The Wolfling Project

My opinion of painting quality:

First, we have unprimed. That's the state of the miniature out of the box -- either bare metal or plastic. To construct it properly, it should be assembled without noticeable glue puddles or marks, superglue fingerprints, and have flash and mold lines removed. This may be time consuming for some of Games Workshop's cheaper and more available miniatures, like the Space Marines from the Assault on Black Reach starter set.

Most problems of an unprimed miniature can be fixed quickly.

Next, we have a primed miniature, usually in white or black. This base color prepares a miniature for more paint. The primer layer is often spraypaint, so it can be overdone, obscuring detail.

Miniature stages: primed, basecoat, basecoat + wash, complete detail.

Miniatures primed in anything other than white, black, or gray are too specialized for purchase or sale on eBay, as they'll need to be stripped down by their new owner.

A large proportion of minis of the casual 40K player won't proceed beyond primer during their lifetime. Many pre-primed armies are available secondhand.

A basecoat is a layer of the largest areas of the miniature in their base colors. This is the minimum for some tournaments -- the "three color standard."

Anything more involved can be judged on quality and style.

Here's the Games Workshop sales photo of a Sisters of Battle Canoness:

This miniature is now the Queen of England.

This is display level, great for selling minis. 98% of miniatures are below this quality. As a sales photo, it's also shot on a medium format camera (like restaurant menus) and photoshopped.

Above this level is a Golden Demon-winning miniature. These are some of the few miniatures that can be sold for more than their retail value -- perhaps $50+ for a character mini. I'd consider this pre-Heresy Thousand Sons figure posted online to be of this quality.

Display-quality minis are sometimes sold separately on the web.

This is more common: a tabletop-quality figure.

Canoness from an eBay auction

Same figure, much lower quality. Everything is painted -- basecoat, some shading on the fur and robes, but no washes and few highlights. There's been no attempt to paint the eyes or shade the face or hair. This figure would look fine on the gaming table or from a few feet away.

Not to pick on others, here's my test miniature -- the first of the army -- for the Sisters of Battle. I'd call this tabletop or charitably, high tabletop quality.

Sisters of Battle test miniature

In the secondary market, tabletop minis need to match an existing army or be a complete army themselves. Everything else requires a bath in Simple Green and a vigorous scrubbing -- and that means a discount of 30% or more on the retail price.