One of the primary objections, it seems, to once again allowing responses – like PRICE DROP -- to Buy/Sell threads is that it pushes newer items back in the queue. People don’t want you to respond to your own thread with “Price Drop.” Edit the original post, people will read through back pages of items, people will find your item. Or so goes the conventional wisdom. And to that I say, it being Sunday, consider the Parable of the Lost Diesel.
A couple of months ago I listed a Lionel Legacy Burlington Northern diesel engine for sale. Listed it for a price that I figured was comparable to what they were selling for on Internet auction sites. Unfortunately I had no nibbles. I received no inquiries, no low-ball offers, nada. By this time, maybe a week or two had gone by, and the listing was now pushed back to Page Three, I think, give or take a few lines. So I thought I’d try something. I edited my original listing, which kept it on page three, rather than delete it and start a new thread. I reduced the price….to $100. Yes, a Lionel Legacy diesel for $100. (And if that deal weren't sweet enough, I offered FREE SHIPPING! LOL) Thought I’d see just how many people actually flip through the old For Sale listings. Amazingly no one bought it. I never heard from a soul. Again, no one e-mailed me with any questions. No one asking “Is this for real?” No low-ball offers (I was waiting for someone to write, “$100…would you take $85??)
The fact that a Legacy engine for a hundred bucks on page three draws no response seems to indicate that not a ton of people are willing to scroll through pages and pages of For Sale threads.
Under the previous system, if you responded to your own thread and reduced the price of a Legacy diesel to $100, how long would it sit there unclaimed? 10 minutes? 2 minutes? 30 seconds? (I also tried a similar experiment with an MTH Premier 33k tank car from last year’s catalog that was not drawing any interest. Reduced price…50 cents. No one responded.)
Maybe there are some out there who wonder, “Why didn’t you delete it and post a new thread titled “PRICE DROP?” That’s all well and good but what’s the big different between doing that and responding to your own thread? Creating a new, reduced-price thread would’ve pushed the other items down one slot on the page. It would’ve added another topic to Recent Posts, which apparently is a real irritant for some folks. (I know, you waste all that time scrolling down the Recent Posts column and think, “there’s 10 seconds of my life I’ll never get back.)
Just thought I’d pass that along. I’m grateful for the Buy/Sell Forum either way. 
