Just an Observation

Prices go up.  So do salaries, etc.  Inflation.  My first new car was a '68 Camaro SS V8 that cost right at $3,000 plus tax - and I was a newly minted graduate-degree engineer just out of school making not quite $9,000 a year.  Several months ago, one of the young new hired engineers in my company bought a '12 Camaro SS V8 which looks to sit in the identical niche in Chevy's product line and it cost right at $30,000 plus tax.   Ten to one ratio of prices, '68 to '12, or an average 5.4% escalation per year, which seems extreme until you remember it includes those years with really high inflaction like 1980, where it was over 13%.  Anyway, he is earning right around $80-$90K or about ten times what I did with the same degree, etc.  A lot of the stuff works out the same.   In the going-on eight years I have been in O gauge I've noticed prices go up but not tremendously, at least if I consider what i can actually buy the stuff for, including the discounts I can get on-line.

so long as we keep demanding more detail and finer models the R&D work will continue to drive up prices as well as the cost of labor at Lionel, Mikes etc. We have several members of our club that buy strictly MTH Railking and Atlas Trainman that run really nice trains and can satisfy most "operators" needs.  We also need to be more cautious shoppers. Last buy in the secondary market, there are always those the overbuy or just leave the hobby

Good Thread

Common but not always the case, many of Lionels locomotive prices have been fairly steady, some have even dropped.

Lionels TMCC B&O EM1 $1499 back in 2000

http://www.lionel.com/Products...neID=&CatalogId=

The legacy EM1 with whistle steam  $1299 in 2012

http://www.lionel.com/Products...neID=&CatalogId=

 "Incorrect firebox" TMCC k4 $1049 back in 2002

http://www.lionel.com/Products...neID=&CatalogId=

Legacy k4  with whistle steam from the "correct" k4 tooling, $899 in 2011

http://www.lionel.com/Products...neID=&CatalogId=

I don't know why this would come as any surprise!?

WE chose to move Atlas-type manufacturing offshore...to never be able to get it back unless WE completely re-tooled. 

THEY tasted the forbidden fruits of 'capitalism'...and found it extremely delicious...enticingly delicious...addictively delicious.  'MORE, MORE, MORE!!', they cried to the world, and their government, gradually...no, happily...obliged and allowed the planting of more delicious 'capitalism' throughout the land.

Meanwhile, the happy people spent their money on bling things...like computers with internet capability.   And they tasted a new 'fruit'...what 'America' looked like compared to how they were living.   And they said 'Wow!  We could be like that...if we earned the kind of money those people received when they once built Atlas-type things!  Let's raise our expectations...rattle the bars...organize...create chaos until our demands are met!  It worked for them in their history...why not US!?!?'

And, so they did.  And, so they got.  And, so we pay. 

Meanwhile, their government amassed this mountain of money ('And you silly Tibetans and Nepalese thought your Himalayas were huge! Lookee what we got!!!) and looked around for ways to spend it....like world-class high speed railroad systems, replacing old cities with new ones, growing their military capability to reach farther into the world.  

Then they saw another interesting opportunity...  'Those Americans...what's up with them?  They want us to BUY THEM??  Hey,...why not?  They apparently have lost their ability to be America: The Land of Opportunity!'    

So, why are the new monthly prices for Atlas-type things and 3-packs of gooseneck lights,...or a gallon of gasoline...so surprising.  It's what WE wanted.  It's what WE created.  

And, it must be good...I read it in the newspaper this morning and heard it on TV just last night...again...'We're on the right track.  Our economy is improving.  Business is booming.  There is no debt.  There is no spending problem.  The Bureau of Engraving is printing around the clock.  All is well, all is well."

Sleep tight.

Same old stuff; different day.  

Yep, that's the nature of new toy train stuff. Everything goes up every year including our age.

When I was in college a VW Bug was priced at $1,800. I started working @ $9K a year. Then it was BIG money.

Back in 1969 I was making a whopping $1.73/hr...went out and bought a 1970 Opel GT for $3600 (my dad said I could buy 2 Ford trucks for that kinda money).

You can buy 20 low-quality pieces at $30 each during the year or 1 high-quality piece at $600 once/year.  I'd rather have the 1 high-quality piece running on the railroad instead of 20 pieces still in boxes hidden underneath the layout.

Bought groceries lately? Everything has gone up and with less product in the package. I guess we are lucky they can't shrink our trains..

Gentlemen...like the title says...this was just an observation I felt compelled to post about.

I know there is no "news" here.  I understand some of the ramifications of the situation we (the US) has set up with the overseas markets.

For some reason...it just struck me...in this one instance...how much these Atlas O switches (whether you like them or not...whether you think they are overpriced or not) had gone up in price.

Had it been this way when I even conceived putting together my present operation...it would have been one tenth the size and/or may never have existed.

I continue to say...some of these guys are about to price themselves (or is it the Chinese forcing them) right out of business.

Average people (is that the so-often mentioned...middle class...not the deep pockets people on this forum) can't and won't pay such prices for toy trains...it doesn't meet the common sense test.

While a number of high volume posters who regularly post their bought items or FS items on this forum might not consider themselves having deep pockets, from all the items they post about their pockets are deeper than the average Joe who doesn't post here on a regular ongoing basis since they don't buy on an ongoing basis like others seem to. But remember as even Allan Miller sees it (and he knows more about this forum's membership composition than the rest of us), regular poster's on this forum are definitely atypical toy train hobbyists. I sasy this considering the apparent comparative sizes of their collections, the amount of dispposable income they have available to spend on their train habit, and the amount of expendable "free" time they can devote to being an ongoing regular posters on this OGR forum.