New or Old Locomotives and Rolling Stock

That is one of the reasons why I collect plarail/tomy/trackmaster trains.  I did look into collecting HO train when I first start my "train" hobby.  Like you said, the rollng stocks and engines are quite expensive and not to mention it can get extremely complex when you have to install wires here and there.  I already have a headache just to install EZ Bachmann tracks.  

If you are into model trains, I would only buy used rolling stocks and not engines.  Rolling stocks are easy to fix.  Engines on the other hand requires a lot of skills like soldering and parts replacement.  The drawback of the used market is that you may have to acquire more than what you need as the market place may want to sell their items in lots as oppose to individually.    I wouldn't bother to repair trackmaster/tomy tender engines (the ones where there is a wire connected from the firebox to the tender). 

If you are still young, don't spent too much money on model trains as you may lose interests down the road.  I initially started my train hobby with wooden railway and then I move to battery operated trains.

I totally take your point and to be fair this is primarily a PlaRail site.  But the one good thing about HO/OO scale models is if you do invest in them you are very unlikely to lose your money.  If anything you will likely find if you come to sell them you are likely to get as much if not more than you paid for them new so long as they are in good condition and working order.  The continual price rises being what they are you could often probably make more money investing in these models than you would earn by leaving your cash in a high interest savings account or similar.  There was an example of this when 'Black Friday' hit the money markets some years back.  In the 3 years between the crash and recovery they reckon if you invested your money wisely on the stock market and made no mistakes over that 3 years you could have earned around 20% increase of your capital.  However during that same period if you had invested the same money in Lego sets and kept them sealed/pristine and sold them 3 years later your capital growth would have been 50% plus due to the collectors market and constant lego price increases and range cycling.  Well these days HO/OO models trains are pretty much in that same bracket, if 5 years ago you had bought the right models at say £100, now you can probably sell the same ones at £200 due to the new versions now being priced at £250-300.

A classic example of this market are the Limited Edition Hornby Dublo models that Hornby released to celebrate their 100th anniversary in 2020.  They were stunning models made with fully diecast chassis and bodies like the original ancient Dublo models from the 50's but to higher levels of precision and detail.  They proved so popular that they have continued to add to that range year on year (there are 4 models coming this year for example).  I managed to get hold of one of the Merchant Navy 'Elder Fyfes' models at the end of last year, like all of these releases these are limited to 500 models of each release.  At the time it cost me £235 which was a big price in my opinion, but I just wanted one of these.  Now these trade on eBay at between £400 and £450 each - so if I wanted to make a quick buck I could almost double my investment by selling a model I only bought about 3 months ago.

But this sort of thing is not limited to just the limited edition models, it seems that many normal models are only single runs of the model in each particular livery.  As you may have noticed I posted about the Hornby W1 'hush-hush' I managed to get on pre-order.  Again that was quite expensive, £180 or thereabouts for a normal non-limited edition model.  But it sold out in days and they have since changed hands on eBay at silly prices, one was seen to sell at £890!!  Why?  Because the first version was made in a special prototype grey livery.  The market has cooled down a little since the height as there have now been other versions released in other liveries including another in the grey livery, albeit a different variant.  So the first model is now down to a little more reasonable £280 or thereabouts.  But that is still £100 more than I paid for mine...

The sad thing is this sort of speculation is destroying the market for collectors who also want to run the locos as they simply can't get them unless they pre-order them which then encourages the manufacturers to keep pushing the price point up to a breaking point.  I should of course make it clear this is all manufacturers not just Hornby, I was just using those as an example as they are models I picked up.