The "best" deal ever!!!

Two that I remember are a K-Line semi scale Hudson for 75 bucks, needed a 10 buck E unit from my scrap box. Not feeling too smug as I saw one just sell for 50 bucks on the bay. Also a Lionel TMCC scale USRA 0-8-0 for 125 bucks that needed a repaint.

$85 K-Line Hudson

$130 after repaint.

Pete

I purchased a postwar Lionel 2343 Santa Fe "AA" for $5.00 at a flea market. It was in decent shape, I still have it.

I found this add on Craigslist. The add said "a grey lionel diesel engine. $500".  It included one picture of just the "a" unit.  When I got their he said it was a Christmas gift from his dad when he was 7. He was only allowed to play with it at Christmas.  He was tired of packing it around and wanted it gone. I couldn't believe it when I got it home and everything was still wrapped up in the papers.  Not a blemish on anything.  He also threw in another small steam set in its original boxes.  It has common pieces but the set box was a promotional item I still can't locate any info on. I couldn't believe it when I got it home and everything was still wrapped up in the papers.  Not a blemish on anything.    This was my greatest find/bargain.  

**The picture is from the internet.  Mine is packed away right now waiting for my house to be built.

Bhale posted:

I found this add on Craigslist. The add said "a grey lionel diesel engine. $500".  It included one picture of just the "a" unit.  When I got their he said it was a Christmas gift from his dad when he was 7. He was only allowed to play with it at Christmas.  He was tired of packing it around and wanted it gone. I couldn't believe it when I got it home and everything was still wrapped up in the papers.  Not a blemish on anything.  He also threw in another small steam set in its original boxes.  It has common pieces but the set box was a promotional item I still can't locate any info on. I couldn't believe it when I got it home and everything was still wrapped up in the papers.  Not a blemish on anything.    This was my greatest find/bargain.  

 

**The picture is from the internet.  Mine is packed away right now waiting for my house to be built.

How cool is that?!  Do you seen a green color on the distant horizon?

The vast majority of my collection is via 'deals'........and I get them on ebay, my local hobby shop, train shows and here on the OGR forum.  My Lionel 1st generation Big Boy was a great deal at $450 delivered......not cheap but much less than the new VL loco.

John C. posted:

Bhale posted:

I found this add on Craigslist. The add said "a grey lionel diesel engine. $500".  It included one picture of just the "a" unit.  When I got their he said it was a Christmas gift from his dad when he was 7. He was only allowed to play with it at Christmas.  He was tired of packing it around and wanted it gone. I couldn't believe it when I got it home and everything was still wrapped up in the papers.  Not a blemish on anything.  He also threw in another small steam set in its original boxes.  It has common pieces but the set box was a promotional item I still can't locate any info on. I couldn't believe it when I got it home and everything was still wrapped up in the papers.  Not a blemish on anything.    This was my greatest find/bargain.  

 

**The picture is from the internet.  Mine is packed away right now waiting for my house to be built.

How cool is that?!  Do you seen a green color on the distant horizon?

I can't sell it cause I can't afford to replace it.  LOL

I forgot about this one. When I was 14 (37 now), I loved boxes and still do.  I found this under the table deal for a dollar.  So the best bargain would be this little box I guess since they are going well over 100 on ebay. 

**The picture is from the internet.  Mine is packed away right now waiting for my house to be built.

I won a Plasticville pedestrian bridge on Ebay once for a penny.  I guess that qualifies but it's not terribly exciting I'm afraid! 

My best deal was at a flea market: A K Line NYC F3, AB set, an MTH PARR Madison car, (16"), several other pieces of rolling stock that I can't recall, an HO transformer and some track, and a 4 foot pipe wrench for $6.00! I still have the pipe wrench hanging on the outside wall of my work shop. I sold all the train items and probably quintupled my money or more. 

Don

Not my deal, but my fathers - when he was young in the early 60's, he wandered into his Lionel watering hole and in his exploration inspected a box for a Lionel 220T only to find it heavier than it should have been. Realizing a 220P was within, he purchased it. That locomotive now rumbles around my layout.

I could tell you about a couple of engines that I got cheap. That might be bragging and/or rubbing it in to the guys who sold it?

 I could tell you about some that I sought after and finally found that were more important. Some are still sitting in their boxes. I think that I got so many that each one blurs out the others.

 So the most important one for me was my first in O scale. It was a MTH dummy engine CP rail SD90MAC. It looked so good I bought it without knowing fully what would happen next. I brought it home and was amazed at the feel of just holding it. It seemed to have great detail and yet very rugged. I even let our grandson roll it around on the bare floor. He treated as gentle as I could ever do.

 That first one was the best deal. It affirmed that HO was too small for me. It showed me that G scale had not come full circle with proper details and proportions that I desired in modern engines. It is the best balance of size, mass, and detail. Now if I could just get the rest of them....

My best deal ever was the latest engine I bought.  A new Lionel LC+ camelback from Amazon for $245.  I hadn’t bought a new Lionel since the MPC days and wasn’t the least bit in the market for a new engine since I had just taken delivery of an MTH F7 ABBA.  But when I saw the price Amazon was asking, I couldn’t resist.  Right after I bought it, Amazon bumped the price up to a few bucks less than retail.

Engineer-Joe posted:

... the most important one for me was my first in O scale. It was a MTH dummy engine CP rail SD90MAC. It looked so good I bought it without knowing fully what would happen next. I brought it home and was amazed at the feel of just holding it. It seemed to have great detail and yet very rugged. I even let our grandson roll it around on the bare floor. He treated as gentle as I could ever do.

That first one was the best deal. It affirmed that HO was too small for me. It showed me that G scale had not come full circle with proper details and proportions that I desired in modern engines. It is the best balance of size, mass, and detail. Now if I could just get the rest of them....

Joe, I liked your post to the topic. It really drives home the point that a bargain doesn't necessarily mean "cheap," but involves our feelings of satisfaction in terms of the value delivered. I really got a sense of how much that model meant (and still means) to you, and affirms the magic of discovery and loving what you have.

One lionel train set I found came with a large bridge that was 70 inches long. Really too big for Lionel trains in my opinion. Turned out to be a 1907 Marklin hand painted 1 gauge bridge.  Also found a cheap postwar steam engine set once with an extra 3454 merchandise car in the set.  One 3454 had blue lettering and one 3454 had red lettering.

I bought off the bay a complete 2231W Southern A-B-A set with other cars. Shipped in the set box for 2265W ( yes i cringed when I saw that ) and another box. Well the extra cars where for the 2265W set so all I needed was a 736 loco and 2046W tender and I had that complete set also for the original $600 so after buying the 736 and tender for about $150 I had both sets with all there boxes and the 2265W set even had set box. Like a fool thou I sold the 2231W set but still have the 2265W set. 

Two come to mind. 10 or 12 years ago I was at a junk/estate auction, and most of the bidders were flea market vendors. They don't bid very high. I got a new in the box Bachmann On30 Royal Blue set for $45.00. 

 More recently, I was wandering around an indoor flea, NOT looking for trains, and I ended up in a booth run by a guy that wanted to get rid of all of his train inventory. He had a sign up saying $300.00 for everything. I did not ask any questions, I barely looked at the trains, but the guy blurts out that he will take $100.00 for all of it. I got 3 boxes of miscellaneous stuff, including tons of rolling stock, track and switches, loads of little figures, 7 sets of MTH freight trucks, a box of electrical items, and two perfect Lionel catalogs from 1957 and 1958! I added up the prices on the items that were tagged, and came up with $625+, and lots of items weren't tagged. This is not all of it.

When I was a teenager, I was at a flea market with my parents and saw a black postwar 3562-1 barrel car on a guy's table for $5.  It was the only Lionel item he had and I grabbed it just because it was a Lionel train.

I learned later that the black one is one of the rarer variations.  I still marvel at my good luck 40+ years later.  Funny how that goes.

Steven J. Serenska

My best deal was probably for my Lionel BB1's that I picked up at a train show for about $250.  I very rarely see this set pop up on Ebay and I believe they only made them for a year.  One of these days I'll put an ERR cruise commander in them to cure the Odyssey lurch issue they have.  They're definitely unique locomotives and fun to watch run.

6-18030 Frisco Mikado never run for $300.   Box is in bad shape, engine is excellent.  Frisco Caboose for $50, BNIB.

At a clearance sale at a local hobby shop, I got a LIONEL cascade range set NIB for 80 bucks plus tax.  Docksider, 3 log dump cars, caboose, track, and a CW80.  Such a deal!  Love the docksiders.

My best deal was a 3rd Rail Brass PRR T1 in perfect condition for $200.  Gotta love those "Buick" portholes!

Bob

Best deal i ever got was a BNSF die cast es44 in perfect shape for 300 bucks...It suposely had a short .Someone or factory pinched a wire and that was all that was wrong.. I wish i still had it!

I was looking for a SP Daylight train. A gentlemen here offered me EIGHT K-Line heavyweight Daylight Special passenger cars for $200. I bought them and with about $25 in repairs and fixes they all are lit and run like champs. NOTHING is more beautiful than the SP Daylight!!!

Best deal I ever got was a Vision Line Challenger for 750.00 and a Vision Line New in Box EVO for 650.00

My best deal was a Marklin Maxi G 549900 Crane Car set in new box for $35 at a train show.

Did not match my other G tinplate so I Ebayed it for $231.00.

Now somebody wants $380 for same on Ebay.

Lehigh74 posted:

My best deal ever was the latest engine I bought.  A new Lionel LC+ camelback from Amazon for $245. 

Wow. There are lots of great deals listed here and some involve a lot more $$ but that IS a great deal on the new LC + camelback. They're consistently going for > $400 from many sources. Nice find.

My best deals ever are out of the junk bins under the tables at local train shows and off of E-bay:

Picked up a 3474 Western Pacific operating boxcar top (with holes melted in it) for $2 just to get the special doors off of it to complete another junker I picked out of a parts box at a previous show that was missing the doors.  I now have a complete 3474 WP operating box car for $7.

Picked up a 2243C  (middle car) in nice shape for only $5.  I have since cut holes in the side and installed port holes to make it look like a 2353C.

I once bought a box of 'slightly' tarnished track, 022 switches and misc 'junk' for $30 on Ebay just to get what I thought was an odd colored #160 bin sitting on the table with it in the picture.  It turned out to be a brown and pink speckled #160 bin in perfect shape.  I've never seen another one in those colors.  I ended up using the switches and track on my kids layout so it turned out well.

Best other 'find' was on E-bay, I made a 'speculative guess' that a set of cars were a part of the 1945 463W set based on seeing a grainy photo of the bottom of the 2466W tender listed by the same buyer.  I ended up getting the 2755, 2758, 2452 and 2457 cars (note, the bottoms of these cars weren't photographed in the listing) with black fiber board flying shoe trucks and whirly wheels on all cars for $33 total.  (I've since picked up a few of the same cars with deep dish wheels on them just for fun at local train shows, usually for $10 or less).

Traingeek

RRDOC posted:

My best deal was a 3rd Rail Brass PRR T1 in perfect condition for $200.  Gotta love those "Buick" portholes!

Bob

Hello Bob...........

How did you managed to get that for 200 dollars ?  so what really wrong with it ?

Tiffany

When I was about 14 my father told a neighbor about my train hobby. A few days later our neighbor came over to see my 4X8 layout. After running a few trains for him, he left and returned with a nicely preserved ZW transformer for me to keep! 

Tiffany posted:

RRDOC posted:

My best deal was a 3rd Rail Brass PRR T1 in perfect condition for $200.  Gotta love those "Buick" portholes!

Bob

Hello Bob...........

How did you managed to get that for 200 dollars ?  so what really wrong with it ?

Tiffany

Right place, right time.  It was a 3-rail item at a 2-rail show.  I don't expect to get this lucky again.

Bob

RRDOC posted:

Tiffany posted:

RRDOC posted:

My best deal was a 3rd Rail Brass PRR T1 in perfect condition for $200.  Gotta love those "Buick" portholes!

Bob

Hello Bob...........

How did you managed to get that for 200 dollars ?  so what really wrong with it ?

Tiffany

Right place, right time.  It was a 3-rail item at a 2-rail show.  I don't expect to get this lucky again.

Bob

Hello Bob.

 Oh you are very lucky !!!!!! I had to pay 1200 for my Sunset 3rd S.F. 5011in 2012.  I guess I am born unlucky and having very very HARD time trying to get a good running car that we need very badly and no one would help us.

Tiffany

One of the York Meet OGR tours to Weaver Models was about a year or so after Weaver came out with their brass models of the Reading G-1 and G-2sa steam locomotives.  Weaver was apparently blowing out the remaining inventory and additionally had lowered the sale price even more for the OGR tour participants.  I don't remember exactly what the price was, but it was way too good a deal not to take advantage of.  They are beautiful locomotives and are prototypically accurate for the Pennsylvania-Reading Seashore Lines.  The tour itself was great and the deal on those locomotives was the icing on the cake.

Last year I won a STD Gauge 384 Christmas steam engine, 14 STD Ga Christmas cars, 2 O tinplate cars, 2 z1000 transformers, and 300 feet of STD track (Gargraves and USA ), plus some lockons and misc.  It was about 600 shipped.  Instead of putting it on watch list, I placed a bid. Needless to say , I was shocked when I won. Everything worked great!

Bob

In the mid 1970's Lionel had a promotion where  for every three Lionel labels you sent in you got a free 9700 series box car.  A friend pointed out that each Lionel box had four labels.  I had a small collection of rolling stock by that time.  I cut up all of my boxes and ended up with enough to get 24 box cars.  Several weeks later the UPS driver delivered two cases from Lionel.  There were quite a few duplicates, but the price was right.  A couple of friends, who also took advantage of the promotion, had different road names.  After all of the trading I had seven or eight duplicate cars left.  I took them to a train show and put them on my uncle's table at $5.00 each.  He thought I was nuts.  I sold all of the cars to a single buyer and had some train cash to spend.  Not a bad deal for a 14 year old!

Tom

A #397 Loader with yellow cover. Local Flea Market Barn had it priced at an expensive $25.00 and a 10% discount for cash. The proprietor apologized that it was missing the belt and the paint was chipped... Wife said my eyeballs popped out when I saw it and I repeated holy **** for two hours straight...

I am still finding great deals today...but I think my best one so far was picking up the Lionel Postwar Celebration Series Super O Hudson Freight Set sealed for 375.00, and all of the late 90's early 2000's Scale steamers for under 400.00 each. Considering some went for at least 1k back in the day, getting them so cheap and sometimes still sealed were bargains for me.....

I paid $8 for this Marx loco and handful of tubular o-gauge track.

But I probably spent all of three times that much to make it look like it does now.

worth every penny too!

Thanks to everyone for sharing.  I had a good time reviewing this thread.  Some real great stuff.