Good morning folks. A number of years ago, I had raised a thread here and put out the idea of a wish list forum. Having traveled far and wide over the last couple years, and visiting some of the great hobby shops between Washington and Chicago, I found that some of the things I had been looking for while watching eBay for years were sitting right there on somebody's shelf gathering dust! It has rekindled the idea in my mind, that the thing you believe to be rare might be waiting for you... not to mention it would give some of us even more reason to check the shelves at the LHS I will give you a few examples; There are GHQ MILW & NP locomotive kits on the shelf in Twin Cities, I saw a Zephyr in Duluth for a really fair price (owner said he's happy to do phone/mail order) and folks looking for a UP Big Boy didn't realize that the shop in Concord California had one just waiting for an owner for a very long time, $50 lower than eBay average. There were ~100 Atlas 1990's Geeps in Twin cities as well. On several occasions, I have seen locomotives and passenger sets on the tables at the local show, that somebody had been looking for right here on TB. So, who here would like a place to post their N scale "wants & needs" lists as a way to help local hobby stores? Maybe organized by era or road names?
Not to be a stick in the mud, but I can tell you the owners of my two local hobby shops are not members of the Train Board and would never see such a list.
How many shops are there that still don't have some form of a web site? Even if they don't want to establish a more sophisticated e-commerce type site, they would benefit from, at the minimum, creating a one-page site, listing the shop name, location and contact info, with a simple text listing of their entire inventory. In this way, potential customers, who are beyond the shop's local area, can perform a web search, find an item in the shop's inventory and contact the shop to order it. This assumes that the shop owner isn't trying to run a museum or is otherwise content with the level of business from those customers who walk in the door.
Another way to read this, is a person posts what they are looking for, and a person in the area could set up a purchase transaction for the traveler to pick up. Thoughts?
This does work. I've done it with 1/24 NASCAR and Sprint Car model kits. Too bad that certain LHS is gone. He had TONS of N !!!
My idea is that we help each other find things on our 'lists', increasing the social aspect of the hobby! Too many old LHS owners don't know or understand how to set up a website, much less want to inventory twenty years of shelf product haha
There are already posts for "wanted" items in the Swap Meet section of the forum. Maybe the wanted list could be made into a "sticky"? A question for those hobby shop owners who don't (want to) maintain an inventory list of stock on hand: what evidence do you submit when filing a claim with your insurance company in the event that your shop burns down, gets leveled by a tornado or is otherwise destroyed?
Most likely taxes are the reason behind the lack of a published (and readily verifiable) inventory list. For tax purposes, I'd suspect the declared valuation of inventory is either just a WAG or is deliberately fudged.
Personally, I think (at least from what I am understanding) that having a place for people to ask others to keep an eye open for some things at whatever their LHS is, is an great idea. I'm sure that there are plenty of east coast roads sitting idle on west coast hobby shops that east coasters would love to have (and vice-versa). I know that one car that I was looking for. I know I HATE to pre-order cars, especially when after waiting for months or years for them to come out (IM, I'm talking about you and your Chateau Martin express reefer...over two years waiting before it was cancelled). I understand that pre-orders judge an items interest to a MFR, but if you aren't sure that something will sell, then don't tease it...it may very well keep another MFR from developing the same item (Concor, I'm talking about almost everything you say you are coming out with but NEVER seem to release...well, anything). Anyway, there was a car (Atlas SP daylight TOFC flat car, NOT the silver trailers) that I REALLY WANTED. It was released and before I could order it from anyone, it was out of stock (literally days after the release). Eventually I was able to get several from the second hand market, but I could still use more of them. On the rare times they come up on 'that auction site', the asking price is double (or more) than the list price (I haven't seen one there for well over a year now). Also looking for MT 390 00 000 undec wood DS box cars...and yes, I have posted both in the Wanted section of the For Sale board. I don't expect to find any more of either, just posting examples. I need to plan another trip down to the SF bay area so I can swing by that Concord shop as well as the one in Santa Clara, just to see what they still have...
It's one small way we could help keep the LHS alive... since I had to blow the dust off shelves of locos in several of my stops, but I see those same locos sell on 'that auction site' all the time. I think it's inevitable that we'll all be chubby little scooter-riders like in WALL-E within a few decades, and the internet will teleport us the things we want in an instant, but until then... it's painful to walk into a 1200sq ft LHS and be the only customer, knowing that somebody wants that N&W Geep or the old TOFC eastern roads pack etc. It might be hard to "sticky" more than a few want lists, I have at least thirty/forty "would buy now" items and I bet I'm on the low side...
Only have to "sticky" one thread, into which everyone posts their wanted items. Downside is that the "edit" function for this forum times out, so updating a want list might not be feasible.
The only thing to remember, would be that we keep our "finds" and conversations in PM. The worst thing that could happen, would be for one member to blame another if what they received from an LHS was no good. I can see someone receiving their treasure, some 25 year old Atlas SD-9, and being miffed it doesn't run like brand new (dry grease, bearings, etc.)... Still, I think I'll put my own wish list together and post it in the swap meet forum. Anyone else is welcome to join. Maybe a moderator can enlighten us on how to edit our wish list posts in a longer timeframe...?
Okay, it's up! Y'all go post some of your "wish I could find" goodies and let's get the ball rolling It's almost FRIDAY! WOO!
Unfortunately this is a limitation which is set in our software. A one size fits all situation. We can do some editing, which we do now. But should this idea take off, that might get to be a bit much for us to keep up with any significant demand.