price to purchase all 2012Vol1 Items ?

Hey Ed; Are you thinking about doing it?

For that kind of outlay, I'd better get free shipping.

A friend who once had a train store told me that during the early nineties he had about ten customers who would call on the phone and have him ship everything in the Lionel catalog out to them.

Of course the catalogs back then where much smaller then they are today and I don't remember very many 1K plus items in them. I would have to check my fact but I bet we could of had the whole 1992 Lionel catalog for about eight grand or less.

The catalogs today are not printed with the thought that all the items would be produced as they where back then. Today a catalog is nothing more then a gee-wizz, kind of sort of type of thing. It is more like lets run it up the flagpole and see who salutes it, or pre-orders it. 

When we read a catalog today we have to remember that if there are no orders there will be no product. But, even if half of the offerings are dropped it's still a big chunk of money. Even our friend with 10K to spend could not put a dent in it.

Boy I could see the return authorization for all the stuff that went belly up.
No Thanks I'll just buy my stuff that doesn't work one at a time.

David

Nope, not a chance.  Just the EMD SD70ACe demo unit and a few pieces of the traditional

O gauge rolling stock and I'll be happy.

Geesh! The Feds could use an analyst like you in Washington!    I don't have $10K to spend, but I did order a Pennsy NW-2 Switcher, so that's my small contribution to  Lionel's profit line.

Bill

>>When we read a catalog today we have to remember that if there are no orders there will be no product. But, even if half of the offerings are dropped it's still a big chunk of money. Even our friend with 10K to spend could not put a dent in it.<<

My guess is, with Lionel, most of the expensive stuff, especially steam is well along in the production process before the catalog is released.

My order is already in. With prices that for me has finally reached the point of dissolving all appreaciation value, I won't be spending much.  A CN speeder on pg19 and a well hidden archive 6464 boxcar on pg.96.  

Joe

There were cancellations done in the 80s and 90s, too. I couldn't say, however, that as a percentage of products offered, there are more cancellations today than there were in the 90s or early 2000s.

Along those lines, from time to time I hear people on the Forum mention about all the items that won't be produced. Lionel from time to time announces some, but compared to all that ends up being produced, it seems it's a relative drop in the bucket.

So I occasionally wonder why comments are made that catalogs are just speculation, as if half of the items will never get produced.

I'm curious if anyone can list the items that were cancelled from Catalog 1 of 2011, for example, and how that compares to the number of items that were shown in the catalog. Maybe there were more cancellations than I think, but I certainly don't remember tales (and wails) about tremendous numbers of items not being produced.

Are you talking about buying only one of a loco? For example, the Mikado is offered in eight roadnames) were you buying one, or all eight?.

Regardless, remember to save some money for Volume II!!!!!

Lee - the numbers I came up with are based are one of every item listed as new.

In the case of the Mikados, it would mean 8 items since all are listed as new.

In the past 20 years its amazing how much selection there is now, I remember the Lionel catalogs from the early 1990s, they had maybe two or three high end locos and a few sets and that was pretty much it.

The guy I'm building a layout for, has bought in the last 2 days, all off the shelf at retail,  Vision Hudson, Legacy Mikado, Legacy C&NW SD 70ACE, Legacy Wabash FM, Set of Legacy IC F units.  I don't know what that adds up to, because my calculator never goes that high.  And he hasn't even seen his layout yet! 

Mario, you probably wouldn't be too far off.  I alluded to this the other day in a different thread, when I mentioned Charles Ro had offered a volume discount back in those years too.  As I recall, throughout some of the 1980's and 1990's, if you spent between $5k and $10k (the exact number depended on which year the program was running), you received a 10% credit on your account.  Haven't seen that program offered for quite some time now.  But if they did offer it again, I'd have no trouble believing that the $$$ spend would need to be quite substantial compared to the $5k-$10K outlay of 20+ years ago.

David

Quite honestly, if you knew the "hard cost" of building some of these items, you might never even want to spend your hard-earned dollars on this stuff again! 

David

I'll be bringing my winnings to Nassau Hobby!!!

Why think so small, I am buying both stores!

Forget the items in the catalog...with $640 million, maybe I'll buy MTH!

Buying MTH is a great idea! That way you can work and Mike can retire!  

Bill

When I first got back into trains about 1997, There was a set of Alaska passenger cars that I had to pre-order.  I had money on deposit for over a year before they were cancelled.  I understand that things are different now, but that jaded me for pre-ordering and I think I have only done it a couple of times since.

Yes, things are different now. These days, with respect to the vast majority of cataloged items, most smaller dealers in the country (the ones that are left, that is) will only get items they have a pre-order for. Even larger dealers, including many mail-order outfits, only order a limited number of each item. Point is, if you don't pre-order an item these days, it's often much more difficult to find than it used to be.

Everyone likes all the variety of different items shown in today's catalogs. However, combine this large number of product with expensive inventory costs, and the flip side of having all this variety is that dealers can't afford to carry everything (and in many cases, hardly anything). Even the largest dealers may only have a relative handful of a given item in stock. Another major factor is that manufacturers - at least Lionel - are producing far lower numbers of each particular item than in years past.

You mentioned having an item cancelled was a reason you stopped pre-ordering. I don't know that an item not being produced would ever have been a reason to dissuade me from pre-ordering. For me, that wasn't much of a factor; my reasons were more like the worry that the pre-ordered items as actually produced might be significantly different from the cataloged version, or the worry about having to wait an excessive amount of time and in the meantime having other, more attractive items come along. Plus, I'm just not real comfortable committing to something in the future when I don't know what can happen between now and then.

However, for a lot of folks these days, there seem to be more reasons than ever to say, "Boy, I'm glad I decided to pre-order that."