Has Ebay had it's day?

[AndyMac1707817969]

I don't understand why anyone would lug a load of stuff to a train fair to sell it for less that they could get for it elsewhere and then to have to lug it home again. Might suit the buyer to think this but a doubt few sellers do, you could end up costing you more than you make. If buyers are not prepared to pay the asking price at fairs then I guess sellers will simply stop going. The idea they will suddenly start flogging it off cheap to them is wishful thinking.

Best to just stick it all on eBay as a buy it now, it can sit there it costs you nothing and takes zero effort with an audience a thousand times larger than any train fair could ever hope to have. It’s really a no brainer, though I don’t have much experience in the market of selling old bits for locos made 50 or 60 years ago, I would not even consider it worth the effort photographing and listing them.

Prices can temporarily fall, just leave it listed until they rise again or put it back in the cupboard for 6 months or a year. It’s a pretty safe bet that most things will be worth more in a years time than now.

The mean old man customer for me is best avoided, might be more than their fair share of them on this forum. I mean just look at the thread on the Queens Platinum Jubilee Loco. Mostly people complaining about the price and how they don’t like the colour while at the same time the initial 1,500 sell out in days and Hornby increase the production run by 1,000. Good job Hornby marketing ignore this forum else all they would make would be traction tyres for old Tri-ang locos.

I think the previous posts make ait a lot more likely the train fair has had its day rather than eBay and the internet is here to stay, things are not going back to the 1960s.

 

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@AndyMac

You make some valid points but sellers do indeed end up taking stock home because no-one is prepared to pay the inflated prices sought. I have seen this phenomenon with my own eyes. If buyers will not pay the price at a train fair they will not pay it on ebay. Everyone will have their own business model but personally I would not wish to sit on a cupboard full of stock for months or years on end in the hope that prices might rise - I would rather have the space. The advantage to me of selling off surplus items at a train fair is that I don't have to bother photographing them, putting them on a website, packing them for dispatch, waiting for payment and paying a commission on sales. I just pay for a table, spread everything out and wait for buyers. From a buyer's point of view they can see exactly what they are getting, have a good haggle over price and don't have to pay postage. In addition, a train fair can be quite a sociable occasion.

There are pros and cons to each method of selling for both buyers and sellers and you are quite right that the internet is here to stay but I would respectfully suggest that the whole point of this forum is that everyone can have their say without being lumped in a category with me, a self confessed mean old man, nor classified as interested only in old Triang items. Mean I may be but I still buy from both ebay and train fairs and am always happy to pay a fair price. My concern is that the spiralling cost of this hobby cannot be healthy for its long term survival and I suspect that the sales figures for the Jubilee loco have more to do with astute marketing than interest from genuine modellers - I wonder how many will sit in unopened boxes in the hope of an increase in value, rather than run round layouts?

[RB51]

This thread has been locked due to wandering off topic. R-