Visionline GG1___ Street Price

According to one of the forum sponsors here, Lionel reportedly has this under MAP guidelines.  So all dealers seem to be ADVERTISING at $1190 give or take a few pennies.  Now that's not to say all the dealers are SELLING at that price , but on the surface they're advertising at that price-point. 

MAP is commonly used throughout other industries too, in an effort to keep blatant/overt price wars to a minimum in various media.  But in reality, it just puts the onus on the consumer to wheel-and-deal for the best possible price... rather than blindly buy at the minimum advertised price that all sellers have published.  For online websites, it's a bit more transparent in that the easiest way around MAP is to list the price-point that the manufacturer/importer "insists upon", but then suggest the shopper simply "add the item to the cart" to see the actual selling price.  We see that quite frequently in the consumer electronics and audio/video equipment world... among others.  The auto industry is a huge user of MAP too, but that just comes with the territory where folks are accustomed to negotiating their own deal anyway.

There's plenty of room for dealers to move off Lionel's Vision Line GG-1 MAP and still make a nice profit, so don't let 'em tell you that they NEED to sell at that price because Lionel tells them so.  That's gibberish -- not to mention illegal too. 

So negotiate your best deal if you really want one of these units.  But on the surface, you'll find everyone pretty much advertising them for $1190.  And any sellers advertising and/or trying to sell trains at MSRP... well they're on borrowed time anyway. 

David

That David is one sharp cookie. This is one of the reasons I installed software on my website that invites you to make an offer. Pull up your favorite GG1 on my site, then move your mouse to the address bar and a box pops up inviting you to make an offer on that item. When you do, I get notified and we can make a deal for the item. This doesn't work on mobile devices, sorry. We're working on it.

I've had this on my site since late October and we've been able to help the customer with a better price about sixty percent of the time. Some offers are below dealer cost. That happens. There's not the margin, nor the volume, in these products there once was. 

We don't charge a deposit and so there's some risk in this. I'm sitting on two extra Lionel Hudson Empire State Sets right now that were canceled preorders. The good news is, eventually everything sells. 

You might find it interesting that I get hate mail from invalid email addresses because of this feature. The main theme is that everyone should get the same price. Yeah, I know. I expect some of it is from other dealers. I am aware of shops reporting this to a manufacturer as a violation of MAP, and it's not. 

Marty, he's over on the Menards rebate thread too.  

David

Years ago I bought a fair amount of trains from one of the big NYC train stores. Their prices were the same as other large dealers at the time.

Prior to making a purchase, I would send an email to the owner and ask if he would take 10%  less than his asking price. He would always reply no, but, he would meet me in the middle and knock 5% off.

I bought a lot of stuff from him and it was like having an automatic 5% discount. I guess it doesn't hurt to ask.