Second hand prices on ebay are rising because of the epidemic of fixed price listings which now are the majority of listings. The prices are rarely cheap....in many cases more for an old tool secondhand model than we were paying for a new tool equivalent only a few years ago.

Cheers,
Alan

Dr Al, You are right about the prices.
I have some Langley County bodies to make up that have sat in a drawer for a long while. They utilise the old farish Hall chassis which seem to be going for quite a bit compared to the cost of newer and much more detailed/refined stuff. Are people actively collecting the old Farish stuff or is it a case of people putting a high buy it now price on things?
You can upgrade the County body by using items from N brass, but the cost of these plus what seems to me the somewhat inflated cost of a Hall chassis pushes up the cost of completing a white metal County. There was some postings recently about the future of white metal kits. I'm also conscious of the situation where once you start a project such as this somebody often announces a RTR version.
Having produced a RTR Manor a County could seem a viable model in RTR. What to do?!

Personally (and I don't mind sharing this as I don't bid on N ), unless the item is put in at an extremely attractive BIN or is something I really really want (not so much these days), I tend to flag it to my Watch List & keep an eye on it.  If the price is still within my limit in the last 15 mins, I'll place my maximum in there and get the first stage of the bid in - but hold on "Confirm" until the last 10 seconds or so.

OK, sniping software may come in & go above me; oh well.  Ditto a real person trying the same.  But it has to be something exceptional for me to break my limit ...

As to the debate on sniping (not the morals, thank God !  Yet, anyway  ), those saying "computers always win" need to remember that while automated systems are indeed fast - there are more factors in play.  How often do they "spam" eBay for updates ?  How long is the time from eBay responding to that request to it being received ?  How long to process the price & determine whether a new bid is to be made ?  How long to send that new bid and then confirm it ?  All you need is a few seconds delay in there somewhere (and it does happen - to automated systems as well as to us) and the snipe may well fail if the person defining it was too strict on the time (eg last 3 seconds).

Getting back to topic ( ) ... one item I use on trains (as opposed to infrastructure) is Ramsay's Guide.  No it's not perfect, but it does give a good indication.

Mike