This is about the lowest price I’ve seen on one of PSC’s “Mollies” ($475 at time of posting, with two days to go).
When they first arrived, I looked into getting one, but the price was close to $1200 - much, much too expensive for me. About a year ago the retailers started gradually dropping the price and putting them up for auction on Ebay. They’re nice enough models, of course, and unless you’re a master scratchbuilder they exist only in brass, but I wonder how well the retailers actually did with them. The Challenger C&S 2-10-2s seemed like they were following the same trajectory, albeit at a slightly higher price - which may go a long way toward explaining why Challenger got out of the brass business.
rripp: It’s up to $495.00 now, you say they were $1200.00 a while back? now that’s quite a difference, so just what do you think the original purchaser paid for this? $200? $400? $600.00? if it’s worth $1200.00 then sell it for $1200.00, everyone says it will sell for what it’s worth, or what ever people will pay for it. $500.00 for a $1200.00 engine is a good deal, I think, especially if there is no other alternative. are you bidding???
Nope, I’m not: if I were going to bid, the LAST thing I would do is put it on a public forum!
I put this up as a data point - a lot of people will tell you the brass market is moribund right now. I don’t know whether that’s the case, but I do know that it’s interesting to see a limited-run brass model with an MSRP of $1195 going for less than half that price.
Hard to tell what’s moving these days. Dan’s Train Depot seems to be turning stuff over pretty quickly, but I notice stuff at Caboose Hobbies’ online sites sometimes stays around a lot longer than it used to.