Vintage pricing!

[Miggers]

And to think I sold my Optima Mid Custom for £25 about ten years ago.

Then in 2007 there was a Procat for sale on E-Bay with a BIN of £35.
No one even bothered with it,

[discothesnake]

Originally Posted by terry.sc

To answer your question, I would say you are being unreasonable.

The vintage market is nowhere near as big as it used to be and in general prices have come down a lot compared with ten years ago. But back then there was a chance you could walk into your local hobby shop and find vintage parts to resell or go towards your rebuild, and there was plenty of loft clearance cars being put on ebay. People used to find parts in hobby shops and ebay them which meant there was always plenty of parts available, now the big sellers do tours of the country buying up old stock, and old shops are shutting with the spares they have left over being thrown away. It doesn't help that ebay are trying to put people off selling on there by charging a lot more than they used to.

Prices reflect supply and demand, for example vintage-kyosho sells Kyoshos Equalizer shocks at £20 a pair, while he has managed to sell out of
gold shocks at £50 a pair. There was obviously enough buyers out there prepared to pay £50 a pair for Kyosho golds even though most of us wouldn't. Another thing to remember, for vintage-kyosho/vintageavante/tamkyo-reprodecals and Europro975/Tonys Tamiya Parts selling parts on ebay is a full time job and their main source of income, if they overprice parts then they don't earn a living. If something you want is expensive from the big sellers it is because there is a demand for them and the sellers don't have many left, and we are talking about a limited supply of parts left in the world.

If you want a part and the big sellers are expensive, then do what everyone else does and wait for the parts to turn up at a reasonable price, or think laterally. For example I wanted a set of gold shocks for an Optima, so bought a Mid with a battered chassis for half the price of second hand shocks on their own. At least with Tamiya and Kyosho there is a good chance the parts will appear, my Predator rebuild took me 5 years to be counted as finished and I'm still waiting for some more original parts to appear.

Listen, I'm not really having a go at people who have shops. I'm more concerned about the EBay lot who are so greedy with prices. I don't mind them having an auction but it's the BIN prices that really grate me.

There is even someone wanting £120 for an empty box for God sake! Get a grip.

[terry.sc]

If someone wants to ask for £120 for a box then that is down to them, no one is forcing you to buy it. If it is the right model and in perfect condition then a few years ago it would have been snapped up at that price. Perfect condition boxes are the rarest part of any kit, after all the box is usually thrown away or used for storage. The prices have come down a long way from the heyday of vintage collecting, even though there were a lot more parts around 10 years ago because there was an even greater demand back then than there is today the prices were much higher back then.

At least 75-80% of NIP vintage parts being sold on ebay are sold by a small number of people who make a living from it, and the parts are priced accordingly to buyers demand and what they have sold for in the past. Tamiya parts are the worst, purely because vintage Tamiya fans greatly outnumber many times all the other makes put together.

If you really want to see a silly price, a new in box Tamiya Black Porsche in almost perfect condition is valued at around £5000. Yes, £5000. This price isn't plucked from thin air, this is the price that they have been sold for in the past. Now you might find this frightening, but here are a couple of pictures of a small sample of the collections of a couple of people who have paid that much.

http://www.spiegel.de/img/0,1020,1122790,00.jpg
http://www.spiegel.de/img/0,1020,1122788,00.jpg
This collector has just bought 20 new car and buggy kits, including a couple of 1/5th scales, plus a whole load of vintage NIBs as well just this past month.

http://www.tamiyaclub.com/showroom_m...94495&id=22062
http://www.tamiyaclub.com/showroom_m...3182&sid=22062
Yes, the car is real.

If you want to deal with the top end of the vintage market, then these are the people you are competing against. This why the rarest parts fetch huge sums of money.

In my case, I wanted a new body for an AYK Radiant but was having to bid against someone on ebay who was whatever price for everything AYK thanks to his business having being bought from him for $4 million. The bodies were selling for £100-150 because they are very rare and he could afford them, but I kept on looking. It took around 3 years, but either he missed it or had stopped buying, but I picked up a new body from ebay for £15.

Another example, for some reason JR-RC in Japan got hold of a huge stock of original Blitzer Beetle chrome parts, the same as used on the Sand Scorcher. He put them on ebay Japan in batches, about 50 at a time, and those of us in the know jumped on them and bought them at around £8 a set. Unfortunately the big ebay sellers got hold of them, buying 30,40,50 of them at a time so taking them off the market. Each batch took no more than a couple of hours to sell out. When the parts got to the UK, they relisted them for around £30 a set, because that is what people who desperately wanted them at any cost were prepared to pay for them. When people stopped buying them at £30 not surprisingly the price went down, and kept on going down as people stopped buying them. For those prepared to wait long enough, they ended up cheaper than if they had bought from the original seller in Japan.

At the other end of the scale, Tomy parts are supposed to be rarer than hens teeth and cost a fortune. I bought loads of Tomy buggy spares from a hobby shop clearance for £45, about 4 sets of suspension parts, gearbox cases, pulleys, wheels. I didn't want them, I though they would go towards paying for something I did want. Ebayed the lot of them last year when I needed the cash, and made a loss on the deal. The nip Tomy Intruder wheels sold for £10. I could have started them at higher prices, but having the cash was more important to me than holding out for more money.

If your problem is that you want to 'restore' using all new parts and you want to rebuild it now and aren't prepared to wait then the prices you pay will be at a premium. The real problem is that you are dealing with a limited quantity of parts left in the world and you have to compete with everyone else. If you don't want to pay silly prices, and I also think a lot of the prices are ridiculous, you have to work at it.

In my case, currently I'm trying to rebuild a CAT 2000. Can't afford to just go out and buy new bits, and certainly can't afford to just buy new carbon parts from Fibre-Lyte like a lot of people do. Bought a load of new parts cheap when Roundabout Toys shut down, including extras I have sold on to help fund the rest of the rebuild. New top decks seem to go for £30-50 on ebay, but searching through ebay I found a job lot of unknown Schumacher parts, including the top deck I wanted. Bought the whole lot for £8, and likely to end up with a free top deck and money left over when I get the other parts sold on.

If you want to rebuild them as new, and you don't want to spend a fortune like some people do, then you have to be prepared to wait and reasonable prices do appear. Also, don't just watch ebay and expect bargains to pop up, some of my best deals have come through people knowing I collect vintage and contacting me.
I bought brand new Lazer ZX-R, Procat and Mid cars for £25 each from someone's loft clearance, and cars picked up from car boot sales, cleaned up and sold on ebay to raise funds for others. Spent £600 on another loft clearance of 12 cars and spares, ebayed 4 of them and got my money back and still have 8 cars. A Cougar 2 wreck bought at a car boot for £10 with radio, cleaned up with spares I had, a tidier body picked up for another £8, ebayed for £60 to help fund my other car rebuilds. If you want to do it on the cheap you can, you just have to be more patient.

[Rich D]

Originally Posted by discothesnake

Listen, I'm not really having a go at people who have shops. I'm more concerned about the EBay lot who are so greedy with prices. I don't mind them having an auction but it's the BIN prices that really grate me.

There is even someone wanting £120 for an empty box for God sake! Get a grip.

I sold an empty Sand Scorcher cardboard box to a German bidder for £150. That was an 99p auction sale too. Before the re release was announced.

Sand Scorchers NIB were going for around £3500 at the time.

Supply and demand as Terry says.

[DanB4]

Originally Posted by terry.sc

If someone wants to ask for £120 for a box then that is down to them, no one is forcing you to buy it. If it is the right model and in perfect condition then a few years ago it would have been snapped up at that price. Perfect condition boxes are the rarest part of any kit, after all the box is usually thrown away or used for storage. The prices have come down a long way from the heyday of vintage collecting, even though there were a lot more parts around 10 years ago because there was an even greater demand back then than there is today the prices were much higher back then.

At least 75-80% of NIP vintage parts being sold on ebay are sold by a small number of people who make a living from it, and the parts are priced accordingly to buyers demand and what they have sold for in the past. Tamiya parts are the worst, purely because vintage Tamiya fans greatly outnumber many times all the other makes put together.

If you really want to see a silly price, a new in box Tamiya Black Porsche in almost perfect condition is valued at around £5000. Yes, £5000. This price isn't plucked from thin air, this is the price that they have been sold for in the past. Now you might find this frightening, but here are a couple of pictures of a small sample of the collections of a couple of people who have paid that much.

http://www.spiegel.de/img/0,1020,1122790,00.jpg
http://www.spiegel.de/img/0,1020,1122788,00.jpg
This collector has just bought 20 new car and buggy kits, including a couple of 1/5th scales, plus a whole load of vintage NIBs as well just this past month.

http://www.tamiyaclub.com/showroom_m...94495&id=22062
http://www.tamiyaclub.com/showroom_m...3182&sid=22062
Yes, the car is real.

If you want to deal with the top end of the vintage market, then these are the people you are competing against. This why the rarest parts fetch huge sums of money.

In my case, I wanted a new body for an AYK Radiant but was having to bid against someone on ebay who was whatever price for everything AYK thanks to his business having being bought from him for $4 million. The bodies were selling for £100-150 because they are very rare and he could afford them, but I kept on looking. It took around 3 years, but either he missed it or had stopped buying, but I picked up a new body from ebay for £15.

Another example, for some reason JR-RC in Japan got hold of a huge stock of original Blitzer Beetle chrome parts, the same as used on the Sand Scorcher. He put them on ebay Japan in batches, about 50 at a time, and those of us in the know jumped on them and bought them at around £8 a set. Unfortunately the big ebay sellers got hold of them, buying 30,40,50 of them at a time so taking them off the market. Each batch took no more than a couple of hours to sell out. When the parts got to the UK, they relisted them for around £30 a set, because that is what people who desperately wanted them at any cost were prepared to pay for them. When people stopped buying them at £30 not surprisingly the price went down, and kept on going down as people stopped buying them. For those prepared to wait long enough, they ended up cheaper than if they had bought from the original seller in Japan.

At the other end of the scale, Tomy parts are supposed to be rarer than hens teeth and cost a fortune. I bought loads of Tomy buggy spares from a hobby shop clearance for £45, about 4 sets of suspension parts, gearbox cases, pulleys, wheels. I didn't want them, I though they would go towards paying for something I did want. Ebayed the lot of them last year when I needed the cash, and made a loss on the deal. The nip Tomy Intruder wheels sold for £10. I could have started them at higher prices, but having the cash was more important to me than holding out for more money.

If your problem is that you want to 'restore' using all new parts and you want to rebuild it now and aren't prepared to wait then the prices you pay will be at a premium. The real problem is that you are dealing with a limited quantity of parts left in the world and you have to compete with everyone else. If you don't want to pay silly prices, and I also think a lot of the prices are ridiculous, you have to work at it.

In my case, currently I'm trying to rebuild a CAT 2000. Can't afford to just go out and buy new bits, and certainly can't afford to just buy new carbon parts from Fibre-Lyte like a lot of people do. Bought a load of new parts cheap when Roundabout Toys shut down, including extras I have sold on to help fund the rest of the rebuild. New top decks seem to go for £30-50 on ebay, but searching through ebay I found a job lot of unknown Schumacher parts, including the top deck I wanted. Bought the whole lot for £8, and likely to end up with a free top deck and money left over when I get the other parts sold on.

If you want to rebuild them as new, and you don't want to spend a fortune like some people do, then you have to be prepared to wait and reasonable prices do appear. Also, don't just watch ebay and expect bargains to pop up, some of my best deals have come through people knowing I collect vintage and contacting me.
I bought brand new Lazer ZX-R, Procat and Mid cars for £25 each from someone's loft clearance, and cars picked up from car boot sales, cleaned up and sold on ebay to raise funds for others. Spent £600 on another loft clearance of 12 cars and spares, ebayed 4 of them and got my money back and still have 8 cars. A Cougar 2 wreck bought at a car boot for £10 with radio, cleaned up with spares I had, a tidier body picked up for another £8, ebayed for £60 to help fund my other car rebuilds. If you want to do it on the cheap you can, you just have to be more patient.

Those links nearly made my eyes pop out Terry!

[amadán]

I think you should all leave disco alone he is just a tight Scotsman having a moan