less for sale on Ebay.

No question Build To Order has taken its toll on excess inventory, Public Delivery Track still has a large stock of Atlas along with a few other dealers but many models are scarce.JMO

Supply and demand..............more supply than demand so cut the supply and watch the prices go up with demand.............corporate America using capitalism to sell China made products......... ;-) 

Searching has been made more difficult since they reorganized the subsections.  I know I search Ebay much less now than I did a year ago.  So Ebay is probably not as attractive to sellers as it was. 

Right now going to eBay and clicking on the Atlas brand in the left column brings up 1688 items.  There's more Atlas items in the "not specified" category, too.  There's probably more in other categories as well.

That reorganization noted above does rely on the seller to make the effort to list their items so that they can be found by buyers - not hard to do, but it has impacted the ability to find stuff easily and quickly.  Setting up a series of searches to will notify of when something is listed is useful.

I think it's a cyclic thing.  I've been buying Williams brass for the past year or 2 and it seems to have dried up recently, hopefully it'll change soon.

Here's what I don't understand, how come the prices for a 4-8-2 always seem higher than a 2-8-4?  The only thing I can think of is most 2-8-4s are of lower quality/detail/less scale-like than the 4-8-2s I've seen and not just on ebay.

Solution:  All readers of this post scurry to the boxes and shelves in their basements and attics and load all those excess trains,  taking up space,  on the net.

Bob Delbridge posted:

Here's what I don't understand, how come the prices for a 4-8-2 always seem higher than a 2-8-4?  The only thing I can think of is most 2-8-4s are of lower quality/detail/less scale-like than the 4-8-2s I've seen and not just on ebay.

No good answer, Bob.  I'm still trying to understand why folks are willing to pay over or even double retail for parts on eBay that they can order today for retail,   Then again, I have more parts to sell so I'm hoping that they just keep buying!

More sellers with auctions before? Now it seems to be mainly businesses selling items at fixed prices in all categories. and the new, revised categories are simply atrocious.

The revised categories are a total waste.  You can be looking at an item in "O" scale, then click on the "sellers other items" and half the "O" scale items won't show up in the search no matter how many categories you view. 

Any want to finance a auction site where the auction stays open if people bid within 5 minutes before the end thus allowing people to compete with those buyers using ultra high speed lines to grab items at the last second.   The sellers would actually make more money and it would be more like a live auction.  The live auctions ebay has I've never been able to access.

VGN64 posted:

The revised categories are a total waste. 

Try being into narrow gauge. There used to be different On3 and On30 headings. Now it's all jumbled into a generic narrow-gauge heading that can include anything from On3 to HOn2...

mwb posted:

That reorganization noted above does rely on the seller to make the effort to list their items so that they can be found by buyers - not hard to do, but it has impacted the ability to find stuff easily and quickly.  

I've often found that the "seller" is not the "collector" or owner and therefore lacks the level of knowledge to properly identify what they're posting. They are either helping out a friend who needs to unload for cash and lacks the online ability or sadly unloading a deceased friend/family member's collection.....

How many times do you see a Whyte mistake on the locomotive listing or the tender backwards behind the locomotive...

Or my favorite: a listing of what is on the box with a different locomotive in it!