A Personal Observation of part of the Train Market

The secondary market is flooded with trains and collections seem to be coming on the market more frequently. The demographic of those that buy the trains is rapidly changing influenced by retirement, downsizing, relocation, financial changes, heath issues, and end of life. There are not enough new hobbyists coming in making the supply far greater than the demand.  Since my purchases are only on the secondary market and the layout is 100% conventional it is easy to locate fantastic buys on overstock, new old stock, and excellent used stuff. If you search it is all around. In many cases you can name your own price. The buying surge peak has passed. Its not the 80's or 90's anymore, its more affordable ( except new 2018 items)  and the hobby is still more fun than ever.

Someone much wiser than me (that wouldn't take much!) once said that everything is worth what someone is willing to pay for it.  Truth. So the game actually comes down to how do we find what we want in a marketplace that favors whichever side of the deal weare on. I think auctions are natural sellers markets. You get the buyers excited and let them duke it out with their wallets. That being said, auctions are limited by who happens to show up. I have been on eBay since 1999  (unrelated to trains) and I have seen some awfully weird stuff. I have posted stuff for sale that would not sell with a buy-it-now on it. Then I said the heck with it--I just want rid of this thing. So I lowered the price by half and left off the BIN. The thing sold for 3 times my original BIN!! How does that happen ?  If I knew, I'd be rich. 

The other important lesson I've learned after the obvious "be patient--sales are a dime a dozen" is to notice what DOES NOT show up on eBay. Oftentimes THAT is the one you want--people that have one are keeping it because it's good. Then you see a dozen of its competitors and you know THAT is the one to avoid. Everyone is getting rid of theirs because it's a dog. 

Anyway FWIW....

don

I probably should not give out my secrets, but I bid on items such as you describe all the time.  If you even suspect the item may not sell, find any excuse to message the seller with a question, even if it's "open to offers". If you do this before the bid ends, the seller will have your contact info and can arrange a sale (through the auction site) directly to you at an agreed upon price.  Entirely legal as auction site still gets their money.

To address your question of value, I see many people price things either with a high starting bid or a high reserve.  If I feel the starting bid or reserve is too high then it must be worth more to the seller than to me, I can either pass or use the trick above to try to get a more reasonable price.  I always bid the maximum I feel something is worth to ME, I do however hold my bid until the last 12 seconds of every bid.  This avoids the stupid price escalation back and forth.

You can also click on closed bids to find out what things sold for and how often they come up to bid.  The less often they come up the more you should go after them aggressively.

Please don't tell anyone.

Chris Sheldon

I agree with Dennis.  I'm finding it harder and harder to sell trains.   I'm now doing as much or more $ per show selling used brio, thomas, push toys as lionel/flyer/marx.  And the profit margin is much higher.

Seems to me that the seller recouped about 50% of the original cost of the AA set.  I think that being able to sell your item for 50 percent of what you paid 13 years ago is pretty good.  Trying doing that with other 13 year old items.

Yes, certain things are more difficult to sell at a decent price but the do sell.

It is also my theory that when prices come down in the used market, more potential hobbiest are able to participate.

Don

To me I try to understand these guys that have it listed at a fair to a little high price but then it doesn't sell, so then they raise the price about 20%. Hmmm it didn't sell for $100 so lets relist it for $120. 

I see a lot of items way over what I think they should be. There's a seller on ebay from AZ. I think he thinks his stuff is worth it's weight in gold, and I see because of that others have high price, but guess what there not selling either. 

To me I try to understand these guys that have it listed at a fair to a little high price but then it doesn't sell, so then they raise the price about 20%. Hmmm it didn't sell for $100 so lets relist it for $120. 

And then the items sells.
I think there are a good number of people who will pass by something priced too low because they think there must be something wrong with the item that is not apparent to them.

Other interesting occurrences on EBay:

The price any given item will yield will vary with the seller. Certain sellers have reputations that drive the prices on their goods higher.

Often an item that is listed as a auction with buy-it-now will sell for more than the buy-it-now price.

What is Sam's train worth?.... on that day it was worth the $330 he paid. But, as Hertz said, there may not be anybody else willing to pay $330, so today, the next identical item may be worth less. Or perhaps someone will show up and bid the next one higher. That happens too.

You also have to consider that the electronics, while probably a better grade, command control, may lack all the bells and whistle of new.  Electronic repair, can be an issue, parts no longer available.  New in box does not mean that it will operate properly.  Also basic TMCC control from close to 20 years ago, is difficult to repair, or find replacement parts.  IMO, Mike CT.

After I got up to 70 command engines, I had to tear down my layout for ceiling work - replace water pipes and electrical upgrades for solar panels.  I have sold around 20 engines for 50% of what I paid for them.  (95% were premier engines - Legacy or DCS).  In my case, if I sell my SMR engines (1 with DCS and the other TMCC -ERR) I doubt I would be able to get that much.  My vision line BB sold near List; however, I doubt that the vision line NS Genset would go for anything more than half of list.  If I sold my 3rd Rail Class 2900 steamer with Proto3, I think it would go for more than 50% because of its command conversion of a highly detailed model.  Regarding persons staying away from command control because of electronic parts, I do not think it is an issue.  Kline went out of business before its cruise control upgrades got very far into the supply chain; however, ERR or Proto 3 are viable upgrade paths and I think there will be paths for repair for years to come.  All my Kline engines (Rdg Tank, F3s, NYC Hudson, and my B&O Lt. Pacific) have all been upgraded to proto2.

Ebay is a strange bird when it comes to prices.  I while back someone listed a PW lionel boxcab repaited as CNJ 1000.  The buy it now was $650 dollars.  This listing renewed for 6 months, each time with the price lower and lower and lower.  I think I finally bought it for $50.  It seems many sellers that are not involved in the hobby hope they will find an unsuspecting buyer who will pay that price.  Some win, others do not.  Since I am not in the buying mood these days watching what thing sell for has become a source of entertainment, nothing more.

@c.sam - I'm curious, do you mind sharing the item part number(s) with us?  I'm doing a personal "experiment" where I'm trying to capture prices off the bay for closed O Gauge engines, I'm a bit of a computer geek as well as a train geek, so it'd be nice to have a real scenario to look at.   Thanks...Rich Murnane

You can easily search 'Closed Listings' for items that have sold or didn't sell. Try it for whatever product you wish to see.

Sam, as you know the "value" is subjective.  When it comes to Lionel pricing we can refer the Greensberg's price guide books published annually, at least for Lionel stuff for some-kind of baseline.

But as already stated the price of anything is just dependent on what someone is welling to pay.  But this amount is totally dependent on the reason for buying.  Is it something a person really personally wants or is it someone just trying to flip it (buy low and sell high).

Now as I recall the Lionel B&O F-Units  up until the one's I have were totally WRONG color!  I grew up around the B&O and remember it well.  The units I have (and one's had up for sale) A-A Set 6-14565 and Pwrd B-Unit 6-24519.  Now the last time I checked Greenberg, they valued as $650.00 and #270.00 respectively.  New they were $700.00 and $300.00.  If I remember correctly I had posted them at around $450.00/480.00 for the ABA set never run.

Right, I'm actually doing that with a computer program I wrote and capturing the results.  I was hoping to keep track of specific examples of "weird" prices on the bay for real sku #s.  No big deal if you don't know the part number, thanks...Rich

The answer is that the price something sells at is not always logical, nor are the prices people ask for it.  If you look at car auctions, the results can make you scratch your head, at a particular auction a car you might expect to go for millions never meets its reserve, while a car you kind of look at and say "what is so special about that?" sells for 2 or 3 times what it generally does..all depends on who sees it and is looking to buy. I have seen listings on e-bay for gargraves flex track that I could get from Charles Ro brand new for cheaper, yet someone bought the lot in question. Years ago I bought the Lackawanna MU units, probably overpaid a bit, but I didn't see them coming up much for sale and they held special meaning (rode the ##**$! real thing for a number of years). In a perfect world, if demand is down prices should drop, but that is where irrationality comes in, people who own the items in question, many of whom may have bought the items thinking they were 'collectors items', paid good money for them, aren't gonna let them go at what they consider 'fire sale prices', hoping someday to 'get their price'. I saw some lionel items for sale locally, PW, the stuff was in nice shape, had things like a 681, F3 AA unit, etc, and when I asked him his price I nearly swallowed my tonsils, it was that high, and he told me he had bought these a number of years ago, paid like 500 for one item, 400 for another, and thought that by now they should be worth at least twice that...I wasn't gonna argue with him, but I did tell him he should invest in the greenburg guide so he could know what the value was. 

Time to buy was during the Obama years, not that he had much to do with it but the post great recession period brought prices down.

The past couple, three years the prices have reflected the recovery period, let the good times roll.

Bogie

I do most of my buying on the secondary market from a couple online train-specific auction sites. Ebay...not so much because the prices generally are foolish. Once in a while something random pops up...and until recently a particular road name I favor has been fairly inexpensive compared to other more popular ones...which works for me.

Until recently. 

I purchased most of my train collection over the last three years, and prices now seem to have bottomed out and going back up. Because of this and the fact I've been able to satisfy my wants fairly easily until now has allowed me to collect up a bunch of fun stuff, but has also made me more than willing to wait for what I consider a bargain rather than buy because I just have to have it.

Always,always remember this stuff has no intrinsic value, is only worth what you are willing to pay, which is variable across different folks.

A 'good deal' is relative terminology. 

Example...I bought a lion master big boy new in the box when they were hard to find but way less than retail two years ago...that same engine can be found with just a little mileage  for two-thirds of what I paid now.

Did I get a good deal? Who knows...but I got one...new...for considerably less than what they sold for when they were released.

Shop around...get what you like and can afford...enjoy it...if you don't destroy it...it will be in your estate sale.

That's the reality of it.

C W Burfle posted:

To me I try to understand these guys that have it listed at a fair to a little high price but then it doesn't sell, so then they raise the price about 20%. Hmmm it didn't sell for $100 so lets relist it for $120. 

And then the items sells.
I think there are a good number of people who will pass by something priced too low because they think there must be something wrong with the item that is not apparent to them.

Other interesting occurrences on EBay:

The price any given item will yield will vary with the seller. Certain sellers have reputations that drive the prices on their goods higher.

Often an item that is listed as a auction with buy-it-now will sell for more than the buy-it-now price.

What is Sam's train worth?.... on that day it was worth the $330 he paid. But, as Hertz said, there may not be anybody else willing to pay $330, so today, the next identical item may be worth less. Or perhaps someone will show up and bid the next one higher. That happens too.

Be a cold in you know where before I would pay more for an item than the guy had on it before. 

@OldBogie - right on. Markets are funny things, and right now the overall sentiment seems to be "good times are a comin." 

It won't last. Just like California home prices, corrections in pricing of virtually anything do happen. 

Be a cold in you know where before I would pay more for an item than the guy had on it before. 

You'd have to notice first.

Murnane posted:

Right, I'm actually doing that with a computer program I wrote and capturing the results.  I was hoping to keep track of specific examples of "weird" prices on the bay for real sku #s.  No big deal if you don't know the part number, thanks...Rich

Lionel 6-14565 F3 AA set Baltimore & Ohio - O gauge - NEW

This is for Laramie Joe,there is a housing shortage in Ca so prices will continue to rise as Ca has a very diversified economy and the sixth greatest economy in the world.

Mikey

On the day you won the bid the trains were worth $305 including Free Shipping, your winning bid with 9 bids.

Probably the best estimate of the price of the trains can be found on the Completed Listings on eBay.  Most of these listing are of a completed auction of numerous bidders.  You should take an average of the last several recent auctions and compensate for free shipping or not and sales tax or not if applicable.  

I believe this is best estimate of a competitive sale and much better than any of those buyers guides that are real guesses and mostly out of date.

The Buy Now and Incomplete Auctions (your $660 no sale is a useless wish by one seller) are useless for valuations and do not represent free market selling and buying.

I do not know of a better free market valuation than eBay Completed Listings.

This is why I do not like to buy on eBay.  Too many buyers bidding on ONE item.  I find better deals at local train meets, garage sales (but trains around here are rare) and other situations of one seller and one buyer negotiating.

But if I sell and can stand to put up with listing, non payers, and shipping, I like eBay for a better price.

Charlie

It's kinda morphed into an eBay discussion but that's okay. The bottom line is that price guides will probably start show a decline in prices. If they don't then they are ignoring the drop in interest in collecting and trying to prop up a sagging market. At that point the guides become worthless.

I have been on eBay since 1999 and have seen and bought some great locomotives and have seen auctions that are just not of this world. Just today I saw 4 auctions today for large steam engines with a price of over $1,000. Now that might not be a bad price for today's legacy and proto 3 engines but each one was a proto ( 1 ) engine worth about $300-$350. 

Anybody can ask what they want but not knowing market just means your waiting for a sucker or your totally ignorant of the item you are selling.

Dave

"And then the items sells.
I think there are a good number of people who will pass by something priced too low because they think there must be something wrong with the item that is not apparent to them."

And, sometimes it's just because the right guy is in the room. Who knows - maybe I've been that guy unknowingly because I didn't happen to see the item the day before at the lower price, and the new price still fit my parameters. I too find that ploy amusing when I see it, however. I wonder how often it actually works in the way intended? I certainly have never gone for it.