Buying New Old train sets.

I have a Pennsylvania Flyer set that I bought in 1980ish. It sat unopened in the box for around 18 years. I got it out for my visiting grand nephew and it ran just fine. Still get it out every couple years and it always works.

There probably are cases where that may happen but most of the time there is no problem with the old but new sets

Merlin, I've been back in the train hobby some 32 years and only buy this type of train products. All my locomotives are starter set locos of some sort. By this I mean the DC can motor variety: In diesels, the truck mounted type (save for any postwar or MPC engines I have).

And in that 32 years I have never had a quality issue, or a DOA out of the box. Everything I have ever purchased still runs to this day. I've had one smoke unit fail (in a 4-4-2 after 13 years of heavy usage) and two DC motors finally give out (one in a K-Line S-2 and another in a Lionel Industrial Switcher, again after heavy usage).

So your thought of a good lubrication is a good place to begin - with a plastic safe lubricant! You could also check traction tires to see if they are cracked. Outside of those two basics, other issues could depend on where the set was stored, such as a damp basement or a cold garage. That might affect the circuit board reverse unit, but that type of board is pretty commonplace.

Another plus side to these types of products is parts availability. New parts are generally becoming harder to find because as to my knowledge, China isn't shipping unassembled parts anymore: The train companies have to order extras on the production run to disassemble stateside. This is a big problem for the high end trains that are made in miniscule production runs by comparison and often have unique-to-that-products parts.

Though it's not just high end: The state of parts availability for Williams by Bachmann is pretty dismal right now if you look on their website. And because K-Line is defunct, some parts for their products are now very hard to find, like operating couplers for the S-2 and Alco FA engines. But it's not impossible to modify a Lionel dummy one to fit on a K-Line engine.

Another plus is the low end starter types of Lionel trains are usually made in much higher production run numbers than the scale products, and in many cases share common parts, and are made for longer periods of time. Two former CEO's of Lionel said the 4-4-2 steam engine starter sets outsold all other train sets combined, which is another way of saying it was the best selling item in the catalogs (from late 1980's to the advent of Polar Express, which stole the "best seller" honor) outside of track.

Also Merlin, there's one more issue at play here that I never read about much here. People during the 1980's-1990's time period were buying too many trains, hoping to capitalize on the collector mania that was so common during that time.

I remember being in my local train shop and one customer was buying a half dozen gold aquarium cars. I asked him why and he said, one to run and five to sell for a lot more money down the road. That shop owner said he had a lot of customers buying multiplies of at least two for the same reason. Time has since proven that idea that ALL Lionel trains are going to be worth a ton of money in the future, quite mistaken. And I think this is why you see so many new condition trains from that time period for sale today, and in many cases for far less than what they sold for back then.

Have bought about a dozen MTH pcc trolleys and streetcars ans as long as I replace the nine volt battery BEFORE putting it on the track everyone has run perfectly.

I love buying NOS.  The older the better.  Pre 1999 or so.  Not only is the quality there, even the cardboard box is sturdy.

The majority of equipment I own is Lionel,  MTH from the late 80’s to late 90’s, as well as a few others like Weaver and K-Line from the mid 90’s to the early 00’s.

Most still have parts readily available because they either are based on 70+ year old designs (like Lionel’s scale Hudson’s) or the majority of their tooling is still being used in current production (like the K-Line light Mikado’s), so I’m not too worried mechanics wise.

The only time is if they’re very electronically based and I don’t plan on gutting the old boards out. Examples would be Lionel engines with Railsounds 1 & 2, and MTH PS1 locomotives. But that’s very rare nowadays since almost everything I buy nowadays gets upgraded to some extent, and most of the ones I have bought still run fine out of the box anyways.

We used to sell 150 or so starter sets a year back in the 90’s. Most had the 4-4-2 steam loco while some had the small Alco or NW-2 switcher . Never really had a problem with these sets or the locomotives except for some of the power packs from the late 90’s . Overall for the prices I see them for on eBay , Facebook and Craigslist they are a good buy

I bought a couple on letgo. That was a website that offered you items from 20 mile radius from your house. I feel bad because it was a lot of kids that were selling their grandfathers collection that passed away. Letgo merged with offer up. I never liked buying from eBay unless it was a special item I needed. In the picture I bought this Lionel nabisco Kraft set. It comes in 2 boxes. One is for Christmas and the second box had passenger cars. They gave these out to managers for Christmas but he never opened the box. It says 2002 and don’t know if these were sold to the public or not. I’m gonna try them when my layout is finished. I don’t think you can beat the price for 50 dollars. I don’t know if these are rare or not. I’m gonna look them up and see.

@Merlin posted:

I bought a couple on letgo. That was a website that offered you items from 20 mile radius from your house. I feel bad because it was a lot of kids that were selling their grandfathers collection that passed away. Letgo merged with offer up. I never liked buying from eBay unless it was a special item I needed. In the picture I bought this Lionel nabisco Kraft set. It comes in 2 boxes. One is for Christmas and the second box had passenger cars. They gave these out to managers for Christmas but he never opened the box. It says 2002 and don’t know if these were sold to the public or not. I’m gonna try them when my layout is finished. I don’t think you can beat the price for 50 dollars. I don’t know if these are rare or not. I’m gonna look them up and see.

According to Greenberg's 2020 pocket price guide (just a guide...as always, YMMV)

Lionel 6-31950 "Kraft Holiday UP RS3 Diesel Freight Set" (2002) - $149 (mint)

Lionel 6-31724 "Nabisco 3-car Passenger Set" (2003) - $110 (mint)

For all I know, those may have been the MSRP on the items. May have been a good deal for $50, though.

Can you post that Greenberg site that gives you prices on sets please. I have some sets I would like to look up. Thanks

@Merlin posted:

Can you post that Greenberg site that gives you prices on sets please. I have some sets I would like to look up. Thanks

It's not a web site, it's a physical paper price guide book: (I have no monetary interest in Barnes and Noble, it just was one of the first search results that clearly showed what is being referred to)

https://www.barnesandnoble.com...oger-carp/1132121093

For an on-line reference, your best bet (assuming any have sold recently) is using eBay and checking the box for only "sold" listings.  The "sold" search only works for titles though, unlike active auctions where your search can include descriptions.  So you may have to make a few attempts to be confident you've included text most sellers would include in their auction titles.

-Dave

Most train stores have copies for sale on their website or counters.

I had it with anything new (engine wise mostly) from Lionel. For the last (5) years I have had more than half of all new engine purchases either sent in immediately for repair or returned to the dealer. I finally stopped buying any new motive power before reading customer reviews.

For the last (2) years I am in the process of buying AGAIN all the sets and engines I sold from the 90’s up to 2012 to buy all the brand new stuff that does not work. My new stuff is mostly shelf queens and my “new old stock” is what I run on the layout. A little oil and grease is all it takes.

How is that for irony?

Donald

I run MTH PS1 and PS2 and even a wonderful Weaver QSI SD40-2 along with a few MTH PS3s.Actually I like the PS1s with their short station announcements better than the long--long PS3 audios.

I've bought nothing new, but have upgraded a couple of MTH F3s to PS3 primarily to take advantage of the built in capacitor and the excellent engine sounds.

Lew

I bought the Lionel Greenberg book yesterday on Amazon for 21 bucks and today I see they have a updated one that goes thru 2021. Funny

I've bought new old stock sets from Lionel and K-Line.  They've all run fine despite being issued years earlier.  Prices are a lot lower than brand new sets, and their performance is great!

I really like buying new old stock MPC, especially the quality items. The graphics are better than postwar and engines are easy to maintain.

Miketg

@Merlin posted:

I bought the Lionel Greenberg book yesterday on Amazon for 21 bucks and today I see they have a updated one that goes thru 2021. Funny

The values in any price guide need to be taken with many grains of salt.

Greenberg guides are not even close.

IIRC, TM Books and Video sells the price guides too. Nothing against Amazon, but whenever possible I prefer to buy from the cottage industries in our hobby vs. spending money with the retail giants.