Trainz - Leaves me cold

All Facets of O-Gauge, 3-Rail, Model Railroading
Chris Webster
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Re: Trainz - Leaves me cold

Postby Chris Webster » Sun Aug 22, 2021 10:38 pm

An interesting way of selling: Wholesale Purchasing

Rufus T. Firefly
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Re: Trainz - Leaves me cold

Postby Rufus T. Firefly » Mon Aug 23, 2021 7:52 am

Chris Webster wrote:An interesting way of selling: Wholesale Purchasing


Overpriced bulk sales of junk....that no doubt someone will buy....
Conservatism: The intense fear that somewhere, somehow, someone you think is inferior is being treated as your equal.

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G3750
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Re: Trainz - Leaves me cold

Postby G3750 » Mon Aug 23, 2021 1:48 pm

Chris Webster wrote:An interesting way of selling: Wholesale Purchasing


Wow! :shock: Even more "pig in a poke" than usual. :shock:

Color me "NO".

George
What is a 'Conservative'? "Someone who wants society and policy to recognize objective reality- economic, biological, and historical."

—Katy Faust

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ScaleCraft
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Re: Trainz - Leaves me cold

Postby ScaleCraft » Mon Aug 23, 2021 3:22 pm

https://www.trainz.com/collections/whol ... esale-cart

Condition: Junk (C-1)
Operational Status: As is
Original Box: No

Scale/Era: HO Modern
Model Type: Miscellaneous


$353.42
Reg Price:
$356.99


I would not pay 1/10 of that even if I was still restoring old Half-0.
Opinion.

Partial steam, partial diseasemals, broken rolling stock, appears to be early cardstock boxcars, brush painted, shells....looks like Woody's Auction.

Folks that do vintage Half-0 are tighter than Lionel folks. I have 40 engines, at least 30 restored, early stuff, plus rolling stock...nobody interested.

Gonna lay it in the driveway and drive over it, then dump it.

To ask that much ($353.42) for literally junk is ludicrous.
Dave....collector, restorer, and operator of the finest doorstops

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jlong
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Re: Trainz - Leaves me cold

Postby jlong » Tue Aug 24, 2021 6:19 pm

Chris Webster wrote:An interesting way of selling: Wholesale Purchasing


OMG!! And they make it sound only the privileged are allowed to get their hands it all. Pretty much sums up what I said in my first post.
Last edited by jlong on Tue Aug 24, 2021 6:23 pm, edited 1 time in total.
John Long

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gregj410
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Re: Trainz - Leaves me cold

Postby gregj410 » Tue Aug 24, 2021 8:23 pm

Chris Webster wrote:I was reading the thread over on NK about MTH All-Door Boxcars. A poster claims that Brad's Trains (bmartz-1991) is buying stuff from Trainz dot com and then relisting it (& letting it sit) on ebay for twice what he paid Trainz. I think the NK poster is correct -- all the 2-rail locomotives bmartz-1991 currently has on ebay are models I think I recall recently seeing on trainz's site.

This strikes me as a really weird business model -- bmartz first buys stuff from Trainz, then has to create listings on ebay for the same items, then waits for something to sell, and then has to pack it up and ship it. Bmartz then gives ~25% of the selling price to ebay. Roughly ~50% to ~55% of the selling price was spent buying the item from Trainz, so bmartz is doing a lot of work just to earn a maximum of 20-25% on low-dollar items.... and that's not even considering the cost of the capital bmartz has tied up in bmartz's inventory.

Meanwhile the S&P is up 20.54% year-to-date.... bmartz would be ahead if they had just deposited their capital in a low-cost index fun and they would not have had to do any work to have earned that return.

I also wonder if there might be an algorithm feedback problem here for bmartz. TrainZ seems to price a lot of their stuff automatically using a database of past sales; I assume their pricing database uses data from their own website and data scraped from ebay. I'm thinking that each time bmartz resells a Trainz item on ebay, bmartz is causing the prices in Trainz's database to artificially inflate.

For example, assume Trainz's database has the prices of 9 individual sales of a particular item, let's say a Weaver Lehigh Valley RS3. The first 8 sales have an average selling price of $100. The 9th sale is when TrainZ uses their price database to sel one to Bmartz for $100.... Bmartz then (eventually) sells it on ebay for twice as much ($200) and Trainz adds that sale to their database. Trainz's software automatically crunches the numbers, and the next LV RS3 they sell will be offered for $110.


I sold him these at York at least 3 years ago.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/4-CAR-GOLDEN-G ... 632-2357-0

I ordered them new but had a change of heart after some years later. IIRC I sold them for 300-350 and they been on eBay since.

Chris Webster
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Re: Trainz - Leaves me cold

Postby Chris Webster » Sun Mar 27, 2022 9:20 pm

gregj410 wrote:I sold him these at York at least 3 years ago.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/4-CAR-GOLDEN-G ... 632-2357-0

I ordered them new but had a change of heart after some years later. IIRC I sold them for 300-350 and they been on eBay since.
And eight months later those cars are still sitting on ebay...

I'm actually here to bump the thread with this video: TRAINZ.COM - Behind the Scenes!! And a NEW Train?!

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Steelers2056
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Re: Trainz - Leaves me cold

Postby Steelers2056 » Sat Apr 02, 2022 4:51 pm

My experience with trainz was getting some HO stuff in (that I was to send to someone else) and it came with broken couplers and IIRC some other damage. Luckily I was able to fix it, but it was annoying. I also remember browsing their ebay listings years ago and seeing a Lionel locomotive with visibly rusted side rods listed as C7 (Despite the definition of C7 saying "No rust").

What got me was all the NK posts praising them, where they'd say stuff like "Yeah, it was listed as like new and was actually broken, scratched and didn't work but their custom service is great!".


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