What's in the booooooooox

So, the other night, perusing Facebook when I probably should have been sleeping, I came across a chap that was looking to get rid of some Warhammer. I offered to take it off his hands if no one else wanted them, and offered to wait a week or so to see if he got any better offers. It turned out that with the advent of Age of Sigmar, his entire group of friends had dropped the game entirely, leaving him with a box of miniatures just taking up space, and as he was moving house shortly he wanted to get shot of them as soon as possible. I spent most of a day on an instant messaging service trying to persuade him to bung them on eBay or wait and see if he got a better offer, but he was keen for them to go somewhere where they'd get used. Today.

Not knowing what to expect (and considering the fact that I might be getting lured into a strangers flat so that they could murder and/or eat me) I ended up meeting the guy who was perfectly charming and walking away with a box of Warhammer. A large box.

Se7en references in the title of this post aside, it wasn't my wife's head in the box, but this:

That's a ton of stuff. Also, a phone charger!

I started pulling out models, trying to sort them by army as I went, but I kept finding interesting things that weren't Warhammer.

Like these:

Potentially the sweetest card sleeves in this world or the next (further investigation has revealed that there isn't enough to sleeve a whole deck. Curse you cruel fate!). 

I had some assistance in sorting through the box:

Although her greatest delight was mostly in taking and moving to the floor the non-Warhammer things that I'd set aside so that I could contact the guy to make sure he definitely didn't want them, and you'll see why:

Well, maybe not that holy sock. 

This, more so...

And this, I thought would probably have some sentimental value at least...

It turned out the watch and the lighter were his father's, so I'm glad I messaged him rather than just tossing them in the bin! There was also an expired bank card, which from chatting to the guy about when he last looked in the box probably wasn't expired when he put it in there...

As you can see, there was also some 3D glasses, some filters, the little tool you use for getting the SIM card out of an iPhone, at least one Magic deck (I'm tempted to just shuffle it up and play without going through the cards to see the synergies just to see what happens) as well as 5 pens, a key ring, and a whole host of old house keys:

And a paintbrush, admittedly, but my daughter had that away and I haven't seen it since.

After a brief break for dinner and a beer:

I continued pulling miniatures out of the box until I ran out of space on the chest we use as a coffee table:

(You'll notice that things start getting less organised towards the camera as I realised that I wasn't going to have enough space to lay out everything)

Even after all this, there was still another hundred or so miniatures in the bottom of the box! The original post described it as a Skaven and Chaos army with 'a few other bits that never get used', which ended up being: a small Wood Elf force, with some chaps riding stags; a Chaos army, with some warriors, wolves, chaps on juggernauts, converted chariots, two Daemon Princes and mounted Slaanesh types; and a Skaven army, that looks like the models from the Island of Blood starter set that have been added to with a Screaming Bell, two Doomwheels, a handful of Stormvermin and a smattering of metal models!

There were some other interesting bits, like this armless Warrior Priest that I don't recognise (EDIT: a day or two later, I've stared at him some more and think he's from a vignette that GW produced of a Warrior Priest blessing a chap's rifle, but don't quote me on that), a plastic Dark Elf sorceress and a handful of dwarfs!

Most excitingly, though, was the discovery of TEN Skaven Jezzails! Super exciting, as up until now I'd managed to acquire the princely total of... one, from a trader at Salute a couple of years back. Also, the hardback Warriors of Chaos army book that the Jezzails are resting on in the above picture, which I realise I haven't mentioned until now...

I also enjoyed this little gem, amongst a smattering of 40K orks, which I can only assume is a converted RPG character, holding a tiny bottle of Jack Daniels!

Piling everything back into the box to await the time I can give them a proper sort (I'm going to need some more boxes!), we then spent some time tidying out the drawers of our desk - many years ago, it was my hobby desk, and the drawers are full of old maps, bases, interestingly shaped oddments of plastic and old knife blades, but these days it's used exclusively by my wife for her crafting, so we're taking out my bits and bobs (most of which have been sat untouched for a couple of years now). Fun tip - do this FOR your wife, not WITH her, as she probably won't take too kindly to your proclamations of 'hey, remember I thought I was out of 40mm bases and spent that afternoon going through every box in the house looking for some? Turns out there were something like twenty in here'...

I came back to these miniatures an evening or two later, and tried sorting them into separate boxes by army, so that I could work out just how much there was, but the boxes I used still weren't big enough! I'll have to get some bigger receptacles an spend an afternoon costing out what I've got using Battlescribe (my army list app of choice for pretty much every game system).

And so, the Tally... Normally, painted miniatures don't add to the Tally, but what about half-painted miniatures? What about miniatures that I'll likely touch up or repaint? It looks like a lot of these figures are painted with enamels, which won't match any of my other miniatures... Plus the fact that I still haven't counted exactly how many miniatures there actually are! I think I'll skip the Tally for these, so bear in mind, if I end up ending the year on a positive score, just remember that it won't really count due to this massive box of miniatures acquired!