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Post by Deleted on Sept 15, 2019 16:58:56 GMT
Andre came to visit. 2 hours of great conversation. Interesting stuff, I'll share.more when I get home. Busy morning and made my goal. More to talk about later.  |
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Post by RLM on Sept 15, 2019 20:31:36 GMT
Excellent conversation and sharing experiences.
The two hours passed like 5 minutes.
Hope you sell more afternoon.
next time I am the area I will let you know.
Andre.
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Post by Country Joe on Sept 15, 2019 22:56:22 GMT
Wood, i hope you did well today and sold a lot of stuff. Your table looked great. A lot of bargains to be had. The Railking Creamsicle car looks very cool.
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Post by Deleted on Sept 16, 2019 0:44:16 GMT
This day was incredibly interesting due to the sharing of old friends, meeting new friends, learning another aspect of our hobby and cleaning out some of my stock. I rode with 2 veterans of the vendor wars, friends from RI, Joe and Walt. Walt has a big 2002 delivery van and we packed all of our stock together. We had assigned tables and were pretty close together in the Old East Greenwich Armory. There were 35 vendors. Beautiful building with no air-conditioning.
We arrived about 7:00 am, lugged our boxes inside and starting setting up our tables. I posted earlier the pic of my inventory. I had a mix of most items representing our Hobby. Only one engine, a remake of the famous New Haven 209 post war ABA F3. 2 sets of K-line passenger cars, a 5 pack of 18" Canadian Pacific, brand new and one 6 car set of K-Line 16" Reading passenger cars. Also there were, 20 freight cars some of which were very nice and many were new in the box. Plus 2 MTH cars, the Popsicle and the CreamSicle car. A good variety of buildings, some building kits new in the box and prebuilt scenes including 6 modules of a Shelf refinery. Beautiful work done by the guy at York. (The Shell refinery was a product I bought from Brian Vail (PTC) when he took down his old layout. I only had room for 3 of the modules on my layout and decided to sell the remaining.)
At 9 AM the doors opened. Reasonable early attendance, my guess is 50-60 people between 9 and 11AM. The big attraction was on my table and it was the large Shell Refining modules. It was quite unexpected and amazing. The vendors and customers flocked around and kept coming over to look at the setup. I had them priced reasonably but not cheap. They would look, talk, walk away come back and buy. Of the 6 modules I sold 4, all to a vendor and experienced model train members.
The vast majority of the attendees were older people or young families with little experience in the hobby. I only sold 2 cars and that was the Popsicle and CreamSicle cars, bought by a family and I think it was because it was such a colorful and playful car. I did sell a Lionel Wind Turbine and the Lionel FORD rotating tower. Good prices paid for both. I sold two buildings and none of the kits plus a little track and some tractor trailer trucks.
I am recounting all of this because it was quite interesting not to sell any of the nice rolling stock I had available. My friends had similar inventory of nice rolling stock but without any accessories. Both of these veterans had $0.00 in sales. Shocking!!!
After 11AM it was dead. Maybe 20 people came, in those 3 hours left before ending at 2:00 pm. I doubt the total attendance hit 100 people.
The Southern New England TCA is led by a group of members who are dedicated to TCA. The problem is nobody wants to volunteer and help. The man who set up the whole event was Dean Johnson who is nice gentleman, 85 years old and has a bad back. He asked me and my friends if any of us were interested in helping out. We did help to clean up but did not offer to assist in the future on events. I felt bad...
The last of this story is about Andre, River Leaf Models. I am going to post about the great conversation we had on the River Leaf Model Board.
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Post by thebigcrabcake on Sept 16, 2019 1:10:48 GMT
That's really interesting Wood. Surprising that the quality rolling stock attracted little interest. After this experience would you do it again as opposed to selling on eBay? Do you think a bigger crowd like York would be worth the effort and expense?
In any case, Thanks for sharing your experience.
Emile
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Post by Deleted on Sept 16, 2019 11:19:18 GMT
That's really interesting Wood. Surprising that the quality rolling stock attracted little interest. After this experience would you do it again as opposed to selling on eBay? Do you think a bigger crowd like York would be worth the effort and expense? In any case, Thanks for sharing your experience. Emile Emile, This was my first time out and they're a lot of model train members doing this. The TCA has another meet in 2 weeks. I am going to try it again. My friends who sold nothing have been doing this for years. They warned me, before the meet, that sometimes it doesn't work out and sometimes you have a great show. I think it is another part of the hobby, they knew multiple vendors and appeared to have a lot of fun socially. York? Not me, too far away and too big. I do believe larger venues with good reputations would help. Then it comes down to your presentation and pricing. I have had a lot of success with eBay and the model train forums. Hopefully our own "Buy/Sell" board will be successful. I am going to post this week to our own board. |
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Post by laz57 on Sept 16, 2019 14:21:39 GMT
WOOD,
Great that you did have success in selling some of your things. GlAd you had the opportunity to meet and talk with ANDRE. Great Fun GUY. See you at YORK.
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Post by ptc on Sept 19, 2019 10:28:30 GMT
Just to meet Andre was a treat fo your Wood.
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Post by Deleted on Sept 19, 2019 11:41:23 GMT
Glad you had some success there Wood. Could you post a pic of the refinery you mentioned?
Regards ,
Gary.
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Post by ptc on Sept 19, 2019 13:49:31 GMT
Very happy Wood that you shared your train meet story with us. You brought to this show a very personal touch.In essence, that's what the OGF is all about.
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