BRAKIE wrote: Dave,In the Glory days of brass as you put it,hobby shops carried tons of brass engines and cars-especially cabooses -because brass was selling hand over fist..Everybody could afford brass back in the 50s and 60s unlike today when only the rich can even think of buying brass.
Dave,In the Glory days of brass as you put it,hobby shops carried tons of brass engines and cars-especially cabooses -because brass was selling hand over fist..Everybody could afford brass back in the 50s and 60s unlike today when only the rich can even think of buying brass.
Brakie is quite correct here. In my area, in the distant suburbs of NYC, brass cabinets used to be found in every medium to large-sized hobby shop from the 1960's until the early 1980's. Close to home, several of the shops were a hangout for IBMers in the 1980's and I saw brass move out the door every lunchtime. I even recall a number of exclusively brass hobby shops in Westchester, outside NYC, back in the 1960's. Those were indeed the good old day...when bass items were affordable enough to be regularly purchased by about half of all modeler railroaders!
CNJ831
Another factor here is probably the drop in people doing real scratchbuilding these days. It is way too easy to buy a kit or an RTR. Building takes work, skill, and thought. Many LHS's aren't even carrying wood or plastic scratchbuilding materials anymore. I have to order most of my styrene and wood off of the internet or have my LHS order it for me.
Ron
Owner and superintendant of the N scale Texas Colorado & Western Railway, a protolanced representaion of the BNSF from Fort Worth, TX through Wichita Falls TX and into Colorado.
Check out the TC&WRy on at https://www.facebook.com/TCWRy
Check out my MRR How-To YouTube channel at https://www.youtube.com/c/RonsTrainsNThings
I did notice that Caboose Hobbies in Denver has an extensive brass inventory. I love going in there and browsing their brass. Even there, they don't seem to move a whole lot of brass out the door.
I realize that we are talking LHSs here, but Uncle Dave's Brass Trains has an awesome inventory at great prices.
Dave said:Even in the "glory days" (whenever those were) the LHS probably did not have gobs of brass on display. The risks of guessing wrong and having an expensive piece of unsold and unreturnable inventory until just the right buyer came in were too great. For example, here in Milwaukee, there was not a huge amount of interest in the western and logging prototypes that Pacific Fast Mail favored (even though the Northern Pacific and GN had Wisconsin trackage). But let them bring out a CNW or Milwaukee Road prototype and -- woosh -- out the door it went. Something like a Western Maryland or Richmond, Fredericksburg & Potomac engine could sit there forever
=====================================================
Larry
Conductor.
Summerset Ry.
"Stay Alert, Don't get hurt Safety First!"
One Track Mind said:Your own market and economics dictates what a LHS will stock.
=======================================================
This is very true..The hobby shops in Mansfield does not carry brass..The bigger shops in the bigger cities like Columbus and Cleveland carries brass.So,one can't paint with a wide brush why hobby shops won't carry brass..Its all local economics.
From the back of Model Railroader, Sept. 2006:
www.thecaboose.com
5 Mohawk DriveWolcott, CT 203-879-2316Open: Monday through Friday, 8 to 5
---------------
The Caboose does not necessarily have the best prices you've ever seen for brass. However, he has it, and he has great customer service. He also will buy your brass. I have gotten some deals at his table at the Springfield show, where he is surely the biggest brass dealer there. Best thing I can say about him is that he's honest. If the price is cheap, it's because it's not worth as much. If it's higher, then it's better.
Paul A. Cutler III*************Weather Or No Go New Haven*************
Brass will outlive us all. As long as there are locomotives that are not available any other way, and as long as there are some people who want to be collectors, the brass market will be just fine. It is a niche market, always has been, but they know it and behave accordingly. Ferrari, Lamborghini, and Bently dealers do not tend to stock as many cars on the lot as Chevy and Ford dealers, either.
When I had the bucks, and I really, really wanted a steam engine, I wanted THAT steam engine and by God I got one. If it was only available in brass, I got brass.
Since a lot of stuff has become available in plastic I have sold a lot of brass (lot being a relative term), and I did not lose a dime on anything. If I had bucks like I used to, there are a few I would get now. Personally, I know a lot of people get insulted at the price of brass, but I think some of their prices are more easiliy justified than some of the plastic or mass produced stuff. Precision Scale, Division Point and a few others have turned out some gorgeous steam engines that run like a watch.
grayfox1119,Tucker's Hobbies in Warren, MA is still a new brass dealer IF you order it. He does have used and second hand brass for sale at his place, but as a rule does not stock new brass without someone ordering it.
But IMHO the main reason why New England hobby shops don't try to carry brass is because of The Caboose in Wolcott, CT. Probably the biggest brass dealer in the Northeast. It's the same reason why you won't find too many LHS's carrying Lionel in big numbers because of Charles Ro Supply Co. in Malden, MA (the biggest Lionel dealer in the Northeast).
Oh, sure, there are a couple stores and a couple train show dealers that sell brass locally. But none of them has the size and selection of The Caboose.
grayfox1119 wrote: They also stated that the newer locomotives are so much better detailed today, that no one is going to pay the high price for brass, no matter what the incremental gain may be perceived. So there you have it guys and gals. Agree or not, that is what the locals are telling me here in Massachusetts. Some of the owners that I spoke to, do have some brass in a cabinet for sale, but they are not moving the product.
Statements only partially true, at best, when it comes to the brass collector. First of all, modern plastic steam locomotives still don't even approach the level of detail found on similar contemporary brass models. With regard to, "...no one is going to pay the high price for brass", that's nonsense. There is an elite, well-to-do, subgroup within the hobby whose only interest IS in collecting brass models. Most rarely if ever run them and many don't even have layouts. For many their interest is in the models themselves, not in model railroading per se. This small element will continue to purchase brass items (which today include scale model planes, ships, vehicles and other items) as long as they are available. The size of runs may be far smaller than in the past (the runs of plastic are often today nearly equal to the size of larger brass runs in the past!) but this facet of the hobby is unlikely to disappear in the near future simply because the quality of plastic locomotives has risen.
Likewise, the entire way in which the brass market functions today is different from the past and essentially precludes LHS carrying new brass, other than on consignment. Models are done in such small runs that brass hobbyists today place pre-production orders directly with specific brass dealers, not the LHS. Nor would ever think to look in a LHS for any new-issue item today, as there is little or no excess production that would allow it. The way the brass market functions has changed, not the base-level demand.
Even in the "glory days" (whenever those were) the LHS probably did not have gobs of brass on display. The risks of guessing wrong and having an expensive piece of unsold and unreturnable inventory until just the right buyer came in were too great. For example, here in Milwaukee, there was not a huge amount of interest in the western and logging prototypes that Pacific Fast Mail favored (even though the Northern Pacific and GN had Wisconsin trackage). But let them bring out a CNW or Milwaukee Road prototype and -- woosh -- out the door it went. Something like a Western Maryland or Richmond, Fredericksburg & Potomac engine could sit there forever.
The reverse was true -- if you were traveling out of state often the LHS would have a brass engine that was unobtainable any more in your own area, for the same reasons -- that Milwaukee Road engine could sit unsold forever in a Boston hobby shop until a midwestern tourist came in.
Actually to a certain extent this is true today of plastic models as well, and books too.
Just know I just remembered something. Until the late 1960s and early '70s brass imports were not only unpainted but they did not have the coat of brass colored paint that came to be popular. Thus they were raw brass and I remember the unsold inventory at Milwaukee's LHS, Casanova's, looking very very tarnished. The other thing I remember is to get to the train part of Casanovas you had to pass through the gun shop which is where they also sold the "men's adventure" magazines, with lurid covers often featuring scantily clad (for that era -- you see more flesh at the mall nowadays) women in dangerous situations. Heady stuff for a 13 year old!
Um .... what were we talking about?
Dave Nelson