Last night I was on eBay keeping tabs on an undecorated (1st run) early 90s Walthers SW1 on my watch list. There was only about 2 hours left on the auction and I was curious to see how high the bidding would go to determine whether I would bite on it or not - since even the older Walthers SW1s can still fetch full MSRP ($80) 25+ years later. Well, lo and behold - a newly posted Buy It Now identical undecorated SW1 popped up on eBay for less than the current bid on the watched item and I pounced it on it for $30, plus S&H.
The other Walthers undecorated SW1 eventually fetched $44, which is still a very good bargain for that particular switcher because it’s heavy and a very smooth runner. (I already have one and converted it to DCC back in 2011.) It reminded me of another find back in 2010 when I snagged three (3) hard-to-find Waterlevel Models NYC 19000-series caboose kits. The seller had just posted them on eBay and I snapped them up for $25 each.
I’m NOT looking so much for stories about bargains you’ve found. What I am looking for are stories about purchases you made where an item you were looking for popped up unexpectedly and you pulled the trigger before someone else could. And you can include “lost fish” stories where you wish you had acted but didn’t.
Also just bought a box with a whole ton of stuff in it including a Bachmann 70 ton DCC onboard for less than $50 out the door, fiqued that alone was a fair price but really wanted some of the other stuff.
My story is about the 12 pack of Tortoise switch machines.
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An ebay seller listed six of them one week, all with a $10.00 opening bid. I need about 40 switch machines for my layout, I tried to get four of them in one fell swoop.
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Well, all of them got bid up to close to $200.00, and I did not win any of them.
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But… at the exact same time, the same item was on sale at ModelTrainStuff for about $160.00!
The other day I was searching for the old blue box Athearn 5 unit container cars but there weren’t any listed. They usually go for around $50-60 in NOS unassembled condition. I checked the completed items and there were a handful that had been listed as buy now with the list price being only $19.95 and $29.95 from another seller. I missed out.
On the other hand I snagged a very hard to find maintenance of way crane that was newly listed. I had been looking for it for several years.
I don’t like auctions, I like buy now but you have to check the newly listed every day or you miss out.
Same thing happened to me. I was watching an item that usually fetches $65 and up in dogfights, Buy it Now anywhere from there , up, and I mean WAY up. So I hit refresh on the search, and it was one JUST posted for less than half that, Buy it now. I didn’t expect it to be there not even wishfully. I couldn’t pound keys fast enough!!! But, I nailed it. Made my day! I still smile when I think about it. Dan
That phenomenon works out great for those of us in South Florida.
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Our Model Railroading time is the Summer when it is too hot and humid to spend any time outside. Golf, fishing, live steam, etc are all Winter time activities down here when humidity is low and temperatures are in the 70s.
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Getting to ride national economic trends in our favor is a nice benefit.
I’d been chasing the holy grail of 70’s Southern modelers - the GP30 High Hood for a long time. Lost one that I had bid way more than I wanted to spend and settled for not finding one.
One day one popped up on Ebay for 130 and I jumped while it was still the last items listed. While I was waiting for it, I bought a set of new gears - hear all about Proto’s cracking.
Got it and suprise - it’s a smooth running great looking loco. Even my wife noticed how well it ran - a first. A quick decoder addition and it’s probably my favorite loco and I have the gears, should it end up needing them.
Normally I would agree but I have always been a bottom feeder and was delighted at the last housing crash (for me) as I had lots of hobby cash at that time (wish I had housing cash too) and expected prices to go way down, never happened. Now all of a sudden there are deals and not just on brass. Just saw one of the Hawthorn sets with everthing including the case , now I know it is not what most here would want and me neither but for around $135 out the door with everthing, wow. If I had gone into On30 like I was cotimplating at one time, I would have bought it for kitbash parts and gotten them for free as reselling unwanted parts.
I can´t comment at what is going on at your end of the Big Pond, but here in my country, the number of collections hitting the market seems to have increased recently, resulting in a noticeable drop in asking prices.
I model the Reading in N scale. A few years back Atlas made a Reading MP-15 but they are decently hard to come by. A couple months ago one popped up on Ebay unfortunately I was in a bit of a cash crunch at the same time. It ended up going in the high $40s. I’ve only seen one since and the starting bid was $80 with a buy it now north of $100, kind of wish I’d just stuck the first one on the old credit card…
I don’t know about under the radar, but what works for me is a combination of patience and checking almost daily for items of interest and decent deals.
There are some OOP items like 40’ Fruehauf trailers that are typically jacked up to 2 or 3 times the original MRSP - with some patience they do come up for MSRP or much less. Same with the OOP Athearn 60’ flat cars or bulkheads with loads - again they are normally listed for 2x MSRP or more, but I do see people winning examples for “fair” prices.
I don’t really have a super duper “steals” on Ebay to crow about - mainly I look for rolling stock that is OOP that I need and try to find decent prices - if possible at or below street discount prices. I’ve managed to find quite a few freight cars in the last month to fill in some home road freight cars I was looking for, including a lot of 5 P2K 4427 hopper kits all built up nicely ($13) each, and a bunch of IMRC and Exactrail covered hoppers for below disount or sale price.
There has been a ton of 3 rail Marklin hitting the market over here in the past 12 months, and prices are dropping a lot. I don’t know anything about it, but the prices are so reasonable now that I am becoming curious…
I was looking for Type 21 tank cars. Just like that, 3 of them showed up for a total of about $40. These were assembled Proto models new in the box. They came from an estate sale. I got very lucky.
An eBay bargain had the nintended effect of making the hobby more expensive for me. I bought an undecorated Bachmann Spectrum 4-8-2 Mountain with DCC and sound for the opening bid of $79.99. The locomative had never been unpacked.
I had initially decided that I wasn’t going to have sound because of the cost. I put it on my test track and I was instantly hooked.
I don’t know how I got it so cheap. I guess no one else saw the listing.