Been looking at the Buy/Sell Forum lately, and all I can say is "Yikes!' A Southern Pacific "Oil Can" set!! Canadian National TankTrain cars!!! A complete set of Conrail business train passenger cars!!!! Lionel Vision Ethanol tankers!!!!! Months go by with little or nothing attracting my interest on the Buy/Sell Forum, then we turn the calendar to the month of October and the countdown begins until the York Train Meet. Like magic, the Forum is filled with exciting, high-end, desirable offerings like those mentioned above. How can I be expected to part with hundreds of dollars when I'm only days away from setting foot in the Orange, Silver and Purple Halls (among others)??? What gives??! Where were all these postings in July???
Figuring this was more than mere coincidence, I wondered whether scientific proof existed that would explain this sudden appearance of hot train listings so close to the first day of York. I challenged some former college buddies, now teaching applied math and theoretical physics at M.I.T., to come up with an explanation.
Using complex mathematical formulas like the one pictured below, they put forth a possible explanation...one I call, for lack of a better term, Caruso's Theorem.
This radical view of the toy train market suggests the following: The odds of your finding something that you desperately want on the Buy/Sell Forum (or eBay, for that matter), increases in inverse proportion to the number of days before York.
Scientific fact? Or simply coincidence? I will leave it to the more mathematically inclined among you to debate the merits of this startling, and perhaps controversial, new theorem.
- Mike
