Subject:
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Re: eBay lego sniping? Why it is a problem?
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.market.auction
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Date:
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Sun, 1 Nov 1998 15:40:58 GMT
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Viewed:
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1498 times
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Paul Foster writes:
> Larry Pieniazek wrote:
>
>
> >
> > Unrelated note: eBay has started advertising in TRAINS magazine.
> >
> > ++Lar
>
> That's an interesting place to advertise, what market are they trying
> to relate to with an ad in TRAINS?
TRAINS and Model Railroader (which I dropped my subscription to) and Classic
Trains (a tinplate and other toy train collector's mag which I never got, I
like scale stuff better) have a lot of cross traffic. You find ads for proto
videos in MR and you find ads for tinplate in TRAINS.
So I assume they're going for the collectible aspect of the RR hobby (china,
timetables, switchmans locks, hat badges, etc.) as well as the fan information
aspect (video, audio, books, timetables again, rosters, etc.) and the toy
aspect (Marx, Lionel, American Flyer and other tinplate) and the model aspect
(PFM, Shinohara, Tenshodo, and a bunch of brass manufacturers I can't recall).
Some definitions:
Tinplate: Toylike, not very scale trains in large gauges, made from about 1925
on through the early 60s. Typically run on S, O and O-27 gauge track. Called
tinplate because the car bodes are made of tinplate (soft steel sheet plated
with tin) which resisted rust and takes paint fairly well. Made in the US,
mostly. Connected by pressing tabs over behind slots. Originally fairly cheap.
Good examples, especially rare sets, are now astronomical, although some sets
had multi year runs (into the hundreds of thousands) and are still very
reasonable. People operate tinplate empires, as well as collect.Most people run
the stuff as is. As in most collectible hobbies, original is better than
restored
Brass: Expensive, fragile, very scale models usually in smaller gauges (HO, O
and recently N) made in the Far East (Japan, then Korea and Taiwan as Japanese
labor costs went up. Made of brass shape stock, stampings, and lost wax
castings, connected by solder (often using a multitude of solders that melt at
progressively lower temperatures so that previous assembly steps don't come
apart as more stuff is soldered on) Originally expensive. Now even worse,
especially popular stuff that had limited runs. Some runs are as small as 200
pieces. People operate Brass, usually after replacing or at least tuning the
(typically shoddy) mechanism. Brass is almost always painted by the owner as
shiny brass locomotives are not very realistic. Good paint can fetch more than
unpainted, by a lot. Did I say this stuff was expensive yet? At a time when a
plastic HO loco was going for 10 bucks, a brass steamer, new, would go for 150.
Now that plastic locos (with much improved mechanisms over the 10 dollar ones,
granted) are in the 50 to 100 range I have seen new brass ones for over a
grand.
++Lar
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