The proverbial box of junk

What I hate is for someone to say I found some old trains in the attic, you may be interested in them and then they think all old trains are worth their weight in gold. And then they want you to offer them some high price for stuff like this.

Don't look a gift horse in the mouth. Yeah, that box was pretty much common junk, but once in a while you could hit the jackpot.

After I closed my display at Mall of America, I moved all of the trains to a warehouse space. One Sunday morning, I went over to get some tools. The phone rang (which it almost never did). The woman on other end said she had some trains she didn't want, and she was going to leave them on the porch, I could have them, free. I went and picked them up.

Got home and went through the stuff. There were a bunch of common items. I thought it was pretty cool getting a postwar ballast tamper with the original box. There was also the very common 6414 auto loader. But as we all know, it's all about the cars. At first I didn't see the cars. I was looking for the "deluxe cars" like came with my auto loader from when I was a kid. What I found was two red and two yellow cheap plastic cars. All the struts were intact. I had never heard of that variation before that.

Junk?

The Marx trains would probably clean up, and be a good train to give to a child.

The Lionel transformers look OK, and there are a few Lionel cars.

I'd be delighted if someone gave me a box with similar contents.

Clean them up and give them to a kid.  You never know what you'll start by passing them along.

Fred

Doesn't look like junk to me either. Clean it up and it runs. The transformers are usable, post war cars always have value as does the Marx stuff. Someone just handed you a couple hundred bucks. It will fetch a lot more than a modern logo with blown electronics. 

Some years ago, a client gave me a box of "junk". Turned out it was a Marx 666 set, with issues. This guy thought because it was old, it would get a lot on the bay. When this did not happen, I acquired it.

It opened up a new world for me. I had not previously considered Marx. I learned much since, because of this set. I have added more Marx to my collection. Without the box of "junk" I would be missing much.

Mark

PS I just noticed:I was demoted from Engineer to mere member. Oh well.

Mark:

I don't know you well enough to insert an attorney joke, but I admit I was tempted . . .