I normally don't yell in pain about prices and take it as a sign of the times and just something that happens. Part and parcel of enjoying my hobby.
I'm building a new layout and use N.O. pushbuttons for my engine terminal. In the disassembly & move to my new home a few of them got damaged. No big deal! Well, just went looking for them and the price at Radio Suck is $4.40 for 2 of them. Jeeze! My other model railroad mfgr has them for $2.79 each. Used to get 5 on a card at RS for 79¢! HA!
Sorry, but it just came as a big and unwelcome surprise to me. Not really complaining but just a bit caught off guard. After all, a brass steamer at $500 doesn't phase me but this one blew my thought process! LOL
oldline1
As little as 50 cents on ebay.
rrebell As little as 50 cents on ebay.
Agreed... try searching "pbs-110 10pcs" on ebay. Should be able to get 10 or 20 for around 50c apiece, like he said.
I like those buttons because they're metal and have the threaded shaft. They include nuts and washers for screwing the button onto your control panel. And they come with various fun coloured plastic caps.
I have two 500watt floodlights in the backyard that needed replacing. Home Depot wanted $98.00 for two. I thought about all the stuff I order from China for cheap for the RR and looked up the "made in China" lights that Home Depot sells and sure enough, there they were for $8.00 each, free shipping. I had them in 11 days and they were in the same box and were identical in every way to the ones in Home Depot. Ebay is a wonderful mall.
Brent
"All of the world's problems are the result of the difference between how we think and how the world works."
How disloyal LOL. I buy from China all the time, if carefull you get the same stuff a lot cheaper, sometimes as much as 90% cheaper.
rrebell How disloyal LOL. I buy from China all the time, if carefull you get the same stuff a lot cheaper, sometimes as much as 90% cheaper.
LOL, all the money I save goes to Jason Shron through Rapido trains. I would rather give it to him than Home Depot. China gets their $8.00 either way.
Radio Shack was never cheap - it was just convenient when they still had retail stores if you needed somethign and didn;t want to wait a couple of days even for Amazon. Just pop buy and pick it up.
I remember those 79 cent 5 packs of pushbuttons. I had a lot of them. They were the cheapest pushbuttons I ever saw (in terms of quality). Sometimes they worked well, some in the pack you had to really mash down to make contact. The 'cheap' potentiometers they sould were also pretty much junk for any serious use - the linear ones had a huge dead band in them. I made a jump port throttle for my Zephyr using a Radio Shack pot and it was next to useless.
When Radio Shack was selling those pushbuttons a 5 for $0.79, you could get the same quality ones from one of the online electronic suppliers at about half that price. Or significantly better ones for a little more money.
What you can't compare to are the places "specializing in model railroad electronics" - that translates into "we sell the same component for MORE". Can't tell you how many times I saw tables at train shows sselling the very same multimeter you can get ar Harbor Freight for $1, or sometimes free, for as much at $17.95!
Miniatronics is convenient, if you have a LHS that stocks their line, and with their LEDs you know exactly which shade of white you are getting, vs taking a gamble that the pack of 100 you order from China on eBay that SAYS "warm white" really are warm white. But that comes at a cost - they are way overpriced for a pack of 5 LEDs. And so are their other items, like toggle switches. You can get them much cheaper from Mouser or Digi-Key or China-based LCSC. The problem is, those palces have hundreds if not thousands of varieties of toggle switches, including ones that are the same ones Miniatronics repackages. The problem there is then finding exactly which item to order out of that huge selection in order to get the same thing. And if you only need 1 or 2, there are additional order fees with most large electronic suppliers if the order is under a certain dollar amount - these places supply manufacturers with reels of thousands of componend each for automatic assembly machinery, they aren't geared to selling a casual hobbyist just 3 of something. So while the base prioce of the toggle might be half that of the price of the Miniatronics one, once you factor in all the additional handling fees and shipping, a 5 pack from Miniatronics at the LHS may be cheaper than getting just the 3 you need from Mouser. But if you need a few dozen to fully outfit all your control panels, it's a different story.
--Randy
Modeling the Reading Railroad in the 1950's
Visit my web site at www.readingeastpenn.com for construction updates, DCC Info, and more.
Try this guy. Even though he's shutting down the business, he still has some inventory. Even with the shipping, still reasonably priced. I've bought all of my push buttons from him..
http://www.led-switch.com/Pushbuttons.htm
Neal
BATMANLOL, all the money I save goes to Jason Shron through Rapido trains. I would rather give it to him than Home Depot. China gets their $8.00 either way.
I first saw what was possible in the shipping policies of a couple of computer retailers, I think by the late '80s, where it was capped at something like $3.99 per order no matter how much you bought. Only some of that was reflected in the retail 'discount' prices -- much of it was the then-new logistics inherent in being able to load everything to be shipped into a single van or container, to be picked up at a fixed time and delivered to automatic (or at least regimented) sorting and dispatch through a company specializing in transportation and delivery, at a preferential bulk rate that 'covered costs' -- probably negotiated and periodically re-negotiated hair-raisingly in back rooms somewhere.
I used to say in the '70s 'Lord help us when the Japanese learn to build Lincolns'. Then I said in the '90s 'Lord help us when the Japanese learn to build big pickup trucks'. At least one replica locomotive project known to me appears to have been cancelled over the prospect of the Chinese contractors turning out knockoffs and derivatives 'free' after the first one ... although I have to wonder whose, if any, ox would be gored by such a thing. I have learned not to worry about the Chinese learning to build high-quality specialty HO trains to peddle here directly, although there is at least as much promise of high profitability there as elsewhere in the hobby. Perhaps I should; I wonder how much behind-the-scenes action there has to be to preclude it...
rrinker Miniatronics is convenient, if you have a LHS that stocks their line, and with their LEDs you know exactly which shade of white you are getting, vs taking a gamble that the pack of 100 you order from China on eBay that SAYS "warm white" really are warm white. But that comes at a cost - they are way overpriced for a pack of 5 LEDs. And so are their other items, like toggle switches. So while the base prioce of the toggle might be half that of the price of the Miniatronics one, once you factor in all the additional handling fees and shipping, a 5 pack from Miniatronics at the LHS may be cheaper than getting just the 3 you need from Mouser. But if you need a few dozen to fully outfit all your control panels, it's a different story.
Miniatronics is convenient, if you have a LHS that stocks their line, and with their LEDs you know exactly which shade of white you are getting, vs taking a gamble that the pack of 100 you order from China on eBay that SAYS "warm white" really are warm white. But that comes at a cost - they are way overpriced for a pack of 5 LEDs. And so are their other items, like toggle switches.
So while the base prioce of the toggle might be half that of the price of the Miniatronics one, once you factor in all the additional handling fees and shipping, a 5 pack from Miniatronics at the LHS may be cheaper than getting just the 3 you need from Mouser. But if you need a few dozen to fully outfit all your control panels, it's a different story.
Rich
Alton Junction
I'd postulate they never learned to build Lincolns because they recognized those were dinosaurs and not the way forward. ANd I'll also wager they haven't yet quite learned how to build pickups, as mine sits about to collapse any day due to a completely rotted out frame. Multiple frame recalls across multiple model lines to address the issue don't lend much confidence. Sure, the motor and trnamission will never ever die. But that doesn't do me much good without a chassis to put it in.
I wonder what sort of lights Batman was getting - I repalced my old 100 watt floodlights that came with the house (4 total in the back yard) with LEDs that are equivalent of 200 watt incandescents - DOUBLE the light, at 1/4 of the power of the old ones (each LED is 25 watts). So now letting the dogs out at night doesn't make my power meter spin like an airplane propellor.
With China you must think 100 year plan, that is what they think. That is why they never became a real part of the arms race. Most Americans buisness think in 10 year returns, again China thinks 100 and they are more than willing to sacrafice today for 4 generations or more from now instead of our 1 or 2.
rrinker I wonder what sort of lights Batman was getting - I repalced my old 100 watt floodlights that came with the house (4 total in the back yard) with LEDs that are equivalent of 200 watt incandescents
I put up 500 and 1000 watt floods so I can see as far as I can throw a ball for the dogs at night, 300'. I tried LED floods early on but they did not last, however, if and when these ones need replacing I will go with 1000 watt equivalent LEDS again as I think the quality has improved immensely.
Probably an overheating problem. LEDs are very sensitive to heat. When they get too hot, they permanently dim and then die.
Trouble is, high power LEDs generate a LOT of heat in a very small space. There's only so much heat you can realistically take away from a light bulb without resorting to complicated and expensive cooling mechanisms. It's a lot easier to just stick some high powered LEDs, which are very cheap, onto a little tinny bit of metal and sell that. It'll be really bright, for a little while.
Even worse, for a floodlight, the LED is inside a package which is inside a bulb which is inside a housing of some sort which may be sitting out in the sun on a 100F day. It's going to get toasty in there.
speedybeeTrouble is, high power LEDs generate a LOT of heat in a very small space. There's only so much heat you can realistically take away from a light bulb without resorting to complicated and expensive cooling mechanisms.
Where things get fun is cooling something like a Dubai lamp, where the heat pipe arrangement needs to run up each string and dissipate into something properly insulated from current. Given the level of investment in that project, adding better cooling is almost simple...
I get good mileage out of the halogen ones for the midnight romp to the back 40. They are not on except for those romps or to watch a rare snowfall, so the meter is not smoking for long.
Today, you have to know how to use the Internet abd shop.
If you ever fall over in public, pick yourself up and say “sorry it’s been a while since I inhabited a body.” And just walk away.
I saved the Walthers 50th anniverary catalog and when the 75th anniversay catalog came out, I checked the prices on similar items and found that if you adjust for inflation, like items sell for about the same thing they did before. Locomotives are the one item that are considerably more expensive than a generation ago because DCC and sound have made them significantly more sophisticated. DC locos without sound are a similar price to years past. One thing that caught my eye was that Instant Horizons backgrounds were selling for exactly the same price as 25 years earlier without even adjusting for inflation so effectively they were much cheaper. That has since changed but I found that interesting.
I believe covid is being used as an excuse to jack prices everywhere. Retail, wholesale, web sales, restaurants, everyone.
I find inflation to be a big lie, it is supply and demand, same as always. At the start of all this grocery items went up as no bargins were offered, things were going for msrp but the ads are slowly returning now. Train wise the price of decoders has dropped.
rrebell At the start of all this grocery items went up as no bargins were offered, things were going for msrp but the ads are slowly returning now.
Down here, our favorite grocery chain, Publix, offered their weekly ads and specials all through the crisis with no change in operation.
Some regular items disappeared from the specials, like canned soup, but overall they did a very good job of keeping everything functioning as their customers expected.
-Kevin
Living the dream.
Lastspikemike Money is priced the same way, supply and demand for money. More money than there is demand for money drives interest rates down (the price of money) and inflation up (the value of money declines). Inflation is very real and there are many examples of this throughout history. Argentina, the Weimar Republic of Germany, the Spanish Empire at the time of Cortez. You're about to see a return of inflation, possibly as high as 5% quite soon. Thinking of buying a house? Don't delay. Deflation has occurred many times also, in Britain as the industrial revolution got started, in ancient China as well as the China of the time of the Spanish occupation of the Americas and the Philippines and most famously everywhere in the 1930's Deflation, where the demand or need for money exceeds supply, is very dangerous indeed. Inflation tends to speed up the velocity of money which is a positive reinforcement of trend. Deflation slows down the velocity of money very effectively and also self reinforces which drives prices down and the cost of everything way up.
Money is priced the same way, supply and demand for money. More money than there is demand for money drives interest rates down (the price of money) and inflation up (the value of money declines).
Inflation is very real and there are many examples of this throughout history. Argentina, the Weimar Republic of Germany, the Spanish Empire at the time of Cortez. You're about to see a return of inflation, possibly as high as 5% quite soon. Thinking of buying a house? Don't delay.
Deflation has occurred many times also, in Britain as the industrial revolution got started, in ancient China as well as the China of the time of the Spanish occupation of the Americas and the Philippines and most famously everywhere in the 1930's
Deflation, where the demand or need for money exceeds supply, is very dangerous indeed. Inflation tends to speed up the velocity of money which is a positive reinforcement of trend. Deflation slows down the velocity of money very effectively and also self reinforces which drives prices down and the cost of everything way up.
I wish rates would go though the roof, I have dry powder which I didn't have during the financial crises.