brianel_k-lineguy posted:SIRT posted:Modelers have moved on past the toy cars to true detailed O along with the electronic advancements of today. No demand for non-scale anymore. You either have it all, look toward more realistic items or are just plain uninformed about all the numerous O variations.
At the last TCA presentation, Ryan Kunkle said that though it does not get nearly the attention the scale line does, it is the starter set traditional line that pays the bills and keeps Lionel in the black.
Of course, you can also repeat to yourself that the world is flat, but that won't change the fact that it's not.
Yes, there is no shortage of train products on the secondary market, much of it traditionally sized. But there have been millions of these kinds of trains made over the last 70 years between Lionel, AMT, Kusan, MARX, K-Line, Williams, Industrial Rail and RMT. The reality is that the overall size of the market has shrunk and there are just larger numbers of trains than there are buyers. Umm, there's also plenty of newer scale trains on the used market too. If some of those are harder to find, it's because their production numbers are so much smaller.
If Lionel totally dropped the scale line of trains tomorrow, it would hurt them, but not put them out of business. If Lionel dropped the traditional starter set line, there would also be no scale trains because there would be no Lionel.
Perhaps so.
I don’t buy new Lionel for re-sale unless it’s the original PS, X31, USRA or GLA series type cars. New car prices are too high along with poor quality issues as of late. New LS production cars look homemade vs. machine production. Too many variations with the new cheap trucks, paint inconsistencies rough and smooth and glue issues by making them one at a time in the US. Reason why 30 dollar cars are now 80 is because companies had to build in a warranty pre re-work cost for all the failures and returns.
