The Great Goodbye Collection

I see today on the Hornby web site there is another chance to get your hands on the great goodbye collection.
The price still remains at £999.99. If your in the market for buying the A4 set you need to phone on this coming Sunday. I wonder how many sets remain? I was under the impression this set was limited and was sold out last time Hornby offered the collection for sale.


http://www.hornby.com/news/the-great-goodbye-collection/

 

The original collection was sold under the name Great Gathering as I recall so this collection is different, being the Great Goodbye collection!

 

Its basically Hornby cashing in on a successful limited edition run. There is no actual difference between the models produced for the Great Gathering and Great Goodbye collection - the only difference is the colour of the box (and no doubt accompanying certificate). A massive kick in the teeth to those that actually stumped up £1000 in the first place to secure the order, and then contend with various delays due to supply issues in China.

Still, means I may get my hands on a 60007 after all - i'm not paying circa £200 for a Hornby A4 though, as they seem to be fetching on eBay at the moment. Fingers crossed someone will be unfortunate enough to damage the tender/loco wiring, and will want to sell it onto someone who isnt interested in DCC ;-).

 

Give it 6 months..

They'll be dropping in value on ebay as the hysteria subsides.
Longer term with 6000 A4's all preserved in one year they will be the dominate "trickle" sale item on ebay for years to come.
I don't see much longevity In any of them except 4464 Bittern (it's the only one not made before by anyone), the rest have been done by the Red orBlue team.

 

I agree that the other A4's have been done before, however Hornby's latest offering is seen as pretty much as good as you can get in terms of capturing the essence of the real thing. I cannot see another manufacturer retooling another A4 to beat the Hornby model - unless of course you are inclined to pay circa £1000 for a Golden Age example (but even that is fitted with DCC sound, which isnt for everyone). In my mind, these locomotives would have been very collectible and held their price well, at the 500 as initially released. Even if 1000 were initially released, at least those investing would have been aware of the size of the run. As it is, Hornby have attempted to make a mockery of it by knocking out another batch and re-boxing/branding them. Like I say, I dont own any of either collection, but would be put out if I had preordered, sat through the delays, and then found out this.

An excellent example of the 500 vs 1000 divide is the Warley MRC limited wagon. Initially, only one wagon was produced with a limited run of 500 pieces. The wagon pretty much sold out on the Saturday, with demand high because, in essence, you felt you were buying something that you wouldnt be able to get elsewhere. Then, they decided to either increase the batch size to 1000, or produce two lots of 500, which watered the whole thing down and actually lost custom to a point where it was threatened to be stopped last year altogether. Limited runs should be limited - thats the point, otherwise people generally wont buy in to them.