I follow the railwayana auction market quite closely. I wasn't surprised by the BALLYMOSS hammer price.
I am an economist and railwayana is a great example of supply and demand in action.
Unless some were replaced during their time in service, there should only be 44 Deltic nameplates in existence and a fair number of those will be in museums (particularly the regimental ones, I would have thought).
Supply is fixed. The railwayana people want to buy isn't being made any more.
Demand is very variable. But a high price comes when more than one person wants the same thing. In an auction, the hammer price is set by the last person to drop out, not the winner.
Diesel plates of the more famous classes like Deltics,Peaks and Westerns are now attracting the premium prices that the Battle of Britain,Kings and Britannia’s used to. Even 47 plates are about equal to a random Hall plate.
This is a reflection of demographic changes in the demand side of the market. Demand for steam era railwayana is declining. Sadly steam enthusiasts are getting old, and some are heading for the great scrapyard in the sky. When that happens, executors of their estates dispose of their collections, and there are fewer investors to buy. In due course there will be more sellers than buyers and prices can be expected to start to fall.
Demand for diesel railwayana has been rising for a while, and prices with it. During covid there was a substitution effect with enthusiasts buying railwayana with what they were unable to spend on travel. But, more importantly, a lot of relatively rich diesel era railway enthusiasts are now reaching retirement age, with ample funds from pension lump sums (especially if they worked for the railway) and ISA investments. There is a wall of money entering the market: with supply fixed, and more buyers than sellers, prices are going up.
And general inflation at around 10% is contributing to rising prices too.
