and hammer.

DARK HORSE
Here's a trio of TMNT blisters that went for good/about average prices: Shredder/Splinter/Mousers for $22.16, The Foot for $18.16, and Terror Bears for $10.16.

DRAGONTOOTH
Hell's Bells, good AC/DC song. Hell's Well, not a happy place, unless you are the buyer of DE11, Demon Rising from Hell's Well that sold for $59. Just a sweet, sweet piece of old-school goodness. Staying with demons, here's DE4 Gothmaug (minus his axe) for $16.39. I think that's a great price, even with the missing axe. Another DE4 auction was for just Gothmaug's head, for $6.10. As much as I love giants, I was rather surprised to see this GI5 Horned Hill Giant sell for $45.10, considering he is missing his tree trunk club and loot bag. If you were trying to complete your MB6 Griffon, you may have bid on this nest ($12.50) or these wings ($2.82). The wings would also make for a nice conversion piece if that is your cup of tea.

There were three DT dragons on the block: a D78 Winged Fire Drake ($26), a D79 Large Dragon ($27.04), and a D81 Christmas Dragon ($52.89). I couldn't help myself and had to bid on the Christmas Dragon, and ended up winning it. If you are so inclined, you can see some better pics of it in the writeup I did on it..

 If you needed some bits and pieces, or don't mind loose minis, there was a nice selection: AC1 Amphibian Colossus (incomplete) for $13.07, A3 Ranidean Javelineer for $2.52, two T1 Trolls for $11.50, two P-series horses for $2.82, a P51 camel for $7.49, three assorted critters for $13.40, a small lot of weapons, gear, heads and figures including two Frost Giants (just one arm, though) for only $5.17, and three High Elf shields and one of the seven pieces from M8 Bodies & Booty for $7.53.

GALE FORCE NINE
I typically don't track GF9, but this lot was on my radar because it was such a great value. I'm sure the buyer is more than pleased with the bargain they scored. Orcus alone seems to sell for around $70, so yeah, this was a steal of a deal at $85.

GRENADIER
As regular readers of the LMR know, I loves me a bargain! I especially love bargains on giants, odd, rare, and hard-to-find minis, so when I was able to pick up this "Have A Nice Day" beholder (in blister no less) for $2, it totally made my day. Another oddity that a fellow bargain hunter picked up was this Future Warriors resin Street Gang Car for $4 (along with a blister of cyborgs).

Box set bonanza!Take a deep breath, here we go: on the rare/uncommon end of the spectrum, we have both the Lords of Light ($46) AND Lords of Decay ($67.50) in shrink. This Water Nymph was only $21.01, probably due to a generic title. Big dragons? Check. The Invincible Dragon for $42.99 and a Shadow Dragon for $21.50. Dwarf Cannon in shrink, $23.50. There are also some Series II Dragons including Red ($33.99), Black ($33.99), Bronze ($23.50), Silver ($22.50), and a Golden War Dragon for $19.16; Giant's Club giants Stone and Forest for $21.49 each and Chaos for $16.50; Gold Line Hirelings box for only $6.50; a Goblin War giant for a reasonable $38.77, an unboxed incomplete Goblin War giant for $17.28, Ogres of the East for $14, some Chaos Dwarves at $17.16, a super cheap set of Foot Knights for only $3.13 (not a typo, three bucks and thirteen cents). Oh, and one more, the Encounter at the Forest of Elvenwold for $23.59.

This Dragon Lords (the game) Dragon Treasure Hoard with Wizard blister sold for $10.49, and I really wish I had picked up one of these two Barbarian Giants that sold for $12.51 (blister) and less than $10 (loose) respectively. I did, however, pull the trigger on this Purple Worm for $20.50 - I'll be doing a post on this one later this month, where I compare it with a couple other Purple Worms.

HERITAGE
There were 5 blisters of Conan minis that sold, all for the starting price of $59.99 each and not surprisingly all won by the same bidder. They were Companions of Conan, Sorcerers of Conan, Enemies of Conan, Pirates of the Red Brotherhood, and Mercenaries of Koza.

 I kind of expected this complete set of Adventure Game Starter Sets to go for a bit more than the $9.99 winning bid. All are complete, two are in shrink, and the only defect I saw was some box crushing.

These two lots of LOTR minis went for about what is expected, $20.51 for a mostly complete Prancing Pony Inn, and $20.16 bought me a mix of the Helm's Deep boxed set and the Attack on Weathertop blister.

Staying with LOTR, a nice set of 10 LOTR 75mm figures didn't sell for $167.59, but did end up selling when relisted for $120.

I still need one of these Storm Giants and a Hill Giant too, and would have no problem paying the $11 that each one sold for. And this old hydra is very, very nice, and so is the $11.38 winning bid.

Some Heritage paper product was available, starting with the Knights & Magick rule set. It has no box, and is in nice condition overall, so the final bid of $31.04 is very fair and reasonable. Several copies of the John Carter Warlord of Mars Adventure Gaming Handbook were available, selling for $26.65, $26.00, and $22 (my copy). Another one is currently available on eBay until Wednesday 2/10/16 for a starting bid of $22.

LEADING EDGE GAMES
OK, the Power Loader from Aliens is pretty cool, but did you know it also comes with Jonesy? I wonder if Ripley's cat is statted up in the game. This NIB model went for the starting price of $25.

For the Aliens RPG game, there was this unpunched expansion that tallied $102.55.

MARTIAN METALS
This incomplete box set of 9901 Magic (magic users?) should have 9 wizards and 1 panther, but
only has 7 wizards. Still, for only $9, the buyer can probably fill in the missing pieces with a little patience.

MINIFIGS
$14.99 was the winning bid for an Elvin Dragon Master with Lance astride a Small Dragon from the Aureola Rococo line. I wonder what the price would have been if the wings were included, the tail wasn't missing the tip, and the lance was unbroken? And I really dig this neat sculpt of Satan, all that evilness for only $12.49.

RAL PARTHA
Lot of Battletech changing hands, including a fair amount of box sets and even more blisters. I wasn't able to track every blister lot, so I focused on the ones I though might command top dollar. We'll start with boxes and go high to low. Medium Lance for $132.50, Recon Lance for $128.50, Heavy Lance for $106.50, Light Lance for $56, Command Lance for $55, Pursuit Lance for $54, and another  Pursuit Lance for $42. The 4-pack of blisters sold for $182.50 (Marauder, Warhammer, Stalker, Orion), $130 (Goliath, Awesome, Victor, Orion), $71 (Warhammer, Atlas, Crusader, Ostol), and $61 (Warhammer, Cyclops, Archer, Crusader).

SOLDIERS & SWORDS
This might be the first entry for Soldiers & Swords for me (at least without going back and checking previous LMRs). Someone obviously collects them or uses them in their capes & spandex game, and hey, for about $4 per blister, this lot of 6 Champions blisters (The SUPER Miniatures, according to the subheading) seems like a very nice deal.

WOTC
This lot was $81, and included a Monsters III Box Set, an Umber Hulk, and 33 more blisters. At less than $3/blister, I think this lot is a great value.

NOT MINIS
Sometimes buyers get lucky, and sometimes sellers get lucky. I think this time the seller lucked out big time. I'm guessing they likely had no idea what they were sitting on when they listed "A Trio of Dungeons and Dragons Treasures" that included the red box Basic set, a Battlesystem set, and...wait for it...a woodgrain set! $1,314 got you this nifty lot (including Greyhawk and Blackmoor).

First printings of the Holmes blue box continue to hold their value, as evidenced by this example that sold for $242.50. I find it humorous that it is listed as vintage circa 1777. Benjamin Franklin was a DM, no doubt.

Tuesday, March 8, 2016

British Grenadier #14

I picked up a copy of Grenadier's British Grenadier magazine. Not sure if magazine is quite the right word, as it is a bit more akin to a bulletin or newsletter at 16 pages cover to cover, but you get the picture. This is Edition 14, and is labeled International Edition. I assume that is because it originated from Grenadier Models UK Ltd. Here are the front and back cover scans:



Edition 14 seems to be a marketing platform for Grenadier, Mayfair Games, and Iron Crown Enterprises, and is pretty sparse on any actual content. I figure when you feature King Arthur on the cover then you will feature the King Arthur boxed set somewhere inside. But oddly enough, the only mention is a small blurb on page 6 under the News heading. That's it! No pics of the boxed set, no pics of the miniatures, painted or unpainted. Seems to be an odd way to promote your product.

There's a great full-color photo of two Grenadier armies facing each other down on the gaming table, a mixed band of orcs, trolls, ogres along with a Goblin War Giant facing down a mostly dwarf army. The article with the picture mentions mass-battle fantasy wargaming somewhat generically, as well as speed painting, but does not specifically mention the Fantasy Warriors rules, so I can only assume this publication predates 1990, when the FW rules were released. There was no date listed in the masthead, and one ad (Family Business from Mayfair Games) states it is "sure to be the hottest release of 1989!" which leads me to believe Edition 14 was printed in 1989 or possibly late 1988.

And that's really it on content. There's the editor's column, fan letters, classified ads, and new releases, which accounts for 6 pages (8 if you count the covers). The rest is advertising, mostly for Mayfair Games, and a couple pages for ICE product.

I don't know if this was issued with the three hole punches already in place or if they were added after the fact.

The only credited contributor was the editor, Doug Cowie.