It works both ways. I have purchased several brand new items as less than MSRP, sometimes substantially less. I recently won the bidding on a retired Walthers Fron Street Warehouse for $40 that originally sold for nearly $90.
Rich
Some interesting points, Howard and your prediction relating to the final demise of the LHS rings bells of sadness. Because, collectively, it’s the end of a retail institution. Some may say progress, however, to my mind progress infers a positive benefit otherwise it’s just change. However, I do think that ebay does have a place in a modelers buying mix. Without ebay, I would not have been able to buy the Brass Baldwin Centipede in paint that you listed there a few years ago - how else would I have been able to add this - then - much sought after model for my roster. No regrets buying on ebay in that instance - none before or since either come to think of it.
Howard said:
When the LHS becomes part of American Folklore, do you honestly believe that you’ll find the staples needed to practice model railroading in the classical sense on eBay…you guys know, things like paint, track glue, small parts, etc. These are the things that hobby shops stock as a service and reap very little profit, but I hear so many times …“I can get it cheaper on eBay!” I have always viewed the LHS as a needed service and an integeral part of the hobby…so much so, that when they eventually go…so will the hobby. Not immediately, but the decline will be noticeable.
Howard,
As someone who has also been in the hobby a long time and spend my younger years working in hobby shops and even managing a train department in one, I can tell you with confidence that small retail hobby shops and/or model train only shops were in trouble long before E-bay or even the internet.
As the depth of available product increased in the 80’s, and mail order discounting became more common, it quickly became clear that larger shops with more complete inventories, who could also buy direct and be more competitive, would be the only ones to survive.
The internet outlets other than E-bay, have had much more of an effect on speeding up that process than E-bay.
I agree that the industry has been undermined by the discounting - but again, that started long before E-bay. It has all but eliminated the wholesale distributors and required that successful shops have an internet presence and be able to offer some level of discounting.
Maybe we should really blame Ted Klein, Standard Hobby, Hobbies for Men, AHC, for starting that trend some 35-40 years ago?
Fact is, hobby shops/train stores cannot be effective without representitive inventories, that takes big money these days - and space. Money you had better have, not borrow, in today’s banking/business climate.
I deal with some great retail shops here in the Mid Atlantic,
Ebay and the internet marketplace in general has been an important part of our layout construction mostly because it’s much more convenient than making the trek to the nearest hobby store some 40 miles away. When I do go there it’s more for a general search since there’s no guarantee they’ll have what I’m looking for specifically. My town has always been a RR town with 2 major RRs having yards here up until the early 1980’s, but we haven’t had a hobby store in town since that time. Modelers here had to find another way to keep their projects going. This layout has been a project since the days of Linn Wescott, and will probably never be completely finished. Having Ebay to get the items we’re looking for at any time has made our layout what it is today. I’ve found some real bargains on the internet that I wouldn’t have found anywhere else. I still hit the hobby shop when I can, and I still go to the local train show twice a year, but most of my purchases are through the internet now.
I’m a big fan of Ebay. I buy racing T-shirts, racing hats, slot cars, car parts and train stuff off of Ebay. There is no better place to buy anything that you could ever need or want. Ebay sets the market price of an item which is good and bad.
Why do I buy off of Ebay? Well I can’t go to my local Walmart, Zellers etc and buy any type of racing related t-shirts or hats. My local hobby shop refuses to carry higher end slot cars like Slot It. It’s becoming harder every day to find old car parts and finally my LHS thinks that it is good to charge 100 dollars more for a Intermountain ES44AC sound loco then what EBAY and most other hobby shops are selling them for. Ebay is great for purchasing out of production items that LHS’s just can’t carry. I disagree with Howard, the only thing that is going to kill the LHS is themselves. If anything Ebay will only help the hobby grow because it is so big. I hear people complain all the time about their LHS not carrying stuff they want. Well take a look at Ebay, it truly is the worlds biggest Hobby Shop.
My comments about the hobby and eBay have nothing to do with on line shopping. Folks who shop on line are usually buying something they need and are in search of. eBay??? I also shop quite a bit on line and I feel this activity is enhancing the hobby. The only problem is how do we get new folks into the hobby. I once owned a fairly large shop and I can attest that many who walked in were exposed to model railroading for the first time. Train shows serve this function, and this is why I continue with [name removed]. Profit??? Yeah sure!
We are also several generations removed from the heydey of railroading, and each new generation seems a bit futher removed. Could this have some effect? Fortunately I will not live long enough to see the hobby fade out. Actually I don’t think that it will. Change? You bet!
HZ
Though I use eBay as a buyer and seller I love going to the LHS, even when I do not buy much I love browsing the shelves for an hour or so just seeing what it out there. Yesterday, I visited one, tried out an older locomotive of mine I am trying to sell and dropped off another one for them to repair. They’ll get it done in much less time and for less money then the importer and hopefully do a good job at it! In addition, I also bought a few items I needed for the night, and intend to buy much, much more such as the materials I’ll need for the dioramas I am building.
Internet sales have a place in this hobby, but let’s keep the LHS in the equation too especially when they earn our business.
Alvie
p.s the Tichy water columns I mentioned, I bought one at an LHS.
I opened an MR magazine from 1983 the other day. First of all it had 156 pages, chock full of ads, in the days of no ebay. But ads in a hobby mag are a good thing. They show you what’s out there and you could request an item at your LHS. Then I counted the LHS listings by state. In New York alone there were 46! The nationwide total was in the 1000s, I lost count. Nice look back to the former glory days of the LHS.
Back in the day Walther’s ads proudly announced “Your dealer can get it from Walthers”…
What a joke that was!! You see 60% of the time the requested item was not in stock at Walthers so,we had to turn to mail ordering in order to get the requested item…
Please understand a lot of shops back in the day was not well stocked except for those BB engines and cars,few Atlas engines,few Walther kits,some wooden car and structure kits,some track,paint,decals and maybe some brass as well.
At times being a contrarian is actually fun.
Sniping depends on 2 conditions to be present to be any more effective than other strategies:
- the snipe bid is placed late enough that other bidders do not have time to respond
- other bidders did not already bid the maximum amount they were willing to pay
If these conditions are not present, sniping is no different than any other bid system. As both buyer and seller, I have seen eBay occasionally slip auction finish times - without any action on the part of a seller. And if an earlier bidder bid his real maximum, then the snipe bid has to trump that price to win, no matter how late the snipe bid is placed.
OTOH, early bidding has some advantages that are rarely acknowledged (besides the set max bid and walk away). An early minimum bid is needed to lock the seller in. Until the 1st minimum bid is received, the seller is free to withdraw or cancel the auction.
And if there are two early bidders, they may drive the price high enough early enough to discourage the bottom feeders and snipers who are more interested in the search for the deal than the item. As a seller, I don’t want the price to get to the 75%-80% point early in the week because then the snipers don’t show for the last minute push, and my final sell price is actually lower. The auctions where I get the best price (as a seller) are where there is a frenzy of activity in the last 15 minutes. As a buyer, I want the price up to 75% of my final price early on because there are far fewer snipers likely to show.
But in all cases, it takes tw
Really!
Man I have trashed every form of hook coupler known to hobbykind… Shoulda had a V8!
One important thing not mentioned is the rising price of gas. I buildt my first HO empire back in the late eighties and nineties by traveling to and attending train shows. I live in central Texas so when gas was around a dollar a gallon it was very cost efficient to make day trips to Dallas,Houston and San Antonio to the some 8 trains shows a year that used to be very well attended.
Today at 3.25 for the top grade, which my car uses, I can get better deals on ebay or just by googling it and finding it from one of the online shops. As far as my local hobby shop, it is still about 45 miles round trip or about $4.00 in gas, which is almost shipping at Trainworld or MB Klein. So why lose the time and pay extra for the items.
Another factor is time. Back in the eighties and nineties the kids were young and the wife had Saturday’s off. Today, since she has become a boss in her field she is only off one Saturday a month so traveling anywhere is becoming very difficult. In fact the average work week for most Americans is higher than it has been since the “Gilded Era”. That could be one the reasons Train Shows seem to be so full of retirees.
SB
That is a good point. There is no hobby shop in my town. There is a small shop in the next town that is mostly models and all their train stock is DC. 150 miles round trip will get me to a small city and 300 miles round trip will get me to a mid size city with a decent train shop. 20 years ago I would drive there when I wanted a good selection. Now I have options. It is hard to justify 4 hours of travel plus the cost when I can browse the internet or pick up deals on Ebay.
If there was ever a place where the rule of “caveat emptor” was applicable, eBay is it.
I occasionally buy from eBay, but my practice is to decide what the item is worth for me, including shipping, and set my bid accordingly. Then, I don’t bother going back to the auction until after it is done. It gets too easy to be drawn into a bidding war, with a mentality of, “You can’t beat me on this!”
Any item where the shipping is NOT stated right up front, does not get a bid from me. Any item with outrageous shipping charges, also does not get a bid, regardless of how much I might want it.
Ebay auctions are won or lost in the last 5 seconds, not the last 5 hours.
Anyone who bids before the last 5 seconds is just driving up the price of the item.
I use “Auction sniper” and it bids with just a few seconds left. I set the price I am willing to spend on said item and forget about it. I then get an email telling me if I won or lost…
Do yourself a favor and learn how to use a sniping tool if you want to Ebay.
David B
I’m a sniper, I don’t engage in bidding wars.
Not being really familiar with the E-bay process, I guess I have a hypothetical question. Let’s suppose that there are no bids on an item. Now let’s suppose that there is a bidder C who bids early on with one of those “I’ll raise the last bid by $1.00” escalating bids with a maximum bid of $50 and a starting bid of $10. And then there are no further bids until the end.
Now let’s assume that there are two snipers out there with their software set to make their bids 5 seconds before the end of bidding, and that sniper A sets his bid at $40 and sniper B sets his bid at $45.
So what happens? If the $40 sniper’s bid gets there first and time runs out does he win the bid; or if both sniper bids get there at the same time does sniper B win with his $45 bid; or does C automatically win with his I’ll top the last bid with a winning amount of $46?
Or are E-Bay’s computers smart and fast enough to say “wait a second, let me take a break for a second and figure out what actually happened here”?
Inquiring minds want to know!!!
Thanks
I tried for an hour and don’t know how to contact you off-line. tatans
Seller C will get the item because he had the higest bid regardless of when the bid was placed.
One common misconception people have with ebay is that" I lost by only a dollar… Yes, but no. If an Item goes up today for sale starting at a buck, and I put a bid in for $1000!!! It will show me winning it for $1. If two people put sniper bids in 3 days from now to end 5 seconds before the auction ends, 1 at $40 and one at $45 I will win at the end for $46. The system dosent care who put what bids in first even if its down to a few seconds… the winning bid goes to whoever put in the highest bid before it ended… Period! It may look like I only won by a dollar, but in fact I would have won regardless unless your snipe was over $1000.
I have tried the sniping in the past but never felt comforable giving my ebay password away. When the snipe was over I changed my password immediatly. Waiting till the end is the best way to try to keep the price down, however I have also seen a highly saught after item with no or little bids “magicly disapear” aka backdoored as the seller got scared it wasnt going to sell high since there were no bids. Some people need to learn that patience is a vertue. I list all the time and usually nothing happens till the end like others have said. To prevent this I usually put in a small bid, sometimes just the starting price to “show interest” There are a lot of crooked people out there, and usually if an item has a bid they wont end it early, but even then it does happen. I usually send them a message asking why the ended the item and that its worth more than what they were probably offered. 9 times out of 10 it gets relisted.
Echoing again what others have said, Ebay is a great place to find things I just ant get from LHS, shows, or other collectors. Know the going rate for what you want, shop smart and wait for the deals. If you miss something… keep checking , another will come along!
I too always check shipping costs before bidding, FULLY R
I think Ebay is a good thing for several reasons. Most hobby shops (both retail and online) seem to have little to offer in the way of kits. RTR is fine for some, but not what I enjoy. Therefore, I go to Ebay. I recently sold some equipment on Ebay that didn’t fit my scheme/layout. Where else am I going to sell it? Back to the hobby shop? I don’t think so. I sold the items and will use the money from this to purchase other model railroading supplies, some from hobby shops, some online, and probably some from Ebay.
I enjoy visiting hobby shops and have been to many across this country over the last 20 years. However, few of these have what I consider to be a large selection to choose from. Caboose Hobbies (Denver), Des Plaines Hobbies (Chicagoland), Milepost 38 (LA), Mohawk Valley (Albany, NY), these shops are more of an exception than the rule.