As a small time seller, I find eBay the most time-consuming and the most rewarding. eBay, despite its fees, provides more eyeballs and interest on my advertised items than any other market place. And if I have no good idea of what the value is, an eBay auction usually gets me a fair price.
As a buyer (also small time), I prefer a single, easy-to-search marketplace to find the out-of-production items I am generally in the market for. Again, a few auctions of similar items help establish a realistic price. Searching hobby shops, consignment tables, train shows, and multiple sites for the same item is very time consuming, and I usually run into a great variety of prices on the same item when there are multiples available.
My preference, despite its many flaws, is for a single recognized nation-wide market place, preferably with multiple auctions of similar items to help with realistic pricing determinations.
just my thoughts
Fred W
Like all of these sources, eBay can be be a good place to find some bargains. I just scored a P2K H10-44 with sound and dcc, NIB, for about $80 off list. but I'll never buy anything off eBay without checking modeltrainstuff.com first for a comparison.
http://www.gomotorbids.com/index1.cfm
Here is another sourceI have found to be good.
If--and when--I decide to return to HO-Scale after a quarter century in N-Scale I'm going to see if I can find a dealer somewhere who will buy my N-Scale equipment lock-stock-and barrel at a reasonable price I'm not prepared to give it away; on the other hand I'd like to be done with it. I don't want my equipment dribbling out the door which is what you get on ebay so I'm not going there for a mass sale.
From the far, far reaches of the wild, wild west I am: rtpoteet
Now there's one more alternative. Larry at HOSeeker finally got his auction site launched. For a long time the auction link on his site took you nowhere. There isn't much up for sale yet, but we could change that.
http://www.hoseeker.org/cgi-bin/auction/auction.cgi
Nelson
Ex-Southern 385 Being Hoisted
How about your LHS or swapmeets. There are also discounters such as TrainWorld and Discount Trains and Online Trains
GIJoe For what its worth, I have bought 7 items so far off HO Yard Sale, and have been TOTALLY satisfied. With NO fees! Do your due diligence as you would with buying or selling items through the classifieds or whatever and you'll be happy. Joe
For what its worth, I have bought 7 items so far off HO Yard Sale, and have been TOTALLY satisfied. With NO fees! Do your due diligence as you would with buying or selling items through the classifieds or whatever and you'll be happy.
Joe
I have also purchased from this site, with great satisfaction. At least you can negotiate with the selling parties in some cases. I also read the posts on the website and find it extremely easy. You can see a whole page of items at once and pick and choose what to read. I have yet to list items for sale, but if I did, it would be on HOYardsale.
Len S.
Well I signed up for HO Yard, Sold some items on Ebay for 80 - 12 to pay for them, to me, that's a pretty high mark up.
C
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...or at the very list a links section where useful sites like these could be easily accessed.
I'm waiting for Bergie to chime in on this thread with an update to the possible classified section on this forum he said "might" be a possibility in the future.
Great info - Thanks everyone!
I just changed the email notification to "let mee look" instead of "notify me" I guess I didn't pay attention when signing up With all us new members, it may beat the Ething!! As for Craigs list, never found much in trains there - a lot of bad publicity about it now.
This forum gets a lot of traffic...
Interesting that the hoyardsale moderator sent an email that said they'd had a sudden surge of 27 new members. Coincidence with this thread?....
"I am lapidary but not eristic when I use big words." - William F. Buckley
I haven't been sleeping. I'm afraid I'll dream I'm in a coma and then wake up unconscious. -Stephen Wright
lvanhenHoyardsale seems like a good alternative to EThing, BUT, be careful how you sign up - I got 20something e-mails from them this AM!!!!
Hoyardsale seems like a good alternative to EThing, BUT, be careful how you sign up - I got 20something e-mails from them this AM!!!!
Twenty? That's nothing. What can I tell you; it's a healthy group! I have all of that going to my Yahoo email account, and I just go through it and delete whatever isn't of interest to me. You can select the digest option in your group preferences, which will send you a single daily digest of all of the day's postings. I was using that option in the beginning, but I was missing out on too many good deals, so I switched to individual emails.
I think the moderator does a good job of managing what could easily become an unwieldy situation, since the membership is quickly approaching 2500. When I joined in late '07 it was only about 800.
Jimmydieselfan www.trainboard,com
www.trainboard,com
Dan
N Scale Diesels......I like 'em
Although I am a member of the HO Yardsale I don't hang out there much. To find things you almost have to be on line a few times /day. The search feature is not the best and doing searches can be trying sometimes. I did inquire about a couple of items once only to find out they had been sold several days errlier. apparantly the sellers can not take down the posting after an item has sold. Not a big problem though. If somehow we could all get everyone to agree on one site/format it would be a big help. As I mentioned in an earlier post I do list some items on UPBID.net. it is the same format as Ebay but there are no listing fees and a small seller fee. Others like some of the other sites out there. As long as there is indecision amongst us about which site or format to use ebay will continue to flourish.
j610 ho yardsale should be avoided like the plague . they are the most anal , picky bunch of people i have ever came across . RON
ho yardsale should be avoided like the plague . they are the most anal , picky bunch of people i have ever came across . RON
MMM--most people that I know who have used this site seemed to have no problems. So, what happened witchoo? Explain please---
Any argument carried far enough will end up in Semantics--Hartz's law of rhetoric Emerald. Leemer and Southern The route of the Sceptre Express Barry
I just started my blog site...more stuff to come...
http://modeltrainswithmusic.blogspot.ca/
For those of you that are not happy with the Yahoo Group emails you receive, it is a very straight forward process to turn that off. IIRC, you need to access your Yahoo preferences for that particular group and change your email notifications to read that you will access the web site on your own (or words to that effect, my job blocks Yahoo access so I can't "see" the exact wording right now. :-) ) Then you can just go to the site and check new messages on your own without all the spam to your inbox.
I am almost fed up with eBay. Fee, after fee. I sold a engine last night for $130, and they took out $10, and Paypal took out $5.00. I understand they have to take something out, but hey I guess they have to make money. "That they are!!!!"
I am trying the hoyardsale. I have a car on that website now. See what I can get for it. At least its fee free. Also like someone said, you might wanna get another email just for that website. You do get quite a bit of emails.
"Rust, whats not to love?"
SteamFreak If you model HO, check out the HOYARDSALE group on Yahoo. There's one for N scale (NScaleYardSale), and probably other scales as well.
If you model HO, check out the HOYARDSALE group on Yahoo. There's one for N scale (NScaleYardSale), and probably other scales as well.
I am on N scale Yard sale and think its great...Lots of nice folks and you can find almost anything you might need..It seems to be growing every day too...Jerry
j610ho yardsale should be avoided like the plague . they are the most anal , picky bunch of people i have ever came across.
I've not experienced that. I have a separate Yahoo email set up that receives all the new postings. If there's something up for sale the interests me, I contact the seller off-list and the deal is done. Easy peasy. I hardly ever go to the actual group site in Yahoo.
Now this is really useful stuff ! Thanks to all for posting these links.
http://www.railbid.com/index.php
Here is another one called Railbid. I just found it and bought a GP7 Operating Manual for a reasonable price.
I'll third the HO Yardsale Yahoo group. It's great! You can post items you want to buy too.I've seen a bunch of other train auction sites, but when you click the item it takes you to E-Scam.