Most of my structures early on were from Ebay. I’ve found that with the recent fee hikes though, the shipping charges are getting ridiculous (I saw one just last week where the item was worth 10 dollars retail and weighed less than a pound, and the shipping fee was twenty!). I don’t buy much from ebay these days for that reason, but you can’t beat it for that hard to find out-of -production item. A couple pointers though that I haven’t seen in this thread yet:
- When you are searching for an item, use every possible descriptive word you can think of, even if you already found it under the obvious ones. Having some old Walthers catalogues (I’m talking 25-30 years old) can be handy as well. Say you’re looking for a house made by IHC. That same house may have been made by AHM or Tyco thirty years ago, and some guy has it for auction, but back then it was sold as Uncle Don’s Mortuary or Joe’s Hardware. Same kit, different name. Most of the familiar kits are like this, the tooling gets sold to another manufacturer and they repackage it as something new. Looking through the old Walthers catalogues before you go hunting can give you a heads up.
- Don’t bid until the last possible moment. Not because of sniping as much as because someone else may put the same item up for bid at a much better price before that auction you’re watching is over.
- Fuzzy photos usually mean junky stuff.
- Pay special attention to items that say “lot” or “assortment”. If the price is cheap enough you may find the item you want there. If you want the rest of the stuff that comes with it, it’s a bonus. If not, add it to the scrap box or even sell it and get your money back.
- Don’t buy track unless you’re looking for a LOT and wanting to save on a bunch of switches. Usually you can find huge boxes of used track that you can inspect before buying at the LHS and train shows, and it’ll be cheaper. For some reason track tends to sell for ridiculous prices on ebay.