Many may not see it but we are plunging into economic depression. I collect Pre war Lionel and I have noticed during the past year, prices have dropped dramatically. The same goes for Postwar unless you have mint boxed items, then this will not affect you. However, I say this: Capitalism is crumbling every day. If I don't know everything about communism, you don't know anything except the fear of it.
I see the main reason for the decline in train prices as the 'war' between Lionel and MTH. They are producing to many trains! The market can not handle the volume they are producing. Put one of them out of business and prices will stabalize. Ebay is also a factor. I am sure the economy has something to do with it but I don't think we are headed for the 'crash'!
But seriously, never thought we'd hear from a communist in this forum, but your thoughts are 'interesting'!
Prices are stablizing because they needed to stablize. The economy does play a small part in this in that 1.) Funds are short, and 2.) Because funds are short, buyers are not giving in and paying assnine prices for junk. In my 30 years of collecting one thing that confounded me the most was 1.) Sellers who had less than par items, grading them as EX and pricing high. 2.) Morons actually paying premium prices for less than par items thus justifying the sellers harmful activity. Yes, this is a double edged sword in a way. Many times if a seller priced "fairly" then they would only see other "dealers" snap everything up and go back to their shops/tables and price the item too high. This feeds into the problem. The key is with us as the buyers. Simply refuse to pay EX or better prices for anything unless it IS EX or better. Nothing is that rare that you'll never see another one, I know, I've been paying attention to the market the last 30 years. Capitalisim is not crumbling, its mearly being abused and people are allowing it to be abused. When that abuse stops, things will improve. The key is that we have freedom of choice to make the change, if your in a communist country you do not, as your government is going to tell you what, where, when and how. Thats what we know, and all we need to know. We also know we don't want to live like that so chose not to. However given the Liberals today with their PC garbage, I can see a real problem there. Fairly soon we won't be able to do anything for fear of offending some moron somewhere that they are trying to protect. Oh, and what is happening is not plunging into a depression, we were alrady in a small one, and have been slowly coming out. Patience is an agonizing thing to some.
