Train Buying Stories and Rants.

[Terry]

Now that the sniffles pandemic is over, I'm back to buying trains from the public. 

I got 6 boxes of standard gauge on Wednesday morning including a olive green 38. I have a nice one, but put it aside for trades or whatever.  I took 3 500 series freight cars downstairs for the layout along with two 205 LCL containers.  Otherwise mostly junk, but fun to dig through.

This morning I had a call from a man with a late 1950s train set. He told me he'd researched it online and he had a Lionel 58600 loco and some cars. I recognized the cars as postwar cars, but not the 58600. A google search shows 58600 is a LCCA reissue of the 208 blue Santa Fe AA. When I asked if the skirts were broken, he asked what the skirts were. When I asked him what he wanted for the train he refused to say. I told him to do more research and then hung up on him.

It's very difficult to buy trains from people who research them online.

An interesting note is that 3 of the deals I did Wednesday were older people who had layouts and then downsized. They kept the trains after moving,  but, now that they are in their 80s, they are getting rid of them. All three took my initial offer with no discussion, and two of them threw in additional trains after the deal was made.

Note those three men had layouts. I still have a hard time buying trains from men who just bought trains and put them in closets. I'll have to pay more attention to this in the future.

I had a local train guy over today with his dog. His dog comes right in the house and goes and sits by the pantry door.  That's where the treats are! The dog gets a nice waffle biscuit and then we dig through the trains for a while.

[starfire700]

It is difficult buying from someone who has done no research, or too much research.
When I open ebay, a featured item continues to show-up on the left side of the page.
It is a 262 loco that looks like it was dragged behind a car, but he calls it heavy duty metal and wants $759. for it.
My guess is that he has done no research.
He has the loco posed on his bathroom sink for his pictures, to further add to his credibility.
Long ago I bought a 226E freight set from a guy who posed the train on his kitchen stove.
When it came, all the drive wheels had broken flanges. He had placed the loco in the bottom of the box with no cushion or reinforcement under it, the rest of the set on top, then loads of packing material on top of everything. I guess that I am overly critical because of the thousands of orders I have packed since the mid 1970's, with a negligible amount of shipping damage. 

[early0electric]

I really don't think the "sniffles" pandemic is over. It is easing but there are those that don't treat it as lightly as you appear to.

[pjdog350]

CV-19 is real. Those that don’t take it seriously are in for trouble. I have neighbors that damn near died cause they said it was folks trying to get Trump. My son is one of those folks. He will not get the vaccine?  I can’t do a thing with him? Never could?

[Terry]

I also see the same things on ebay over and over and over.

Train shows are the same thing. There is a guy here that brings the same exact items to every meet with free tables since at least 1994. About 15 years ago, I asked him about it, and he said he was coming to the meet so he might as well bring something to put out.

Speaking of ebay and sales. . .

ebay has a new report that compares the  seller (Me) with all sellers in each category. This is called the Listing Quality Report on the performance tab of the hub.

I sell HO scale diecast toy cars. In that category I am 221 ranked by sales volume out of 61,500 sellers. I sold about $800 worth of cars in the past month.

In the Automotive Service Manuals  category, I see "Your rank by sales (GMV) value: 108 out of 8,310 sellers in this category and condition."  I've never sold anything in that category and only have the one book listed at $12.  I think this means 8202 sellers have books listed for under $12 that didn't sell.

. . .