From Miniature Tim:

( X + Y ) x Z = Value

X = Starting Monetary Cost
Y = Labor
Z = Sentimental Attachment

It's a pretty good article. There are also some pretty good comments, in particular, there's a contrasting opinion by Mordian7th, which is more in line with my personal philosophy:

"The starting price is always what I paid for them in retail, rounded up to the closest whole dollar plus a little extra to cover any battlefoam trays/shipping/ebay and paypal fees. Any bids that come in over that I consider paying me for my painting time, and if it sells for the base price I look at it as not being out any money, and still having had all the fun of building and painting"

What about you folks... any formula for figuring out what your custom is worth, either for eBay or other purposes?

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Man.... That's a tough question. I've seen what spin's usually sell for and it makes me want to sell mine, but the sentimental value keeps me from doing so.

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I usually don't factor in much on labor with any of the stuff I do. Mostly just material cost and a little extra sometimes to put money back into my projects. My time I figure would just be watching tv or playing video games or working at my shop if I wasn't building stuff so labor just doesn't bother me much as far as applying a dollar value.

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I have to preface by stating I don't normally sell customs. I have sold some in the past because, as Stealth Viper put it, "Everything has a price, the right price." But my forumla is WAY different.

First, I never consider starting cost unless for someone reason I want to remake that custom and need to get those supplies again. Sure, you probably aren't going to sell a custom action figure for $2 because it will cost $10 to get a figure at retail right now. And okay, if you spent $30 on a vehicle or $50 on an exclusive figure to use in a custom you might want to use that as a starting point. But for the most part the final product justifies the price way more than what I start with. Chances are if it is in my fodder box, I'm not valuing it very highly to begin with.

Second, and this is really where not selling my customs comes in, I put more value on the buyer's Sentimental Attachment, than on my own. That sounds horrible, but as a non-seller, chances are I'll flat out reject a passing offer with "Thank you, but it isn't for sale." But then someone will come along at a show and be all like, "Oh my! I love so and so. I can't believe you made him. Cool, you used such and such parts on him. Is he for sale? Please say yes!" That kind of enthusiasm is hard to say "No" to, especially face to face. If their Sentimental Attachment outweighs my Sentimental Attachment chances are pretty good they're going home with it. When that happens Value all comes down to Labor.

Why Labor? Because hard customs are hard to make. One day I'll be blind and have arthritis and won't be able to customize anymore because I spent so much of my adult life toiling away giving buckles and straps straight lines and inhaling plastic, paint, and resin fumes, as well as typing run-on sentences.

For me the equation would be as follows:
(Labor + Cost if > $10) = Buyer's Attachment

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First off, I'll address commissions to explain how I think they are different from this discussion, because that is "how you value an assignment to make something for someone else". I always (at least nowadays) charge more for a commission than I would to sell an existing figure. Commissions remove the creative freedom from the equation, and for me at least, eliminate most of the fun of the process. At that point, you're just boiling it down to time, and because of my profession and my limited time in general, I've come to value that quite highly. (never mind that I seem to take twice as long on a commission as I want to make it perfect before sending out). A commission can be ego-building, yet artistically frustrating for me. I may sound like a dick for saying so publicly, but I won't even talk about a true commission for anything less than $100, depending on the circumstances at least. If someone says no - just more time for me to do my own stuff. If they say yes, well then at least I have the incentive for a process I'm not keen on to begin with.

Valuing a past piece, however, I don't focus only on how much time it took me, because I was making it for me, and I enjoyed the process. In that sense, the time spent paid for itself via the enjoyment of getting there. I also don't value it sentimentally. I might have an attachment to the character, but there's no figure in my custom collection that I can't recreate if motivated to do so. I can think of only 2 customs I have at the moment that would be truly untouchable due simply to the inability to truly recreate the end result to replenish my own collection later on.

So how do I value an existing custom in my collection? Would it be a cop out to say I let the market decide? Rather than value my past time, effort or artistic abilities, I try to value the piece in and of itself. As if " Customs Roadshow" was in my basement setting the price for me, detached from the factors being discussed above.

With that in mind, most customs I've sold have been on ebay. I start every one at $0.99 with free shipping (except for international) and just let interest in the item play itself out (though I admit I pimp the hell out of my auctions - I can't affect the quality of the bids, but I sure hope to influence the quantity). I'm usually pleased with the final amount, and will say that the bids usually reflect how I feel about the figure myself, at the end of the day. For example, I once sold a bunch of custom Joes I had made within my first year of customizing. The returns were..."modest". But that was appropriate, because they were made by a novice. In later years, I sold customs that had won JCAs here, and the end price sometimes hit 3 digits. So the market and the buyers can tell the difference.

Direct sales (which is probably most on-topic?) are always tougher, because it forces me to set a price. I don't use an equation to fix the price - instead I use the past experience of many ebay auctions to give myself a range. It's subjective in a sense, but weighed against a history of past sales.

I will also say it depends on who the buyer is. If I have a figure I don't intend to sell on ebay, but someone asks me to sell it, I first try to figure out it's ebay range. If the buyer is new to me, I'm likely to set the price at the high end of the range. If the buyer is a friend or well known to me here, I'm likely to go at the low end of that range.

But at the end of the day, it's all about what makes you happy. If you're going to lose sleep about it when it's done, then don't sell that custom. Or better yet, set the price at a level where you know you'll be pleased, and leave it on the buyer to decide... As pluv said the reward of a sale can come in more shapes than just dollar bills too. It can be extremely rewarding to place a custom in the hands of someone you know digs it. But I took the tone of the question to be more bottom line oriented.

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This is very interesting considering I have thought about selling some in the past year just because they are piling up. I have not done so yet because I value most of them sentimentally too high to sell, but also because of the horror stories of ebay buyers demanding refunds if the paint chips despite it being listed as display only. That being said, I have actually started giving some away to my nephew (6 years old) and even my Scarlett to my niece (9 years old). They love them and are very interested in hearing about the mods I made and so forth. My son is too young right now to appreciate or be trusted with any of them, so mine are all currently in storage to be given away to him or some other deserving kid I find. I think selling would be stressful, but giving them away is rewarding. There are, however, a few vehicle customs even my son will never touch until I'm in a small urn waiting to be scattered into the Gauley River.

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that's a good point too Dusty. my son is my most demanding customer, and the payback I get there is more gratifying than any $.

I wouldn't worry much about bad ebay buyers though. If you word your sales description well enough, you are insulated from wear and tear. But I say this in part because I assume you're past the sentimental attachment by the time you take start the auction. I think (unless you're need the cash) that selling it while still attached is a bad idea.

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I don't sell my customs and I don't take commisions. Most of the time the latter is down to mental energy, or lack thereof. Part of the reason I shut down The Bazaar. I would have got the orders out, but it would have been a strain and I would have had to shut down every couple of months for a couple of weeks. With everything that was going on and still is in my life, even making customs for myself As has been said, any value I place on the ones I have done is purely sentimental. I have had offers in the past, especially on non-customising websites. Most of the time the offers woulod not have even covered the parts.

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For the customs I've sold to my buyer I charge cost of figure or parts needed plus labor then $2.50 for shipping.
I've sold like 50 customs to him.I got anywhere from $12 to $40 each.
On ebay I just start with a price that would be ok and just hope for the best. I sold a Fisto I did for $50 and a few others were in the $40 range too.
I do have customs wouldn't sell like my He-man or my thundercats and I'm sure they would sell for quite a bit

The world can't afford my customs.





Seriously though, I don't make customs that I don't personally want in my collection, so I never even consider selling them.
It would probably take a stupid amount of money to get me to sell them.

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Kinda' with Gaigaan there. The customs I make don't exist in the toy world, or they were made in a scale that I do not patronize. Back in the RAH days though, I sold all of my ALIENS customs, CobraLa customs, etc. due to bumps in the life road, and I just threw a price that I was comfortable with and let the feeding frenzy happen, or not.

Then there are times I take the same attitude as my Mrs. She is a great needle-felter. She has only been doing it since Christmas last year and already went from novice to journeyman in a short time. She does it for pure enjoyment, but there are those that gush on her works and she accomodates them but on her terms...if she feels like doing it. Her folks push her as they always have with the usual "Oh you should make a bunch of these and sell 'em!!" but she hates that, as this would take an enjoyment and turn it into a chore. In that, I agree wholeheartedly. Point in fact, about some months ago I apparently had a guestbook entry from someone wanting Skyrim customs for their wedding cake. Since I don't check my guestbook or at least haven't in many months, I missed the request. I ask myself.."would I have done it or not?", and I can't say either way. Doing something that is that obscure ain't easy in the least, and quite often trying to just make one figure involves trades, sacrifices, and many times just pure dumb luck that it actually came out as I wanted it to. Then, like the dios, I am artistically "gun-shy". All I have to do is look at the top and corner of my wife's armoir to see all those dios folks have commissioned, then either stiffed me or conveniently forgot they commissioned them. I hate chasing down folks for money, and more than a handful of these were either broken down to make shoebox dios (like those at the last SlayerCon), or they get thrown into the dumpster/compactor outside.

The costs of some customs would never be reconciled. When I did my clear Predator Gal of my Tsarei custom, I had gotten the clear Invisible Woman from the 4-pack at a time when she wasn't commercially available in the stores, only online, and that was a tough bullet to bite. There would be no way in Hell someone would pay for all that went into making her, from the MU set, to the clear chase run of the Predator blind box shokugan that I got the Predator pieces from.

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Let me ask you guys, how do you determine the labor value?

If I were to do a comission, I would look at how long the custom took, how difficult it was, tracking down parts, whether it was an LBC or needed sculpting/tooling.

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for labor I just charge the time I spent on the custom from start to finish and I rate it at minimum wage here for me