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Is there an E-Bay/Craig’s List alternative?

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Is there an E-Bay/Craig’s List alternative?
Posted by jambam on Wednesday, April 22, 2009 12:02 PM
I’m disgruntled about all the fees, etc. from E-Bay and I’m getting annoyed by all the phishing and fraud that’s happening on Craig’s list. My other hobby is RC aircraft.  I’ve found the marketplace on RC Universe (www.rcuniverse.com) to be absolutely fantastic!  I’ve had great success using this – and it’s free! 

Question: Is there a model train version/equivalent of RCU anywhere out there?  Specifically buying/selling/trading used train stuff.

 

Thanks.

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Posted by pike-62 on Wednesday, April 22, 2009 12:08 PM

UPbid.net is starting to gain some ground. It is still small however. There are no listing fees.

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Posted by SteamFreak on Wednesday, April 22, 2009 2:17 PM

 If you model HO, check out the HOYARDSALE group on Yahoo. There's one for N scale (NScaleYardSale), and probably other scales as well.

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Posted by MECman on Wednesday, April 22, 2009 4:33 PM
I've recently signed up for the Yahoo group HOyardsale. It seems pretty active although I haven't actually bought or sold yet. This is only for HO scale stuff however. http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HOYARDSALE/
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Posted by loathar on Wednesday, April 22, 2009 6:00 PM

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.

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Posted by j610 on Wednesday, April 22, 2009 6:51 PM

ho yardsale should be avoided like the plague .  they are the most anal , picky bunch of people i have ever came across .    RON

J610
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Posted by Hansel on Wednesday, April 22, 2009 7:26 PM

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.

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Posted by Kenfolk on Wednesday, April 22, 2009 8:55 PM

 Now this is really useful stuff !  Thanks to all for posting these links.Smile

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Posted by mononguy63 on Thursday, April 23, 2009 11:15 AM

j610
ho 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.

"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

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Posted by Cox 47 on Thursday, April 23, 2009 11:37 AM

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

ILLinois and Southern...Serving the Coal belt of southern Illinois with a Smile...
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Posted by lvanhen on Friday, April 24, 2009 6:38 AM

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.

Hoyardsale seems like a good alternative to EThing, BUT, be careful how you sign up - I got 20something e-mails from them this AM!!!!Shock

Lou V H Photo by John
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Posted by Robby P. on Friday, April 24, 2009 7:18 AM

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?"      

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Posted by GIJoe on Friday, April 24, 2009 8:02 AM

 

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.

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

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Posted by blownout cylinder on Friday, April 24, 2009 8:13 AM

j610

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---Confused

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...

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Posted by pike-62 on Friday, April 24, 2009 8:38 AM

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.

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Posted by Jimmydieselfan on Friday, April 24, 2009 9:41 AM

N Scale Diesels......I like 'em

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Posted by CNW 6000 on Friday, April 24, 2009 11:03 AM

Jimmydieselfan

That should be www.trainboard.com with a period instead of a comma!  Smile,Wink, & Grin

Dan

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Posted by SteamFreak on Friday, April 24, 2009 2:44 PM

lvanhen

Hoyardsale seems like a good alternative to EThing, BUT, be careful how you sign up - I got 20something e-mails from them this AM!!!!Shock

Twenty? That's nothing. What can I tell you; it's a healthy group! Wink 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.

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Posted by mononguy63 on Friday, April 24, 2009 2:52 PM

Interesting that the hoyardsale moderator sent an email that said they'd had a sudden surge of 27 new members. Coincidence with this thread?....

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Posted by SteamFreak on Friday, April 24, 2009 3:07 PM

 This forum gets a lot of traffic...  Smile

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Posted by lvanhen on Friday, April 24, 2009 7:29 PM

I just changed the email notification to "let mee look" instead of "notify me"  I guess I didn't pay attention when signing upBlush  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.

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Posted by jambam on Friday, April 24, 2009 7:58 PM

Great info - Thanks everyone!

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Posted by loathar on Friday, April 24, 2009 10:07 PM

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.Whistling

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Posted by SteamFreak on Friday, April 24, 2009 11:40 PM

 ...or at the very list a links section where useful sites like these could be easily accessed.

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Posted by Magnum019 on Saturday, April 25, 2009 2:08 AM

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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Posted by LenS on Sunday, April 26, 2009 11:10 AM

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

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.

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Posted by Mr. SP on Sunday, April 26, 2009 12:10 PM

How about your LHS or swapmeets. There are also discounters such as TrainWorld and Discount Trains and Online Trains

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Posted by SteamFreak on Tuesday, May 5, 2009 3:09 PM

 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

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Posted by R. T. POTEET on Saturday, May 9, 2009 12:22 PM

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

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Posted by Great Powderhorn on Wednesday, March 31, 2010 8:53 AM

http://www.gomotorbids.com/index1.cfm

Here is another sourceI have found to be good.

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