I come across a lot of these sets when I am looking on eBay or BrickLink for specific minifigures. So much in fact I wonder if it would be easier to just buy a new set myself, remove the minifigures I want, and then sell the bricks off seperate (and any figs in the set I don't want). Before I do this I want to know how well do these sets w/o minifigures actually sell though?
I ask because the price of the minifigures alone seem to be 70-80% of a sets value. For instance I can buy a brand new Hobbit Bo5A set for $60 OR I can buy JUST the minifigures for almost $50 (Dain and Thorin are $10 each, 2x Gundabad Orcs are $3 each, Azog is $8.50, Bard and Legolas are $4 each, and Gwaihir is $6 as the cheapest). That means I could sell the bricks, nearly 450 of them, for $10 and be coming out about the same as if I just bought all the minifigures alone on eBay or BL. Of course most sellers still ask about 50% of the sets value for just the bricks, making it much cheaper to buy a new set, keep the figs, and sell the bricks if they actually sell.
So my question is, how easy is it to just sell a complete set of bricks minus the minifigures? If they actually sell decently, this seems like it would be WAY cheaper for me than trying to buy up all the extra minifigures in sets I want.