jonnyspeed posted:Brass is taking a huge hit right now. I just took a bath on my Overland GP30. Paid $750 last year and just sold for $530 minus PayPal and Ebay fees. Ouch! A good friend of my is sitting on a good amount of S scale brass that he is having trouble getting more than 50% of what he paid. HO brass is even worse because modern plastic from companies like Rapido, Athearn, Scale Trains, etc... is so good. Fewer and fewer people are interested in painting and lighting. Not to mention that most people I know prefer DCC/Sound to come pre-installed. Add in the aging target audience and you see how we are where we are I guess.
I think you nailed it right on the head with this post.
Brass used to be the only factory-made way you could get:
- Correct details for the prototype
- Good can motors (in some cases)
- A model that held its value, unlike anything made form plastic
Those days are, thankfully, gone. For example, my Bachmann ten-wheelers have as much detail out of the box as a lot of brass used to come with. And already painted, too. You only have to look in a good hobby shop to see the amazing detail that is available for RTR HO and other scales now. Heck, some lot of it comes pre-weathered now! I saw a N scale set recently that has brass-quality details, painted, and weathered (two cars even had graphiti on them). Right out of the box it was ready for a photo shoot in one of the hobby magazines!
Some (if not many) people who buy/bought brass often were the types who liked collecting and wanted to know they had the most expensive stuff out there. Every hobby has these folks. The problem was, they often didn't run all that well. The magazines were filled with stories on how to re-engine brass locomotives so they'd run as good as they looked.
A good friend of mine in Florida collected brass for over 20 years and recently realized he'll never be able to sell it for what he has in it. His HO 'layout' is mostly a parking lot for a massive brass collection now. I doubt many of his locomotives ran all that well. Now, he's discovered the joys of O scale and will probably look to rebuild part of his massive (and for many years, totally dormant) layout into our favorite scale. But I can't imagine how little he'll get for his HO brass if/when he decides to sell.
I went to Whistle Stop trains in Portland a while back and looked in their brass case for the heck of it (it's all just HO, nothing I'd actually buy, due to the scale) and saw stuff for sale for less than what people paid back in the 80s, and that's not even adjusting for inflation! In other words, it's taking a massive hit in value when you consider what 70s-80s money would be worth today.
