Rick, I think that's indicative of a change in the way even the big dealers are working with Lionel now -- not wanting to be sitting on large inventories in this sluggish economy without a healthy pre-order level to justify a large initial order with Lionel.
Proof of this is the fact that Lionel is selling blow-outs direct to the consumer -- both via their occasional web store "sales" as well as the special warehouse events in NC -- rather than channel all those inventories thru places like Ro as they would have in the past.
While it's possible some of the larger dealers may occasionally have "sales" on items that haven't moved in their inventories for awhile, I'm more inclined to believe that the super-dooper blowouts that we saw on the Northerns, Mallets and EM-1's were originated by Lionel offering some of their excess warehouse inventories to dealers and distributors at lower internal costs. Those dealers didn't blow them out on their own... They needed to get the lower internal cost down from Lionel in order to sell at $699-$799, so they could still make something on the deal. ( Naturally, the dealers who are hurting when this happens are those who still have stock when they acquired their inventory at the earlier and higher internal cost, and then feel forced to lower prices to compete with dealers grabbing new inventory at the lower internal costs. Messy, but it happens.)
David
