As you may or may not know we started a strictly train auction site called choochooauctions.com some nine months ago. I remember it was somewhat of a tough. decision to make as it was time consuming and costly to get started.

But I had been doing auctions on ebay for some time before looking into this. To be honest I love ebay. It is probably the best thing since ice cream. I was jealous that I didn't think of ebay in the first place. Of course it would have been called eriebay had that been the case. But seriously I was paying a good bit of money to ebay each month because when you start doing more than a couple of auctions a month, the fees really add up. I was thinking that maybe if I started my own auction site that I could save some money in the end.

But then my other concerns were how would we start. I mean, I didn't want to start this auction site and sacrifice my inventory selling it at ridiculously low prices. And then we had to figure out what to charge for others to use our site. Of course we decided to make it free to use. Why you can even place your own auctions there. I don't know if many people know that, because I am one of the few dealers who uses it. And I will tell you this I realize just as much in most cases for Lionel and American Flyer Trains as I did on ebay. I know that is hard to believe, but it is true, and it is free!

I remember that first auction I entered on my own site. It was exciting to say the least. Almost immediately we received the first bid of $2.00. I can't exactly remember what the first item we auctioned was, but it had a value probably between $50.00 and $100.00.

I was amazed as I saw the bids come in. I can't remember what the final bid was, but I do remember I was tickled pink that something had sold on our brand new auction site at a much higher price than I had anticipated.

And if you have been to choochooauctions.com you know we have been auctioning items ever since. I might add that the bids have been very strong in most cases.

My biggest frustration with the auction process has been the time that it takes to prepare items for on-line auction, upload, maintain, and finish the auction. Of course we are already set up for mail order, but when doing multiple auctions, it can become very time consuming.

That is where my brain storm came in. I have now hired a person for the position of Auction Administrator. This will enable some very positive changes here at Train City. If you like bidding on our auctions, very shortly you will have many more auctions to bid on, as I plan on increasing the number of auctions we do drastically in the near future.

Traumatically this caused the fall of one of the biggest traditions here at Train City because we needed room for the new Auction Office! So I am sad to say that our famous back room has bit the dust. It is now a full fledged office. (Moment of silence please!)

But don't fret. We now have a haunted basement because that is where all the new purchases will go from now on. That's much bigger than the back room, so I am curious to see how long it takes to fill!

I'd like to thank all of those of you who have participated in our auction site. I hope more of you will explore it, as it really can be fun. In a very short time there will be more and more inventory appearing there where you will be able to bid the price you want to pay. Please visit often. And if you'd like to visit right now, just click here.

If you have comments or feedback regarding this article or any subject having to do with electric trains, please feel free to visit our message boards, where you can discuss topics related to trains with other train enthusiasts.

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Revised 8/29/00