The Citadel Giant Saga- Part III: Survival, Scarcity, and Why You Rarely See Them

My giant and reproduction box!

There has been a lot of discussion over the years about how rare the Citadel Giant actually is. 

With me being lucky enough to acquire one as I've noted here and here, my mind turned to scarcity and actually how many of these still exist. 

Rather than relying on vague statements like “very rare” or “hard to find,” it is possible to build a structured model that explains both how many were likely produced and how many still exist today. This is not about claiming exact numbers. It is about building a model that matches what we actually see in the hobby.

The accepted starting point is that roughly 1,000 Citadel Giants were produced. There is no surviving ledger or official production record, but this number aligns with long standing collector consensus and is a reasonable baseline.

From there, the real story is attrition. Over more than forty years, these models were not preserved with future collectors in mind. They were used, broken, discarded, and in some cases intentionally destroyed.

Attrition Buckets (40+ years)

• Melted for scrap or recasting: approximately 150 to 300
  Large metal models had real scrap value, and hobbyists also melted miniatures for home casting projects
• Catastrophic damage (unrecoverable): approximately 100 to 150
  Snapped ankles, failed joints, corrosion, and early adhesive failures often rendered examples unusable
• Lost or discarded (moves, cleanouts): approximately 150 to 250
  Entire collections were thrown out or abandoned, especially during the 1990s when early Citadel models were not valued
• Unknown or inaccessible (attics, estates): approximately 75 to 150
  Not destroyed, but effectively removed from circulation

When these categories are combined, the result is a surviving population of approximately 150 to 300 Citadel Giants in any condition worldwide. This is the core number that matters.

From that pool, further filtering is required. Not all survivors are meaningful to collectors. Many are fragments, incomplete, or heavily damaged. When those are removed, the number of recognizable Giants falls to roughly 120 to 200. From there, collector grade or restorable examples likely fall in the range of 50 to 100.

High completeness examples are rarer still. These are models retaining most of their interchangeable components and structural integrity. That group likely numbers between 20 and 40 worldwide.

At this point it becomes useful to break things down into tiers.

Tier I – NITB (Museum Tier)

• Original box
• Complete contents
• Untouched
• Estimated: 0 to 10 worldwide, likely closer to 0 to 5

Tier II – Full Component Survivor

• All five heads
• All three right hands
• All three victims
• Estimated: approximately 10 to 20 worldwide
• North America: approximately 3 to 8

Tier III – High Completeness

• Four or more heads
• Partial hands
• Most victims
• Estimated: approximately 20 to 40 worldwide

Tier IV – Standard Survivor

• One to three heads
• Limited parts
• Estimated: approximately 60 to 120 worldwide

Tier V – Fragment or Wreck

• Broken
• Partial
• Parts only
• Estimated: remainder of the surviving population

Geography introduces another layer of scarcity. By the time Warhammer began to gain traction in the United States, the Citadel Giant had already been out of production for nearly a decade. This created a structural imbalance that still exists today.

In the United Kingdom, the Giant was part of the original ecosystem. It was produced, sold, and used there. In North America, it was largely absent. Very few were imported during its production run, and most examples seen today arrived later through secondary market transfers.

As a result, North America likely has only 40 to 65 surviving examples across all tiers. When broken down further, the number of high completeness or full component examples becomes extremely small. It is realistic to estimate that only a handful of top tier examples exist across the entire continent.

There is also a simple way to validate this model. If more examples existed in circulation, we would see them. There would be more listings, more restoration threads, more parts trading, and more casual mentions. Instead, each appearance is an event. Years can pass between meaningful sightings. The same examples are recognized when they reappear. There is no steady market, only intermittent visibility.

That absence of chatter is not coincidence. It is evidence.

Of approximately 1,000 Citadel Giants produced, it is likely that only 150 to 300 survive in any condition today. Of those, perhaps 10 to 20 retain full component completeness, with only a small number located in North America. This is not a claim of precision. It is a model that fits what collectors actually observe.

And that is what matters.

(More details on my quest for the giant can be found here and here on Oldhammer.org.) 

Have you quested for this legendary model? if so, let me know your expediences. 

The Citadel Giant Saga- Part II: The Citadel Giant That Shouldn’t Have Been Found

 

Every collector knows the feeling:
“If I’d been five minutes later, it would’ve been gone.”

This was not that.

What happened with the Citadel Giant wasn’t a near miss, or good timing, or even great luck. It was a sequence of events that—taken together—should not realistically occur in the normal life cycle of a collecting hobby.

Here’s why.

THE Citadel Giant after the first pass of paint removal.

 

Not One Improbability — A Chain of Them

Most rare finds hinge on one unlikely thing going right.

This required many, and every one of them had to succeed for the outcome to happen at all. Miss any step, and the chain collapses. 

Think of them as “gates.” If even one stays closed, the Giant is never found.

I should add I was doing these in real time in about 20 minutes start to finish. Checking and referencing sites, is this a legitimate sale? What should I offer? All the while what amount I should offer as I raced the clock knowing that someone else might find it and get a claim in before me.

Primary Seller Gates (Shipment 1)

These gates describe everything that had to go right before the Giant was ever discovered.

Gate 1 — The Giant Had to Exist in the Wild

This was not a standard retail Citadel Giant. It was an internal-cast example pulled from legacy molds—never sold through normal channels and almost never seen publicly. Most collectors will never encounter one at all.

Gate 2 — The Owner Had to Let It Go

Owners of items this rare typically keep them, trade privately, or pass them quietly to other collectors. In this case, the owner chose to sell it openly instead.

Gate 3 — It Had to Be Listed in the "Wrong" Place

Rather than appearing on eBay or a specialist forum, the Giant was listed on Bonanza, a low-traffic marketplace that most collectors do not actively monitor.

Gate 4 — The Search Had to Use the “Wrong” Engine

The discovery depended on using DuckDuckGo instead of Google. DuckDuckGo indexes and ranks obscure listings differently, often surfacing results Google suppresses or ignores.

Gate 5 — The Listing Had to Sit Unnoticed

The Giant needed to remain unsold long enough to be discovered — not snapped up immediately, but not hidden forever either.

Gate 6 — DuckDuckGo Had to Index It at All

Low-authority marketplaces are not always indexed consistently. DuckDuckGo had to successfully ingest and surface the Bonanza listing.

Gate 7 — The Result Had to Appear in a Narrow Visibility Band

The listing landed deep in the results — far enough down to avoid early interception by other collectors, but not so deep that it was functionally invisible.

Gate 8 — A Nonstandard Search Phrase Had to Work

The search phrase used (“The Warhammer Giant 1983”) was conversational and imprecise. It did not match catalog-standard naming and would normally fail to surface an obscure Bonanza listing.

Yet it worked.

Gate 9 — The Timing Had to Be Right

The discovery happened late on a Friday night — a low-competition window when fewer collectors are actively searching.

Gate 10 — The Search Had to Be on Mobile

DuckDuckGo’s mobile search behaves differently from desktop, favoring natural-language phrasing and long-tail results. The search was performed on mobile, not desktop.

Gate 11 — A Deep Scroll Had to Happen

The listing appeared several pages down. Most users never scroll that far, but in this case, it happened.

 

Interlocking Market Gate

Gate 12 — No One Else Could Find It First

During the narrow window when the listing was discoverable, no other collector ran the same search, using the same engine, at the same time, and scrolled deep enough to see it.

If anyone had, the story ends there.

THE Citadel Giant, stripped down of paint.

Secondary Seller Gates (Shipment 2 — The Parts That Shouldn’t Have Appeared 

Together)

After the Giant was secured, a second, unrelated sequence unfolded — one that depended entirely on the first.

Gate 13 — Another Seller Had to Have Loose Giant Parts

A separate seller happened to possess multiple loose components from the same rare kit — something that is itself uncommon.

Gate 14 — A Casual Purchase Had to Spark a Question

A non-rare head variant was purchased, which prompted a simple follow-up inquiry: “Do you happen to have any other Giant parts?”

Gate 15 — The Rarest Head Had to Be There

The seller’s unlisted inventory included the Feral Beard head, the rarest of all Giant head variants.

Gate 16 — Multiple Rare Hands Had to Be There Too

That same unlisted inventory also contained both rare non-club right-hand variants — parts that almost never appear together.

Gate 17 — The Seller Had to Respond and Agree

The seller replied, confirmed the parts, and agreed to sell them — rather than ignoring the message or declining.

Gate 18 — All of This Had to Happen Quickly

The entire secondary sequence unfolded within six days of the original acquisition, before circumstances, attention, or availability changed.

And if this weren't enough? Two different sellers, two different locations and shipping methods. Two separate paths through customs and two different sets of delays in shipping? Both arrived at my door within hours of each other on the same day.

Why This Matters

Any one of these gates opening would be unremarkable. All of them opening? In order is not.

Add to this all of the gates are not weighed evenly. Some like 6,7,8,10 and 11 are beyond absurd that they worked out that way. Gate 6 in particular? I found the giant on page 5 of my search results. DuckDuckGo had indexed it just enough, but not too much to get to a "Goldilocks" zone for me to find it after being diligent enough to drill down.

This is why the story of the Citadel Giant isn’t just about finding a rare miniature. It’s about a fragile chain of conditions that almost never align, aligning once.

And then closing behind it.

Part III will deal with the math behind such an unlikely turn of events. When I said at the onset this "should not realistically occur in the normal life cycle of a collecting hobby?" 

That's not even close to the true. You could run this time after time and the numbers become astronomically rare. I lived it and I still don't believe it really happened.

Note: His restoration progress will be taking place at Oldhammer.org for updates. 

The Citadel Giant Saga- Part I: Or, How Probability, Patience, and USPS Collided

There are purchases, and then there are events.

This was the latter.

"The BIG Giant!"

What began in late November 2025 as a straightforward (if ambitious) acquisition of a 1983 Citadel Giant turned into a multi-week exercise in probability theory, logistics archaeology, and patience-testing uncertainty, capped off by an ending so absurd that it deserves to be documented properly.

This post is that documentation. A follow-up post will contain the mind bending series of improbabilities that led to me finding the giant, but that is for a last day.

Now, because the story needs embellishment, it really doesn’t, but because it illustrates something collectors understand instinctively and outsiders rarely see: the journey matters almost as much as the object.

The Find

The giant itself needs little introduction to Oldhammer collectors. Early Citadel giants are iconic, heavy, and un-apologetically of their era: full of character, strange proportions, and sculptural craziness.

 

What made this one unusual wasn’t just condition or completeness, but the seller’s claim of provenance:

• Cast directly from original Citadel molds

• Not a retail release

• Produced long after normal production had ended

• Originating from a former Games Workshop staff member

That combination alone put this piece firmly outside the normal collecting pipeline.

I made an offer.

It was accepted.

And then… shipping in late November/early December “happened.”

The Waiting Begins

Once the package actually entered the shipping system, things accelerated — and then immediately became opaque.

There were two shipments tied to the giant:

• Shipment 1: The giant itself

• Shipment 2: A secondary shipment containing rare hands and two heads including

the feral bearded head; the most difficult of the five to acquire.

 

Tracking information oscillated between “in customs,” “shipping,” and “somewhere that definitely exists, trust us.”

At various points, both packages appeared to be:

• in New York,

• not in New York,

• cleared customs,

• not cleared customs,

• and possibly sitting on a pallet that both existed and did not exist simultaneously.

Schrödinger’s pallet, if you will.

The Absurd Resolution

Then, on a quiet Saturday morning, reality intervened.

At 9:19 AM, right within my normal USPS delivery window, the giant arrived.

No warning.

No accurate tracking update.

Just… there.

A fleeting phone notification earlier that morning hinted at something “giant”-related, then vanished. The databases hadn’t caught up, but the truck had.

Later that same day — while we were out shopping — Shipment 2 arrived as well.

Both shipments.

Same day.

After weeks of uncertainty.

The system didn’t announce victory.

It simply delivered the boxes and pretended nothing unusual had happened.

Perspective

The giant is really cool. The heads and hands are fantastic. The odds involved were absurd enough to be memorable. But in the end, this was a good problem to have, and one that resolved without loss.

Before paint removal but having safely arrived.

Actually when I say the odds were absurd? That’s an understatement. Part 2 of this story will contain the roughly 18 steps of improbability that I successfully navigated to come out the other side with a complete giant…in six days. This shouldn’t have happened even once, but it did.

Epilogue: The Name

The giant has been named:

Duncan the Drunken.

He currently resides downstairs in the man cave, awaiting his turn on the painting table. There will be tartan. There will be red hair. There will be decisions made slowly and deliberately.

For now, though, the saga is complete.

If there’s a lesson here, it’s a simple one: Tracking is advisory. Reality does what it wants. And sometimes… it’s just Saturday and an ultra rare citadel miniature shows up at your front door.