LOL
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Umbreon_Of_Alton
7h
there a better site then ebay to sell on?
HOSwap
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Yes, I have also found items more expensive on Amazon.
On the other hand there is a cost attached for me to spend a lot of effort searching for alternate sources. In addition I donât have to deal with unknown sources. Plus whatever it is shows up at my door in a couple days.
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The entire retail marketplace is undergoing possibly the biggest change in history. Bricks and mortar stores are being replaced in all markets with internet shopping. Hobby shops are becoming nonexistent just like other markets. I really have some questions regarding decoder pricing however. I understand that there is a cost involved in installation but the pricing of decoders for customer installation seems to be much too high. Electronic components get cheaper and cheaper but decoders do not. Nearly every other electronic chip based item get cheaper with time yet decoders do not. My personal opinion is that decoders are overpriced and very profitable to the sellers.
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Well, mainstream consumer electronics benefit from an enormous economy of scale. Model train decoders are produced in miniscule numbers by comparison and are likely not overpriced based on their cost to produce.
The price of 140 decoders 20 years ago was on a list of factors that kept me out of DCC back then, and it is still a significant expense.
Sheldon
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I can give the sound decoder suppliers a little slack, at least for the ones like ESU or Broadway or Rapido (who will supply recordings to ESU) who sometimes rely on actual recordings for their sound âprojectsâ. I recall seeing a video with Jason Shron while he was on one of these recording ventures.
My nephew worked on a railroad that had several Alco locomotives operating and representatives from Broadway Limited visited there to make actual sound recordings of the equipment there.
The cost of this has to be recovered from somewhere. Future feature developments have to be funded, too, in order to remain competitive. Ultimately, it is the consumer who dictates what the market will bear.
Regards, Ed
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Weâve been battling this out for some time in the O Gauge realm. And Iâm using âgaugeâ rather than âscaleâ because no matter how many rails you have, toy or scale model the problem has been universal.
Bottom line? Itâs really hard to get people interested in a hobby that they canât afford. It canât just be a rich personâs game if we want the hobby to survive. Itâs a participation sport and high price tags drive potential participants away.
We saw it in the 1990âs when MTH and Lionel went head to head. MTH pushed the market towards better proportioned rolling stock for starter sets and that was good. However, MTH also went heavy into electronics and many were simply not good enough to last. I have great looking locomotives that I purchased for a premium price but the fancy electronics I paid for lost their minds years ago.
Lionel responded in kind to the MTH challenge but with a more measured approach which resulted in higher quality. In the interim though locomotive prices went from $300 for a steam engine boiler casting designed in the 1940âs to thousands of dollars for high quality brass models. In the 90âs I could afford new but today I can only to buy used. Which is fine because the older stuff is easier to maintain and repair.
Everyone is tired of talking about high prices and inflation and everything. But lower price, high quality, reasonably well detailed equipment is a necessity to bring people into the hobby.
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Just thought of this oneâŚeBay if you see a seller with the same itemâŚone on auction and the other on listed price offerâŚmake one bid on the low-ball to stay in the auction so you can see the sold price. Then after auction ends go to the listed item and offer the âauctionâ price the other item was sold for. Of course as long if itâs cheaper then the listed price. Human nature dictates the seller just might bite. G.
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Iâm not exactly following?
If you make a bid at the opening price and no one else bids, YOU bought that item.
IF you want to see final bid prices or even some Buy it Now and âmake offerâ listings go to the left menu and select âcompleted listingsâ and you will see what similar listings went for:
If I see an item that I might be interested in Iâll put it in my âwatchâ list. Sometimes a seller will make you an offer of a discount. I recently âwatchedâ a Pennsy B60b baggage car listed at $65 and the seller sent me an email offering a Buy it Now of $45. Thatâs a worthwhile discount.
Cheers, Ed
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I went back to the title of this thread. It didnât seem about prices. Then Onewolf42 shared his story. Hereâs mine.
Long ago I had a personal budget limit on HO rolling stock. Maybe $20 at a hobby shop for 3 cars. My brother is a ârivetâ counter and $20 would not buy one of his.
Then we go on vaction and I happened into a hobby shop. NOT a model RR shop. The owner had bought an estate sale. LOTS of good stuff but he had no local buyers. I bought $200 and the value was probably 3 times that. I was happy and the owner was too.
Another trip later and a revisit to the store. He only had a loco. OK, but I have to see it run. He got a transformer and when âfired upâ the engine did not run. I went to my car to get my voltmeter. BAD transformer (brand new out of the box) Store owner got another transformer and we were good to go. Was I ever proud. Once home that loco would pull a string of cars 12â long. endmrw0320251940
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Iâve done this a number of times with pocket watches and parts.
You bid early, at a small increment over the current bid price. Sometimes (very seldom) there wonât be any more bids and youâll get it for the lowball price. Much more often there will be more bids that exceed your incremental bid.
What heâs saying is that your own lowball, quickly trumped bid puts you in for eBayâs periodic reminders, so you know to go back to the auction to watch. Go through to the end (or snipe if so inclined) BUT â he says â take note of the actual price the item sold for, and either âmake offerâ to the other seller for that amount, or pm the seller and ask if he will relist with a BIN for that amount.
I generally use only the highest âbona fideâ bid, not any wacky red-mist competitive bidding or kids with 5 purchases inflating the bid but never paying.
Itâs kind of like showdown if you donât bet you WONâT win. This way you get to stay in the game. The trick is not to go over list. If you just put it in the watchlist then you will not know what it sells for when auction ends. There in lies the rub. The trick is initial low-ball bid. If you win damm Skippy all the better. If not you know the sell price to âofferâ below list for the identical item he still has. Put it this way have you ever seen anyone win a poker hand after they folded. I did this today and saved 40.00.
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As I recall, every listing I participated in has a âsorry, you didnât winâ message, and my âdidnât winâ list has a clear link to âoriginal listingâ that shows the sale price (and I believe the bid history). Perhaps that has changed at some point (I remember when you could actually tell the biddersâ âhandlesâ so you could get a sense of what theyâd do⌠and I do wish they could bring that back!)
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Always tough playing against the house
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Note that you have to be very, very careful not to get the âred mistâ and overbid.
The point he was making, though, was that you would NOT bid again (except if you could lowball) and would instead take either the ending bid or the last âbona fideâ bid and use that as an âofferâ either by using the âbest offerâ negotiation tool or with e-mail contact. He was just using a token early bid to ensure youâd be looking at the end of the auction to see âby how much you didnât winâ⌠for later reference.
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As Kenny says,
You got to know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em.
Rich
This is what Iâm not getting. I often toss items, even ones Iâm only marginally interested in, to my âWatched Listâ. For instance in this example hereâs a Coach Yard baggage car I watched just for the sake of our conversation:
At the time I watched it there was 50 minutes left in the auction. I donât have to bid in order to follow its progress.
At the end of the auction my watch list showed a summary of the final price:
Five bids, I can click on that to see how the bidding progresses. Anonymity in the bidders is OK by me. The seller can see the actual ID and on some rare occasions Iâve been contacted by the seller to say 1) the winning bidder didnât pay and you can have the item for your last bid â or 2) I happen to have another similar item Iâll sell you for your last bid price.
Iâm still not clear why I would want to place any kind of bid on an item I might simply have an idle curiosity about, yet I can see all the pertinent auction information right there in my watched list.
As I mentioned sometimes Iâll get offers from sellers since THEY know youâre watching. My most recent one was for a Walthers Proto baggage car the seller had listed BIN for $65 and less than a day later I got an email notification saying the seller has offered it to me at $45. Usually the offer isnât all that great and Iâll pass.
Cheers, Ed
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When Iâm selling, I hate Watchers. They never buy.
Rich
SorryâŚ
Regards, Ed
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GASP!
Except you, Ed.
Rich