Taking stock of all these models, which had paint jobs of various levels of embarrassing, I considered stripping them all down using Simple Green and my UltraSonic cleaner, but the thought of having to scrub all those models with a toothbrush and pipe cleaners made my head hurt. It was then, just when I had started to entertain the notion of just throwing them all away, that I saw a video from Blue Table Painting outlining the details of their trade-in program.
Shawn convinced me to send him my trash with this video.
I took stock of what models I was going to get rid of, and put together a list, which I emailed to BTP. I received a response from Shawn the same day, with an offer. The offer wasn't super-high. All told, it was probably 30-35% of the retail value of what I was sending him. To be fair though, I was sending him a lot of crap. I'm talking borderline useless crap. The two gems I sent his way were a ForgeWorld Bloodthirster and Chaos War Mammoth (Did you see it in the videos? Yeah, that was mine once). The price he offered me was about 55% of these two models put together. The rest was really just filler I was trying to unload on him.
I stuffed my models haphazardly into a box and shipped them off. I can't imagine many of them survived the trip from Baltimore to Utah without breaking. My method for packing them was basically to cushion the heavier metal models with softer plastic models, to help absorb impact. In retrospect, perhaps I should have shown Mr. Gately a bit more courtesy, since his trade-in program is so amazingly easy.
As soon as I received confirmation that my package had been received and all the models were accounted for, I shot them over a list of all the delightful new plastic I wanted, fresh in-box. What came was this:
The picture is a bit blurry, but I think you can make out what everything is easy enough. I was so excited I literally spent a few minutes looking back and forth between the boxes, unsure of what to open first. There was a small mistake made with my Manticore, and I had been sent a set that had two weapon options for the rider missing from the sprue, but upon emailing Shawn about this, he replied no more than 20 minutes later that it was a mistake on their end, and that Janine would take care of it. I am currently one very satisfied man.
So what are my plans for these models? The big ones are fairly straight-forward. The Manticore and Stegadon are going to be display pieces, which may go up for sale after completion. If I like them enough, they'll stay on my windowsill and scare away burglars and crackheads. The Orks will probably sit around unused for a little while, but I do have a post-apoc Ork army on my to-do list. The Cold One Riders I ordered for the lizards, which are going to serve as mounts for a project I don't want to reveal too much about... yet. The Assault Terminators, Terminator Lord, and Venerable Dread are for my Lionwatch Space Marine Chapter, which I am working on very slowly. The Cairn Wrath will be a display model and practice piece for my new airbrush, and the Empire Battle Wizards and Chaos Sorcerer will become Inquisimunda pieces. I am thinking a Preacher, Confessor, and Witch Hunter. We'll see how it all turns out.
I highly advise everyone who reads this to look into the BTP trade-in program. Especially if you're like me and would much rather start fresh with new models than spend hours attempting to bring old, outdated and out-of-print models to a point where you can refurbish them. Their compensation rate isn't great, but the simplicity and speed of it makes it infinitely better than trying to hock it all on eBay or something like that.
If you managed to fight your way through this wall of words, I commend you. I will be posting again soon with pictures of what I'm doing with those Wizards.
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