I’m looking for 2 of the Walthers Paper mill #3060 kits. They have been out of production for about 5 years . Local shops , Walthers and ebay have turned up nothing. If anyone out there wants to part with one or two let me know.
Thanks, Ken McCorry
If you’re talking about the Superior Paper Mill building kits, I’ve seen them pop up on ebay from time to time. I’m looking for several OOP (out of production) kits myself, and I just check back once a week or so. Just keep in mind though, OOP kits usually fetch a price above and beyond what they originally sold for. For instance, if memory serves, the Walther’s Backshop and Carshop both went for around $39 when they were still in production, however I’ve seen each fetch upwards of $60 on ebay. Just keep looking, I’ve seen the Paper Mill on ebay before, so I’m sure it’ll show up again.
Ken,
As an ebay member, you can create a custom search to look for your Paper Mill product. Once you create a saved search, you can have eBay email you if anything new pops up meeting the search criteria. I’ve done that with several items I’ve looked for in the past and it works out really well. It beats having to constantly check back on eBay every few days to see if something pops up that you want. You are less likely to miss it using a custom search with email notification. Just make sure your search includes things like “Walthers” and “Paper Mill”. Otherwise, you may get a lot of stuff from other vedors or other Walthers models.
Good luck.
EdW
I got lucky and bought one last year at my LHS. I cut it up and kit bashed it to make it a long narrow paper mill at the back edge of my layout.
I wonder why Walthers discontinues a line, especially a large kit like that. I would think that after it is tooled, it would be a low overhead cost to continue to make them. If you can’t find one, you might want to hurry and buy one or two of their Tri-state Power Authority kits, which are also being retired this year. It’s the same structure as the Kraft Mill portion of the paper mill. You could then kitbash it with other kits or their modular kits to make the rest of the paper mill complex. You should be able to find substitutes for the various tanks as well. If you can’t order these kits through your LHS, try Trainworld. I just bought a retired Walthers kit through them. They do a lot of close outs so if anyone has them, they probably would.
This is why I have so many unbuilt kits in my basement. If I see something I like, I’m always afraid it will get discontinued so I buy it right away, even if I’m not ready to put it on the layout.
Good luck!!!
Jshrade,
Good points, but one thing about the Walthers Back Shop and Car Shop. Prices on Ebay, overall, have been coming down since so many of these kits pop up often times from the same vendor. I snagged a kit for just $34 on Ebay (yes, I’m a sniper) when a month earlier prices were averaging about $60.
One suspected reason for the prices of the Back Shop and Car Shop being a bit lower now is Walthers announcement of a new locomotive shop kit, due out this month. It’s larger, has the big windows, and still can be used from the steam era to today. Due out sometime Dec 2005 - Jan2006.
I was going to “hunt” for another Car Shop or Back Shop kit on Ebay, but now I’ve decided to wait for the new Walthers building instead. If many other modelers are doing the same, then these Out of Production kits may not have such a high demand as before, hence, the lower priced winning bids.
You know, I still haven’t seen a real picture of that model. Walthers still has the artwork only for it on it’s New Products page, although they finally got the actual models of Lakeville Warehousing Modern Warehouse and Magic Pan bakery on their site (these look pretty good and I’ll probably spring for both of them - Walthers did a good job on picking structures for this December release) - but the Diesel House is still only a cartoon…