Aldo Antics on ebay

You're right, that's why I want someone else to do the sums :-)

Has it finished yet? If so, what was it? You have arroused my curiosity!

I've been on the lookout for a Hornby APT, but I've resigned myself to searching elsewhere, or never having one, rather than paying Ebay prices.

Adrian

"Adrian"

Anywhere I can think of - car-boot sales, local paper small ads etc. I should stress that none of these have proved fruitful to date, but I live in hope. The way I see it, there must be loads of APT sets (and other model railway stuff) sitting atics and garages of people (or parents therof) who had a trainset, but will never return to the hobby. People clear out atics and garages etc... Now if only I knew where to dig on that landfill site, there must be loads of 'em!

Adrian

"Adrian"

So, if I'm looking for an APT set in good order at a bargain price, you think a car boot sale is the place to look? You *do* live in hope .

I'm just ploughing through a book called "Beyond Reason" which explains how problems can be expressed mathematically in terms of "complexity" and "satisfiability".

Doing the above is both complex and unsatisfiable. First off, car boot sales are distant and intermittent and require personal attendance (or that of an agent who will have to be paid). Secondly, items for sale are not advertised. This all adds up to a huge logistical undertaking. The chances of actually encountering an APT at one of these sales as a random event must be statistically tending towards zero. And then I have to find it before you do!

Next, the most frequent comment I hear about car boot sales is that ever since the explosion of antique and auction type programmes on the telly, every vendor thinks he or she is selling a priceless work of art and all the prices are extortionate.

Yes, there must be loads of APT sets sitting in attics and garages. The mechanism for their dispersal into the outside world is called "eBay".

When you say "eBay prices", I'm at a loss to understand what you mean. Do you think things on eBay are expensive? An APT at say £200 or even £300? Which it will still be worth forever, thereby actually costing you nothing.

Changing the spark plugs in my car costs £240 plus VAT and brings a lot less immediate pleasure than watching an APT whizzing round my layout!

Cheers, Steve

*stares* just how many cylinders has your engine got, man? spark plugs are what, seven quid each tops if you want gold-plated platinum ones with go-faster stripes? ;-)

R.

But his car might be one of these wonders of modern design which requires half the engine to be dismantled to get at the plugs :-)

Jim.

Your eyes may well water. Mine certainly did when they offered me the quote, which bumped up the price of the service to over £600. And that was at a carefully selected second-tier facility, not a main dealer.

OK, it's a Merc V6. Each cylinder has two plugs, and each of those has to be top of the range gold-plated thingies. I thought about buying the plugs and doing it myself. At least until I discovered that the engine fills the bay edge-to-edge and is completely covered in DCC electronic gizmos. And the cylinders are not even in a row. They are distributed around the engine and you need some degree of patience and special tools to get at them. Neither of which I possess. So God help me when it comes to time to put a DCC chip in a model locomotive.

Oh; and I am not at all well-heeled. I got the Merc for a lot less than I'd expected to pay (good old eBay!), and that left enough in the budget to keep it in good order. Which is just as well, because my days of DIY car maintenance are well in the past, pre-electronic gizmos.

Cheers, Steve

On 25/04/2005 10:14, Adrian wrote,

It has finished, and guess who was disappointed that everyone else had spotted it! The final price was about £250, I think.

What was it?? Nowt to do with model railways. Well....in a roundabout way it was, if you want to print Templot stuff on A2 wide banner paper...

I do however disagree with your assertion that all such items go from garage/atik to Ebay. They may well *end up* on ebay, but if you look at the ones that DO go on Ebay, they are almost always being sold by regular Ebayers/dealers who by your own arguments are unlikely to be wandering car-boot sales the length and bredth of the country and grabbing these items before anyone else. The assumption therefore is that they are sold via local shops, small ads etc before they get to an Ebay-savy person.

As for the prices - of course everything is worth what people will pay. On Ebay, it seems to me that people pay over the odds because the audience is large and therefore the chance of competitive bidding is high. By comparison, in my experience, the same model, if (and I accept it's a considerable "if") it can be found in my local model shop, is likely to be

25% cheeper, with the added advantage that I can inspect before I buy.

Of course I realise that the chances of getting lucky and finding a good APT set for £50 at a boot sale is unlikely, but I don't want one enough to pay £250. There are things much higher up my priority list.

Actually, I don't even visit car-boots myself, but I know a couple of people who do so, and they are under instructions to be on the lookout for model railway stuff. As I said, I live in hope, just as I live in hope of winning the National Lottery with my one pound a week - and I know which is more likely.

As for spark plugs... I don't see the relevance. I pay £250 to keep my car on the road because I *need* a car, not because it gives me pleasure, just as I pay may Council Tax because I need a house.

Adrian

No, he probably just buys them on Ebay.

Adrian

"Adrian" considerable "if") it can be found in my local model shop, is likely to be

OK, I agree with most of what you said. So now we're agreed on the bleedin' obvious.

As for the relevance of the spark plugs, you are right and I was wrong. I should have made a better separation of needs and wants in thinking of an analogy. What's worse is, by even mentioning anything remotely automotive, I've trespassed into the territory where the beast whose name may not be spoken may awaken at any moment...

I didn't realise you actually did have agents searching out the boot sales - I'm genuinely impressed. But here's the kicker - following through on the logic, you can't have an APT. At least for no longer than the transition time between acquisition and selling on. Let's say you get absurdly lucky and someone actually pays *you* a £1 to take away their unwanted APT. If you believe it might fetch £250 on eBay, how can you make the financial sacrifice of £251? There are, after all, other things much higher up the priority list than an APT that you can satisfy with the £251.

And here's the funny thing about model shops - in my experience (freely admitted to be limited), the asking price is generally set at the highest price recently achieved on eBay, with about 10% added because it's *there*, in front of you, calling your name, and the shopkeeper will let you have it

*right now*, and not bother you with any fripperies like cheques or PayPal.

Cheers, Steve

I certainly don't have legions of them scouring the northwest for me, so my chances are still pretty slim.

Good argument...! I suppose the only reply to that is that we are talking about human nature and once I had an APT in my sweaty mits at a knock-down price, I'd be loathed to sell it on. I'd probably keep it and justify to myself (and the wife) that it was an investment!

That may be true for some or even a majority of shops, but for my sampling of 3 shops and a small number of purchases, I have found the prices to be below the Ebay average. Of course, you are right that the prices on Ebay will influence the prices in shops, so perhaps the diference is just commission and other Ebay/Paypal charges (credit/debit cards, if used, obviously negate that to some degree).

To be honest, if my local shops were *a little* more expensive than Ebay, I'd be happy to pay it for the privilage of having a shop which stocks all those odds and ends which are very difficult or impractical to buy online.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not an Ebay hater. I have bought and sold that way, but my experience and that of others I know is that it's the sellers that benefit most from it.

Adrian

He is back!! look at hornbyauctions.com

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Whereabouts? It's a big site. A URL would help.

(kim)

"kim" wrote | > He is back!! look at hornbyauctions.com | | Whereabouts? It's a big site. A URL would help. | | (kim) |

I looked under the Lima subcategory on the website and spotted a couple with the unmistakable Aldo flavour, MEGA RARE! etc.

Ivor

On 31/07/2005 13:16, Ian Cornish wrote,

An unassembled Dapol kit for 15 quid? Wonder why he hasn't got any feedback yet?

Lots of information about the real Deltic, but I can't see any mention of what make the kit is - other than "Lima Bachmann Hornby".