You know those Ebay sellers that put a crazy high price on something because...

[clovis97]

After the seller let my offer expire, I emailed him a last night, and we settled on $78. It is still more than I wanted to pay, especially since I have a good stock of these tools on the shelf, but the item he has is NICE.

BTW, I just need to sell another $15 from this item to have paid for it and put me into profit.

Thanks for the inspiration and help, IP!!!!!

 

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[Iron Patch]

I happened to bid during the last 30 seconds. I had gotten a notification on my iPhone that the auction was ending in 15 minutes, and I was surprised to see the engines still under $200. I placed a bid of $210.59, with the hopes of flipping it for $300. Someone else bid in the last 10 seconds, so I lost it out then. This morning, in hindsight, I should have gone higher, with the intentions of flipping them for $349.

FWIW, I've been watching postwar Lionel for over 10 years on ebay, and the 'hot today but not tomorrow' phenom is pretty interesting. I long believed that there is some money to be made, but haven't really tried it. Shipping is something to overcome too, since shipping can easily run $20 on a pair of F3 diesels.

The interesting thing about the Lionel 'hot today but not tomorrow' is that the market does rebound, but guessing when is the hard part. I do know that the reissues by Lionel is depressing postwar prices greatly, but an article in Classic Toy Trains can cause prices to spike tremendously.

I suspect it is going to take me a long while to hone my skills and be successful with finding trains on ebay for the sole purpose of flipping on ebay. And when you are as dumb as I am, it is going to be a serious learning curve, LOL.

I think what makes that tough is there's only so many that go on, they get listed correctly, and there's enough buyers who know the value so it often comes down to who's going to do the work for the least profit. Where I'm lucky is I buy many types of items and the supply to look through is endless... and I just track, bid, and buy the deals. If I'm searching as much as I should be to do well, I will have between 100-150 items on my watch list that I plan to bid on.

 

[clovis97]

Well, I am about zero for twenty, so far.

Finding trains for flipping is much harder than I thought it would be. I have been out bid on most of them, and have gotten cold feet on one item. In that case, did the seller really not have a transformer and track to test it, or did they find that the E-unit is bad, causing the train not to run, and listed it as "UNTESTED"? I tried looking at it for parts value, but the numbers and profit didn't add up.

As well, the seller didn't show the back of the engine in the pics, and if the shell had a screw hole crack...well, that is the kiss of death for Lionel postwar engines...kind of like someone cleaning a King's Regiment button with sandpaper and a sandblaster, then painting it purple and calling it 'restored'.

I'm going to keep at, but I may have stumbled onto another buy and flip opportunity within the Lionel genre. This one may be just as lucrative, with less risk of something broken, and much easier to ship.

At the same time, I'm going to watch for the peaks and valleys with certain Lionel items.

 

[Nickleanddime]

You'd love the auction by me, all these old people selling their trains off. This past weekend a guy bought a Rubbermaid tote full of Lionel cars and engines for $5 bucks. One person bought a whole trailer load of stuff for $15. Now my fun begins cold weather drives them people away here!

 

[clovis97]

I am now 1 for 127.

I actually quit counting, but it feels like I've watched 927 items.

I'll figure this out eventually. The buying market is pretty hot right now, so finding deals is pretty hard.