Lionel MSRP Resource?

Interesting that the catalogs had the prices thru 1969.  Then from 1970 to the early 90's, no prices listed in the catalogs.

Then the prices reappeared around 1995 or so.

I wonder if that was because the dealers were charging very different things based on location, or a response to the economy, or if they just made the decision to remove the prices for marketing purposes. Either way it makes research difficult.

In some of the early to mid 1970s sets there was a flyer where items could be purchased from Lionel directly.  From what I recall the prices were considerably higher than what dealers advertised in magazines like Model Railroader.

I also have some dealer pricelist from the late 1980s / early 1990s. There are no MSRP prices listed, the prices listed are dealer cost.

What's also interesting I came across a Lionel 1973 suggested retail pricelist.

@J.Dooley posted:

I wonder if that was because the dealers were charging very different things based on location, or a response to the economy, or if they just made the decision to remove the prices for marketing purposes.

Having lived through it at the time, the removal of catalog prices occurred because inflation grew to the point that the prices were rising at an unfathomable rate. Every month they'd be several percent, or more, higher than the previous month, such that by then end of the year any price published at the beginning of the year would be seriously, and ridiculously, off.

Simple solution at the time:  Don't publish the prices.  That's why they stopped, and they didn't resume until 1990 when excessive inflation was long gone.

Mike

@Mellow Hudson Mike posted:

Having lived through it at the time, the removal of catalog prices occurred because inflation grew to the point that the prices were rising at an unfathomable rate. Every month they'd be several percent, or more, higher than the previous month, such that by then end of the year any price published at the beginning of the year would be seriously, and ridiculously, off.

Simple solution at the time:  Don't publish the prices.  That's why they stopped, and they didn't resume until 1990 when excessive inflation was long gone.

Mike

Scary, but also makes sense. Makes you wonder if we'll see that again in the future. Thanks for the context, that's really interesting.

I am not sure what the value of MSRP, since you could buy trains from mail order dealers at below MSRP prices.  I don't recall Lionel putting prices on their boxes, so hobby shops were free to price them as they wished.  Not sure how far back you are going for your study, but Charles Ro was a long time advertiser in Classic Toy Trains and Model Railroader before that.  Model Railroader had O Gauge advertisers going way back.  Below is a price list from Madison Hardware from October 1958.  A subscription to the Trains Magazine online platforms get you access to their complete archives for Trains,  Model Railroader,  Classic Trains and Classic Toy Trains, all for one price.  A combination of Madison Hardware and CharlesRo should get you a good historical record of retail train prices.  These are good reference prices because they are in publically available sources are represent what people were actually paying for the trains 

Oh wow, that's awesome @DL Brunette, thank you for sharing. I've also been scraping through some of the old catalogs to pull prices, but it never occurred to me to look at where the dealers were advertising. Makes you appreciate Charles Ro even more when you consider how long they've been doing this.

There's no "value" per se, it's just fascinating to me to track the original "MSRP" from Lionel alongside what I paid for a particular piece. It's fascinating (to me) to see how "expensive" trains were in different eras. I'm less interested in "what they are worth" and more curious about the historical context.

Actually, back then Lionel trains were free. General Mills and MPC were growing their new business ventures and decided to give business a boost by giving their trains away. Once the market was invigorated, they started putting prices on things.

(We’ll pretend it’s April 1.)