I saw the ad for Model Train Broker in this issue of MR. They are the third or fourth on line auction site I’ve seen trying to cater to model railroaders. I think the idea is fundamentally sound, but I’ve never seen any of the sites last. Everyone gripes about eBay, but doesn’t take advantage of an alternative just for us.
I must admit that this is a bit puzzling. Could it be a case of “no one is there, therefore I’m not going to be there, either” type mentality? [?]
It’s all about trust, on ebay alot of people will not buy or let you buy unless you have a certain rating, also they have paypal.
I don’t think it is puzzling at all. For an auction house to work it has to have a certain critical mass of both buyers and sellers. This is even harder to do with a nitch market like Model Railroading. I don’t believe e-bay would have ever taken off if they would have limited their merchandise to a single category.
The only two ways I can see it getting to that critical mass is if they either have enough of their own merchandise to give the the auctions enough variaty and keep them going while they attract new people (6 months to two years??), or if they get enough hobby stores that have e-stores to abandon e-bay and bring all of their traffic with them to the new site. Even then there has to be enough good word of mouth in the MR community for a sustained period of time before they can even be hopefull of being successful in the long run.
I was approached to post some of my merchandise there, but the gorilla that eBay has become almost guarantees a successful sale. My idea of a successful sale? Ease of posting. Getting a fair price. Getting paid securely. Ease of shipping with PayPal and “Click and Ship”. Most of all is seeing that my customer is happy enough with our transaction to return.