Forgot to clarify that indeed modern era was what I was referencing with the boxes. The only time I've actually seen box swaps in this period is from the manufacturers that make their products in 2 or 3 rail versions. I have a few Atlas O boxes that have a 2-rail label crossed out with 3-rail handwritten on it.

I'll put my input into this -I believe 2 factors are hurting the collectible market

1-i saw a 60 minute segment on baseball cards-they went to a baseball card in

NJ.and spoke to a top collector .he said he remembered when the show use to be packed

YEARS ago and now it is almost empty.he blamed the internet auction sites for killing the collectible market-look at the big auction site-over 75,000 o gauge items up for sale.

see how many mickey mantle cards there are for sale.

2)baby boomers are hitting 65 and unloading their collections flooding the market

with their collections hoping to put their kids thru college.

old playboys are worthless now-

Never ever buy items like trains, cards or whatever thinking you will make money in the future. Buy it because you like it and use it as it was meant to be.

There are many other choices to invest in. 

I think that this is the exact reason people feel the need to equate monetary value with their collectibles.  It is a way to explain to those who are not into that particular collectible that it does have worth to someone and that the collector is not somehow crazy or strange for wanting to collect that particular type of item.

Last year, at my club's biggest non-train-show setup, I got a lot of questions from non-train people what our trains were worth.  I would always avoid quoting numbers, and I would always say that while the trains did have monetary value, that they would never be good investments in anything other than fun.

Andy

My brother-in-law has been collecting from the Golden Age of comics for years. He was once offered $27K for Fantastic Four #1. I know he has two very early Superman #2 and the first one introducing Superboy. Not sure what his collection is worth today.

I have read countless articles about how millenials are living at home into their late 20's.  They are largely under-employed with staggering non-dischargeable student debt.  They say in interviews and polls that they value relationships, not things.  A lot of them aren't even interested in owning a car.  They are putting off home ownreship, marriage, kids, until much later in life.

How will they buy your baseball cards, comic books, postwar trains, whatever if they have not money or even a home to store/run/display them in?

That's another good point. Gabe is 23 and terribly frustrated by the difficulty of finishing college *without* running up those astronomical student loans. It would be easy for him to apply and finish this semester, but as he says, "I can have a bachelor's degree, be out of work and owe forty thousand dollars, or I can be out of work, not have a degree and not owe anything." 

I know an awful lot of people his age who are living in ridiculous conditions in cities. A curtained-off part of a living room in a dicey DC neighborhood was going for $600 a month in October--three other people already live in the apartment, two in the bedroom and one on the couch, but they still need help with the rent because nobody has full-time work and they all have those giant loan payments. They don't have room for trains, or much else. The really scary part is that a lot of those who can't find work are going back to grad school, which means running up still more loans in the hope that the baby boomers will have been able to retire y the time they get masters' or PHD degrees.

--Becky

quote:

Nobody "hyped" us into deciding trains were "collectibles.

I don't know..... what about almost annual price guides with spiraling prices, an endless parade of limited edition items, and orders mysteriously being cut, so seemingly random items were in short supply.
And if today's trains could all stand on their own, why the need to decorate them with the postwar numbers of items they resemble?

I think the market was manipulated.

quote:

A lot of them aren't even interested in owning a car.  They are putting off home ownreship, marriage, kids, until much later in life.

I don't think that's due to interest, I think it is due to economic necessity.

I read the article, I didn't see any reference to being environmentally responsible, although I could have missed the statement or the inference.

I did see:

quote:

"When we've talked to millennials, they actually answer that question quite thoughtfully," Hennessy says. "While they do still want to own a car — not as much as they want to own a smartphone, by the way, that's the physical possession they're most attached to — they are thinking about, 'Do I need a car or not?' in a way that I think five years ago or 10 years ago we wouldn't have seen to the same extent."

My brother-in-law has been collecting from the Golden Age of comics for years. He was once offered $27K for Fantastic Four #1. I know he has two very early Superman #2 and the first one introducing Superboy. Not sure what his collection is worth today.

 

The comic companies and individual artists tried to recreate the Golden Age of comics in the late 80s and early 90s.  Many of the top artists at Marvel and DC left to form their own independent companies and with it new books/superheroes.  The most celebrated of these people was Todd McFarlane who created the character and book Spawn.  Spawn was the hottest comic of its time which led to the movie for a character the general public had never seen before.  Frank Miller and Sin City fits the same mold.  Sam Kieth, another of these artists, created the Maxx which was optioned as a cartoon on MTV.  Like Spawn the goal was a larger than comic book audience.  Both Spawn and the Maxx books are essentially worthless today.  The characters did not become the new Spiderman or X-Men.  At the same time Marvel and DC were introducing new versions of their regular characters so people could buy the #1s of the new series.  Again those are essentially worth pennies today.  DC saw the light before anyone with the "new" Batman movies and Marvel became the Marvel Entertainment Group.  Most of those new characters and books that were the new golden age are gone now.  The Savage Dragon isn't in the general publics mind but Superman and Spiderman sure are.  Even the Silver Surfer, who was always a fringe Marvel character was featured in a movie.  There is a message here about large corporations, media and who really decides what the public wants.

Scott

For most of us we collect because we love the items, love to handle and use them and hope for the best beyond that. My other great hobby is slide rules....ever try to talk to a 23 year old about adding logs and cool scales like hyperbolic sine and cosine? The good news is you can buy stuff cheap but the slope of the price-year sole is definitely negative!

I really love this thread. It's a great reminder that our trains are just toys, so we should all go down to our train room and have fun  with them. That is where all their true value is at.

Yeah.  And if the market collapses, we will all be able to afford even more and better trains, right?

I have an extensive collection of baseball cards,  and still enjoy building a set of Topps cards from boxes. I enjoy baseball, and enjoy reading the backs of the cards (what do you write for a .225 hitter?  "Went 2 for 4 on May2nd to help win the game 6 to 3").  So from that perspective, the cards have intrinsic value to me, but that may not mean they will go up in value.  Frankly, I wish I had started buying trains a lot earlier than I did,  their value to me is is much greater because of all the things you can do with them,  and the quality of the material used in their construction has generally been amazing.  Lastly, I don't need to worry about one of my 736 engines to have tested positive for HGH and wreck its value. 

quote:

Yeah.  And if the market collapses, we will all be able to afford even more and better trains, right?

LOL, I used to tell my brother just that!

Oh, Yeeeaaaah, and keep up that negative talk - that'll help everybody....yup.

I've asked this same question many times.  What I really want to know is what compels people to pay retail prices for "brand new" rolling stock that has essentially remained unchanged in twenty years or more?  Is there not a glut of train stuff already?  I understand the new locos with the new bells and whistles (and chuffs and lights.. etceteras), but really, isn't most of the rolling stock the same as that already out there on the market?  

That said, I do believe there is some collectible stuff from the 90's that hasn't been mentioned... The Rt 66 collection, the ERTL flatcars collections, the AEC collections...  

Yes, that UFO Cafe still goes for over 300 bucks on the Bay.

But, was the earlier rolling stock available in a roadname or decoration the purchaser wanted?

Rusty

>>>Yeah.  And if the market collapses, we will all be able to afford even more and better trains, right?<<

And I'm sure in time it'll take Lionel to the dumper along with it. 

The O gauge hobby needs a viable collector market today more then ever for its survival.  With the current downslide in popularity easily traced to changing entertainment trends, its brought far fewer fans into the helm. 

The last thing this hobby needs is the acceleration of depreciation that curtailed spending and depressed the market over the past few years.

Joe  

Its obvious that what fires our imaginations has no objective rule of thumb to any aspect of it and the only exception to that is what is produced in the majority of products as recycled variants of the same prototypes of Class One equipment.

Simply put,   A healty collector market brings awareness and stimulates growth in a market stagnated by changing entertainment trends.

Joe

An example of imagination on the part of a manufacturer that creates something unique without being too cute for words..Combine a articulated New Haven streamliner seldom reproduced and give it a new twist as a Heritage Amtrak scheme. Collectible on it's merits rather than being designed as a homage to Disneyland, Coke or NASCAR.If this were an O model, I think it would be worthy of collecting as a unique item. This seems to be the issue with O collectibles in that they remove themselves so far from the point of the exercise ( railroads) that they are some sort of odd hybrid of cross marketing that end up as erstwhile parodies of what is considered a collectible. 

.http://www.con-cor.com/HO-Amtrak-Comet.html

Collectors buy what they collect.  If what they collect is still being made, then they are supporting the manufacturers.  For example, I collect Lionel Mint cars.  Lionel keeps making them, so I am buying new production for my collection.  On the other hand, Postwar and Prewar collectors are buying old stuff that is no longer produced.  They do not support the manufacturers directly, but they can inspire others to get into the hobby and thus support it indirectly.

Andy

quote:

This seems counter-intuitive to me.  Collector's buy old stuff and therefore don't contribute to the expansion of the hobby, right?  Doesn't Lionel need "consumers" rather than collectors.  "Consumers" being people who keep buying brand new stuff every year.

Not at all.

There are folks who collect newly made stuff.

Then there are the folks who buy newly made stuff with the thought that "Lionel Trains are valuable". They think that the Lionel name is magic, and their trains will appreciate in value even after they've been used, and sometimes beaten to death.

A close variant is the person who justifies their expensive trains by telling themselves that they can always sell their trains, and get their money back, or perhaps make a little profit.

Plus, as I recently said, there is a little collector in a lot of Lionel's customer base. Otherwise they wouldn't be exploiting old numbering schemes, and packaging their product in replicas of original Lionel Corp packaging.

Also, I think its incorrect to say that collectors don't contribute to the expansion of the hobby. Plenty of collectors give train sets as gifts, and help interested parties get started with trains.

I find myself agreeing with JC642, without a viable collector market, Lionel is doomed.

Were that to happen, I'd still enjoy my trains.