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Post by riogrande on Jan 27, 2021 2:00:12 GMT -8
Model trains are expensive is probably the number one reason hobbyists try to find street prices. Haven't we read umpteen bazillion forum complaints about the cost of model trains?
It isn't just model railroaders who are cheap. Plenty of non model railroaders are cheap. My wife is cheap. Furniture stores ought to be closing right and left. We have almost never bought any new. Furniture is crazy expensive.
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Post by fcixdarrell on Jan 27, 2021 3:06:07 GMT -8
Malls have been dying for years well before the pandemic. Brick and mortar in general giving way to online. The pandemic only accelerated some. Last hobby shop in this area is closing Saturday after being in business 90 years...new owner said he could not compete with web sales. I too think brick and mortar hobby shops (as well as some other retail stores) will have a tough time staying open, even after the pandemic appears to be under control. Me personally...I am so used to now buying nearly everything on-line (except groceries and lumber) and avoiding crowds (as advised to do), that visiting a hobby retailer or going to a train show to purchase model railroad products is a thing of the past. I do not think life (and business) will ever get back to normal, as we once knew it. Toy Train Heaven, MicroMark, Lombard Hobbies, ExactRail, Scale Trains and Tangent are where I do my on-line line shopping and waiting a few days for items to arrive is now an accepted part of my hobby. Same goes for slot cars. I wish it were different. We have one local hobby shop in town that covers a lot of territory and he's doing well. A couple of years ago he moved out of his stripmall location to a smaller shop on the main drag in town. 25% decrease in rent and his business stayed the same. Good move. Last month he moved a few doors down, smaller shop space but more open, feels bigger and his rent went down! Since Covid started, his sales have gone up 50%. Sweet! However, model trains, not so much. They've been a small portion of his sales for years. There's a large model RR club in town, HO and N layouts, and they don't even support the local shop. Everything they buy is online. He tells me there are 5 private layouts in town and they don't buy from him either, except a few small things here and there. He does a huge business in model cars, rockets and military models. He has a 5 customer limit because of Covid and a couple of times I've seen people waiting to get in. Just one guy holding on while lots aren't able to.
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Post by railmodeltroy14 on Jan 27, 2021 3:46:54 GMT -8
The model railroad manufacturing industry seems to be doing well and those I personally know still active in the hobby are purchasing new items like crazy.
Since our area is now hobby shopless and train shows have been cancelled already for '21, you have no choice but to purchase online.
As to model railroaders being "cheap," I only find that to be true of a small percentage.
Most I know spend top dollar on new items when they are available. The key word though is "available" and small hobby shops just don't stock enough items and some products such as the recent Tangent 86'box cars and cabooses are gone if you delay ordering, so you have to purchase on-line, immediately.
Two of these fellows are in their 70's and are spending a small fortune on signalling, electronics, wiring and sound installations. Plus, the time spent is staggering but they are retired.
If I lived in Chicago, Lombard Hobbies would get my business and if I lived in Pennsylvania, Toy Train Heaven would be a frequent stop.
However, many hobby retailers were closed for weeks or months due to the virus for in store shopping and some could not even enter their businesses for mail order.
I obey the rules set forth as to mask-wearing for my business and was shut down for months in 2020 but I hate shopping or being out in public wearing a face covering so I limit my retail visits to only essential.
The hobby is stronger than ever but how model railroaders can purchase the items we want has changed forever.
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Post by riogrande on Jan 27, 2021 4:19:22 GMT -8
Many non-model railroaders are CHEAP as well; my wife is always hunting for bargains and is master at it. My parents grew up during the depression era and have always been frugal. Many I have known through out my life have clipped coupons and watched for sales. This notion of paying at or near MRSP to buy products seems to be an artifact of model train forums. We've all seen umpteen people start forum topics complaining about the high cost of our toys, so it shouldn't be any surprise hobbyists are trying to find good deals. Hunting for good prices has been the norm for most everyone I have ever known, except perhaps some people in the hobby who have fair sized hobby budgets or wives who are tolerant of their husbands paying at or near MSRP on their toys. Those who righteously pay full price to tithe to their local hobby shop place of worship (until the shop closes when the owner retires) may get an extra feather in their cap in model train heaven.
As for no choice but to purchase online; that has been my situation, in-general, for the past 11 years and other places I've lived before that. Yes, train shows are shut down for now, but I expect they will return when the pandemic settles down and I look forward to resuming going to them. What has changed the way we purchase trains is the emergence of online shopping. It allows vendors to sell with discount prices in many cases without the burden of maintaining a physical store, or in other cases, it extends the reach of existing shops to the nation, or even the world. But this isn't anything we haven't known for some years now.
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Post by lvrr325 on Jan 27, 2021 10:54:29 GMT -8
Do you know anyone who pays full list price when they don't have to? Outside of Tangent, Molocco and others where you buy direct and there's no discounts (and even Molocco has some things on sale) most products you can buy below the MSRP. Most retail in general is a big psychological game to appeal to the emotions of the buyer by making them think they got a deal. Clothing is a good one for that, the markup on it must be huge so places can regularly offer sales as much as 50% off list price, whether it's buy one get one free, or here's a coupon $25 off $50, or whichever way they want to appeal to you this week.
The markup on hobby stuff though is fairly small and by the time you discount the price to match the internet guys you make very little on it. When the Atlas Cararama construction stuff came out, a guy on eBay had these $21.98 pieces on eBay for $12.50 or so. I did the math on it and he was making maybe a quarter on each one, after fees, before labor to pack them and ship them. He did sell like 100 of them, but you just spent like $1200 to make $25. Why? I put mine on for $16-$17 and did sell the more popular ones.
That's probably more to do with why this guy is quitting. He can't foot the bill on a 10% margin, but his choice is take a 10% margin or don't sell the stuff at all. The general public sees those internet prices and wants to pay them in person, too. Those same Cararama vehicles I had at the two shows and both times people wanted to offer me less than the already discounted price, and both times I said those are new and already marked down 20% or so, and both times I didn't sell them. Over a $4 difference, which is half what it would cost to have some shipped to them.
That's also why you see so many "basement bombers" who set up at shows with no real shop. The costs are lower than renting a place and you're guaranteed a crowd, they do all the advertising and so forth. So they can go on a lower margin, or some of them don't even sell new, they just buy estates and collections and sell those.
Supposedly one of the reasons Central Hobby Supply quit is they had become more or less a mail order house, selling mostly pre-orders to customers while the stock in the store was slow to move. You can do okay on that, but after a while what is the point of having a store if most of your sales are online? I went through that with my first store. The rent was storage unit level cheap because it was kind of under the radar in the basement retail of what had been a community grocery store and I still was paying all the bills through what I sold on eBay.
There used to be Duffy's Trains in Phoenix, NY and that shop lasted through his death because it was the garage in his house. He lived on a main road in a mixed retail and residential area and was able to get the variance I guess. So his rent was zero. Meanwhile we had Hojack Hobbies in Liverpool and they moved twice that I remember before they closed up shop. Bernie just died late in 2019, he was still doing shows. Central moved twice, too, I know the rent was lower in what was about the same size store in the last location. Maybe it was even bigger.
And yes guys are cheap. The one show I did, I told a guy "well don't buy them then" when he said $10 was too much for some older HO cars he wanted to give me $4 each for. They had $4 in metal wheels and Kadee couplers on them. Not Tyco or AHM junk, Train Miniature cars, which there is a collector following for where had these had their boxes I would have just put them on eBay. The least common ones I had marked $10 and the others like $6. I get being cheap, I'm cheap too, but if you want to pay $4 a shot go to the guy with the low end stuff. These all had bright pink tags I had just put on them a couple weeks before. I'm ahead a little on the collection so I can sit on them for a while.
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Post by riogrande on Jan 27, 2021 12:25:47 GMT -8
Do you know anyone who pays full list price when they don't have to? Outside of Tangent, Molocco and others where you buy direct and there's no discounts (and even Molocco has some things on sale) most products you can buy below the MSRP. Most retail in general is a big psychological game to appeal to the emotions of the buyer by making them think they got a deal. I think you are right; the idea that it's only a few customers that are cheap and look for discount prices is probably inaccurate. It's probably more like the majority of hobbyists. Yes, there are a few who proudly say they support their LHS with their higher prices. That is fine and it's everyone's choice who they patronize and why. A mail-order or online orders should be a good thing. As far as local, it doesn't help that Syracuse has a dead economy. But if online/mail order was good and walk-in not, then Central could have just closed the B&M store and sold out of basement or something like that and getting rid of the physical store costs. Wasn't he in Clay NY? I visited that place and it was a nice little shop. I recall his wife kept it open for a short while before closing. I visited Hojack when I first moved to Liverpool in 1994 and it was a pretty decent shop out on the corner near Hydes hot dog shop. After he moved it wasn't as good. Yes, I've heard that umpteen times. That's one of a number of reasons selling trains at shows isn't for everyone, and tends to turn people bitter. I figure if a job or past time is doing that to a person, it's better to do something else.
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Post by lvrr325 on Jan 28, 2021 9:59:46 GMT -8
Exactly. No one pays full price if they can avoid it. That doesn't make you bad, it's just how it is. Most of retail trains people to look for a deal, and the less disposable income you have the more likely you are to chase that deal.
The problem just is the structure of pricing on hobby stuff doesn't support stacking it deep and selling it cheap. So the retailer is stuck in a catch-22 where if his prices are too high he sells very little, and if his prices are too low he earns very little.
That reefer deal was an odd situation. I didn't yell at him, I just turned his logic back on him, if they're not worth $10 don't buy them. It was actually pretty satisfying to say it. I got cursed at for it to boot. That was when I stopped even feeling bad about it. He knew what he was trying to do. it's no different at the car shows, guys want to give you $5 for a carburetor I can't even replace for under $20 because they need one lever off it and I just say no thanks.
The other story I was told on why Bill Kratz at Central Hobby closed is after analyzing the numbers, he could retire and collect SSI and make about the same income doing nothing. Makes sense to me. When you're just one guy running the show it's a hell of a lot of work.
Syracuse Train & Hobby is more or less the same deal; John Handley Sr. left for a postal service job. Maybe to boost his retirement. His son Jr. ran it for a few years after, but the son is nothing like the father - to the point the family doesn't even speak to him. I saw Sr. last year at Utica and talked to him a bit. Always liked him. (that store started downtown on Clinton near the Armory, moved up to Cicero for a few years, then back to 934 N. Salina, then the last six months or so across the street from there).
Duffy I went to I think twice. Right on Rt. 57 in Phoenix. Maybe 5 minutes north of Great Northern Mall. (which is utterly dead). I just never went up that way that often and he did shows so I saw him there.
Hojack was in what is now Limp Lizard up the street from the corner across from Heid's. That was like 40 years ago. They could even have been somewhere else before that. Then they went to that triangle shaped place, then left there for a place on Buckley Rd. Finally Bernie got involved with another guy and they had a spot in Jamesville for a year or so but I think that had another name to it.
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Post by riogrande on Jan 28, 2021 10:44:43 GMT -8
What was the hobby shop on the other side of Onondaga Lake? Mostly RC plans and cars but some train stuff. Re: Hojacks that I visited I recall was a triangle shaped space - it was out on the end of the block and not far from Heids. I visited the shop once on Buckley Road but wasn't much for me there. I can't remember a place in Jamesville but there was a little shop in Baldwinsville for a short time. It's been long enough that I've forgotten many of the roads but I'm pretty sure it was Duffy's I visited and bought a few kits. There was a small hobby shop in the strip mall near Vicky's Ice Cream off of Old Liverpool Road but they didn't last long either.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 19, 2021 17:53:36 GMT -8
The rest of the dash 8s have a shipping date of April 19th (today) as shipped out from atlas to distributes. Hopefully we see the amtrak ones this week or next.
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Post by lvrr325 on Apr 19, 2021 21:51:43 GMT -8
Walt's Hobby, the primarily R/C shop is on the west side of Onondaga Lake, near what used to be the P&C Grocery warehouse.
The Baldwinsville shop was there for years, Besser's Whistlestop, it was on the main four corners until he sold off his Lionel HO and other parts inventory and made enough he built a new place - he wanted to buy the old station in B'ville but Conrail said no, so he built a station replica at 60 Rd and Brundage Rd which is next to the crossing for the lead into the Bud brewery. Kind of an odd location in that the visibility was not great. Then he died, the son took over, was a staple at shows for about 10-15 years until he decided he'd had enough and abruptly quit. The inventory didn't even get dumped local, he sold it all rumor had it to someone in Florida. But it was mostly newer stuff and primarily O scale by then.
The shop in the strip plaza in Liverpool was J&R Junction and they moved out to Erie Blvd. East and are still going. I'm just down the street from the old location and yet I was only in there a handful of times. Also primarily an O/Lionel store.
I mostly replied so I could say that same old tightwad was back at Binghamton and I told him no again and he had the audacity to say I don't turn my inventory over much. Well, yes, sparky, this stuff hasn't been out for sale anywhere since November 28th because the shows have all been cancelled. I sold several of the cars he wanted later in the day to other people. That show was like normal times again, my sales were the second highest since I started doing those Binghamton shows in 2013.
One of the other vendors was talking about having had a large shop, he's down in Elmira and from the sound of it he bought a pre-built shed and put it at the end of his driveway and that's the store. That's not a bad idea really, my sister just got one of those sheds and you can finish the inside how you want, the only disadvantage is no plumbing. For this guy, who sells mostly N scale, it's great.
Atlas has a new Spring Arrivals catalog posted on their website and seems like the Amtrak ones are in it, but there's two versions of it - the one I got emailed has way more in it including U23B's while on the website itself it does not show those, or all the items in the emailed one. The U23B's are curious because while this is about when they *should* show up, the page with all the container shipping dates has nothing on them, no sign of anything on the water right now at all when I read through it.
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