I’m mostly what’s called an “Armchair” Model Railroader. Been one since 1973 when I was just fourteen years old, with my first purchase of a MRR magazine. That usually means I read the various hobbyist books and magazines but do not actually “build” things. Well, that’s not 100% true in my case, since I’ve built ~8 buildings (“structures” in MRR terminology) from various model kits the last few years. And I once started building my own “layout” (something involving laying train track and creating the surrounding scenery), but after getting it half done, the motivation to continue building it left me (long story there, don’t even bother asking).
(You can see the buildings I’ve created in my FB photo albums, as well as the partially constructed “layout” –
Layout
)
However, I’m also a collector of MRR stuff, such as the building kits (to build “someday”), and train engines (steam, diesel, and electric), as well as passenger cars. The majority of Model RailRoaders enjoy collecting freight cars, and then do “operations” with those freight cars (moving them from one location to another location on their layout, simulating an actual freight car operation). Myself, I envisioned having a layout where passenger trains moved from one city to another city. Here in the USA, this would be modeling the AMTRAK railway, or modeling one of the older passenger/freight railroads such as the Denver, Rio Grande and Western (DRGW). But, I always wanted to model the European countryside, with their TGV (France’s High Speed Railway), or the Japanese Bullet trains.
Anyway, over the last ten or so years, I’ve acquired some pretty nice MRR things – some a bit rare, while other’s are more commonplace.
I decided last fall to reduce my collection, and have been slowly selling my MRR things via eBay.
The reason why I’m writing this blog post today is due to a nice young man who bought one of my passenger car sets. There, of course, is a background story, before sharing with you the actual thing I want to share.
It turns out, the winner of one of my recent eBay auctions lives in the same town as me (“Beautiful downtown Apple Valley”). I thought that that was pretty interesting since, other than a feller over in Burnsville who has bought a couple of my items, most of my eBay sales have gone to all parts of the USA, and in a few cases, even over to Europe.
Well, in the ~300 auctions since I began my selling, I have made only one or two shipping mistakes. And, of course, the second one just happened to be with this young feller in AV who lives, apparently, just a few miles away from me.
Last week, while at the Post Office Kiosk, I typed in 55424 as his zip code rather than the 55124 which has been Apple Valley’s zip code since I first moved here fifteen years ago – you would think I wouldn’t make a mistake with my own zip, but I did. The next day, my buyer sends me a very polite eBay message, telling me “something has horribly gone wrong with my shipment, with the P.O. trying to deliver it to
Not knowing how long it would take USPS to return the package to me, I give my buyer the option of a refund or for us to just wait for the item to be returned to me, at which point, I’ll resend it to him with the correct zip on it. I also gave him the option of sending something similar to him, which I could immediately send to him. After some discussion, he took up this third option, and I mailed it out last Friday, with him receiving it on Saturday.
This morning (and now comes the original intent of this posting), I get my last eBay message from my buyer, making me smile:
“Got ’em on saturday. my dad is extremely pleased!!! my mom not so much (‘where are you gonna put them? you can’t run them on your layout. you don’t even have engines for them.’) nevermind that the intermountain f7’s won’t come out until november but thats beside the point 🙂 i’ll keep an eye on the tracking number for the lost ones, and if they end up coming my way i’ll let you know and we can get them back to you.”
Such a nice young man.
Thanks, Jason, you made my day.
