We report loco selling prices.
Based on 18 DTFS sales we report the lowest price for a used model as £395, the highest £1,512 and the average as £980.
We are offering a working guaranteed used DTFS for £595. It's an early certificate number too.
That's too cheap
We are selling a DwightD for £20 less than average and Seagull for £40 more than average.
How are we setting selling prices?
For a serviced and guaranteed product I think average price plus service repair cost (say £100) is fair.
We do need to take into consideration the advantages to the club of selling locos to club members at a reasonable price. The follow on shop sales can be very lucrative to the club so should not be ignored. Any income gained from loco sales can easily be doubled when shop sales are factored in. This also promotes the benefits of being a club member.
Val x
Adrian the sheet you refer to is the one that tracks EBay prices.
There is already a draft Loco Sales Policy in the process of being finalised for consideration by the committee and a full explanation con be found on this link.
To arrive at a fair frice for both buying and selling from/to club members we monitor the Ebay prices, take off the EBay and PayPal charges, and then compare the derived amount wiith the average of the last fives years (nearly six now) of club and add for sales add in a a reasonable profit. This gives a figure that we know is fair but it is then a judgement call for the Loco Sales Manager to add or remove a little depending on the circumstances. Nigel is continuing along the same lines as started by Maurice with one change and that is to add in any servicing and/or parts cost to the buy in price before adding the notional profit (average of £100 per loco).
In seeking to broaden the appeal of Live Steam, as a Non Profit Making Organisation, surely we should be minimising the cost for members to initially get involved ? We are not a commercial organisation seeking to maximise our ROI/profit. The buying and selling of locos is a service the Club offers to members.
Simply Models and others Ebay pricing could actually be doing us a favour in steering people to OOLS Club where models are available at a sensible price including servicing and a 3 month warranty. Maurice didn’t seem to see any need for “price matching” Ebay. So if it ain’t broke don’t fix it
If you dont agree wiyth methodolgy then as suggested by David and Val bring it up at trhe next AGM.
No doubt this is one for the AGM, but I think it's worth going back to consider why we sell locos. For that matter, why we sell serviced locos.
For me, the aim is to get locos back into regular use by our club members at a fair and reasonable price. I don't think we should be selling locos in order to maximise club funds. I would suggest that we only need a modest profit in order to fund other club activities (eg roadshow, new shop parts etc).
We do need to somehow take account of market conditions, but I would suggest that is done through the price we pay (our cost), rather than our selling price. Given the time taken for servicing, that always means we will be lagging the market, but that's OK isn't it? It should help to stabilise prices.