Remember, if it ain’t broke, don’t try to fix it.
I hear much complaining about E-Bay commisions and an equal number of fraud complaints. I don’t think this is an area that will help promote our hobby, with sellers wanting the best possible price and the buyers wanting huge bargins. It is an exercise in creation of potential conflict that E-Bay is best left to address, and be well paid for.
Will
I think Unlikely.
Choochooauctions is a good site, but they are mostly collectable O and S scale stuff- some HO, some N, but not much else unless your into Lionel or Flyer. There actually have been several other model RR only auction sites, and they’ve bitten the dust- MRRauctions.com and collectorauctions.com are the latest casualties. If you want to see why they don’t make it, go to auctions.yahoo.com, then “toys”, “models”, “railroad”. They usually have anywhere from 100-300 auctions going total for train stuff. But most of what you’ll find is someone trying to get big money out of junk. There are some auctions on there that have probably been running for 16-18 MONTHS! One in particular is for an old Lionel transformer. The seller keeps relisting it for $9.99, and has been doing so for a long time. It’s not an auction, it’s a storefront that’s cheaper than Ebay to list on.
All the strictly MRR auction sites suffered the same problem. The sellers thought they had the same bunch of crazies that inhabit Ebay, and they priced accordingly. But no one bought much! There were few good deals, and no real bargains. And no sales means no profits, which leads to no auction site.
And for cheaper pricing, well I’m not so sure about that! An auction site would probably take another person or two to run, another server, more bandwith, etc…And I don’t think Trains.com is going to start shoveling money out the window. All considered, Ebay is cheap. Look at what a plain old classified ad costs in MR- $25 minimum. Not ripping on them, but that’s what it costs. An auction on Ebay costs anywhere from thirty cents to a couple bucks to list, depending on the starting cost. And the final value fee is a couple percent of the sale price, so you’re going to have to be selling in the $800-$1000 range to be hitting that $25 cost. And if it doesn’t sell, you’re not out more than the listing fee. Can’t beat it!