Every now and then I go to EBay just to see what’s being offered and occasionally am baffled why someone would do something that appears to me to be several standard deviations away from common sense.
Someone has separated what appears to me to be a perfectly seriviceable PFM D&RGW P-44 4-6-2 into its major sub-assemblies (boiler, mechanism, pilot and trailing trucks, tender and pilot deck). I suppose a single person could put the minimum bid on all the components (it would come to just under $240) and stand a reasonable chance of picking up the entire model for that price. But why would the seller part it out in the first place? In all likelihood, he could get $250-300 for the intact model from a D&RGW modeler. I’ll be absolutely floored if there is a bid on one component without a bit on them all.
EDIT: On the next page, there’s an intact and painted P-44 with 9 bids (currently at $131.48) on it on and about 3 days to go. It’ll be interesting to see what it ultimately sells for.
Maybe they got it in disassembled form, so decided to auction it that way?
Doesn’t make much sense to me either, other than someone thinks brass is like used cars, more valuable broken up into part than as a whole? I kinda doubt it. After someone buys one part of it and nobody bites on the rest, then you stuck with less than a whole loco, even in pieces – and who is going to buy that if no one on ebay wants it?
Right after I made my original post, I found another (intact) P-44 for sale with 9 bids on it, which makes the whole thing even stranger. I can understand selling parts for Mantua, Bowser and even Varney engines that were manufactured in great quantities. Yardbird Classic Trains makes a business out of it. But low production quantity brass engines (IIRC, there was only a single run of the P-44)? Doesn’t make sense.
Several years ago, someone tried to flog off a 40+ year old Athearn SD45 for $5000. Got quite upset when people pointed out the things are common as dirt. Come to think of it, I think Athearn was still offering the BB SD45 at the time. There’s a Ron White comedy routine in there.
Maybe the loco did not run well, and rather than fix it, or be honest about its running qualities, the seller thinks he can get more out of this way without liability for its defects.
In one of my other hobbies, GRAVELY garden tractors, perfectly good complete tractors are parted out all the time for profit.
In only avarage cosmetic condition, but with few or minor mechanical problems, GRAVELY tractors from the 60’s thru the 80’s often sell for just a few hundred dollars. These were very expensive commercial grade machines when new.
But there is hardly a part or sub assembly that will not bring at least $50 -$100 on Ebay - so there is actually money in buying the right $250 tractor and taking it apart.
I can’t imagane why anyone would buy the parts to a brass loco, unless they just happpened to have the same one in need of repair - but what do I know?
It’s not just brass locomotives – sometimes a train set is broken up and sold as individual pieces, especially right after Christmas when sellers seem to think that people who purchased a train set are looking for additional rolling stock or track and are willing to pay premium prices.
To add to Sheldons post, it could be the seller used it as a parts loco for another project. Perhaps there were detail parts not readily available and it got cannibalized and parted out.
I also see people paying big $ for junk brass. I have also seen steam locos sold without tenders and even the wrong tenders. Locos that I bought within the last few years going for up to three times what I had payed. The PRR used the Centipede by Baldwin in pairs held together by a solid draw bar but I see some sellers separate them on E-bay. Is it weird that an unpainted loco go for more money than a factory painted one? I will never figure out E-bay buyers. [banghead]
The Miwaukee K-1 part out adds up to about $369, not really out of line for a complete NWSL K-1 2-6-2. Just a quick mental add up of the sale of the parted out Sunset USRA Heavy 4-8-2 comes to around $360, not really out of line with the price of the entire model. There’s an Akane USRA Heavy 4-8-2 for sale for a buy it now price of $425 and a light 4-8-2 for $345.99. Detail’s much better with Sunset, which, like Akane, did both light and heavy 4-8-2’s.
Someone’s got a complete NWSL K-1 2-6-2 up for bid starting at $175. No bidders yet, however. There’s also a Key Santa Fe 1050 class 2-6-2 for a buy it now price of $349.99, roughly in line with the total price of the parted out K-1.
What would be interesting to know is if the parted out engines actually went to multiple buyers.
Someone else has a Custom Brass ATSF 1800 class 2-6-2 up for bid at a start of $390. Looking at his other brass items up for auction, I’d say he’s at least $
Remember the news story about the Australian investors who intended to purchase a Picasso and then cut it up into pieces on the theory that they could get more money for the pieces from art collectors who could not afford an entire Picasso than they spent on the original? There was a lot of outrage about this in the art community of course and I do not know if they ever went through with it.
I suppose there is a chance this guy has had a similar brain storm about brass parts, possibly with more justification.
But there are more likely explanations. The first is that he viewed his brass engine as a source of raw materials for the sorts of highly involved conversions that the late Bill Schopp used to write up in Model Railroad Craftsman. He worked almost exclusively with brass. He’d take a cab from this engine, the tender deck from another, the running gear from this one, the cylinders from that one, and so on. It was crazy but he was a great craftsman and at the end of the day he’d have a beautiful looking brass locomotive that no importer had ever offered. He used, and in fact sold for a time, electric soldering tweezers that he used in his work. I think Schopp was also the “Layout Doctor” in RMC for many years.
This guy might have tried doing that and gave up. Or maybe these are the left overs?
Another explanation (and this unfortunately actually happens more often than you’d like to think) is that the guy was attempting to make modifications to his brass and ran into the problem that bringing a hot soldering iron in the vicinity of a brass locomotive is an invitation for the thing to reduce itself to its component parts. I nearly had that experience myself years ago when the pilot from a brass 4-4-2 came off and needed to be reattached. I nearly lost the running boards and may be much more. A friend who is a very fussy prototype modeler basically dismantled more then one Milwau
Hey, there’s always somebody out there wiling to buy these things.
As mentioned before, maybe it has a bad mechanism. I know someone who is willing to buy whole locomotives to just cannibalize them for parts if needed.
As far as parting out train sets, there is a hobby shop in Troy PA that does this. They have a slew of K-Line products and sets. They’re thinking is that if somebody buys, say, a Lionel Legacy Equipped ES44AC and wants to know how much it can haul, they will buy the cars from the sets to get an idea as to how much the locomotive can haul.
I don’t ‘do’ E-Bay, but this is not the first ‘disassembled’ brass locomotive I’ve heard about. A couple of years ago I was looking through the E-Bay “HO scale Brass Locomotive” thread, and someone had disassembled an Akane Southern Pacific AC-12 4-8-8-2 cab forward into what seemed at least 10 subsections (even offering the 4 sets of valve gear separately!). I figured that if one bid on all of the items separately, the seller would have come up with a profit at LEAST 15 times the original cost of the locomotive.
As to the PFM Rio Grande P-44 4-6-2, I can’t think of any reason someone would disassemble it–I’ve got one and it’s a very simple fool-proof drive–it takes about two ‘tweaks’ of a screwdriver to make it run like a Swiss watch if anything ever happens to it–and the locomotive can be picked up at Caboose Hobbies consignment brass for about $250-300 (I think mine cost $275 about 5 years ago). So if one were to bid on the components and spend over $275, I’d say that the bidder is being taken for a nice, long ride. I’m a Rio Grande standard-gauge steam brass ‘nut’, but even I know that the P-44 is hardly the Holy Grail of Rio Grande steam, LOL!
If a buyer wanted the complete engine, he would have to bid high to make sure he got all of the components. Otherwise, he would be stuck with a chassis, tender and no boiler, for example. The seller probably realizes this and knows he could benefit if a bidding war ensued.
This is the third time this ebayer has parted out engines. None show signs of physical damage or paint mishaps.
They could have a mechanical or electrical problem the seller is unable or unwilling to deal with. Or he may be looking for a score. You would think after three attempts he might just decide to sell them whole.