I recently purchased a Lionel 6-31753 set that is still factory sealed. Although it is only 9 years old, is it more advantageous to keep it sealed, or it doesn’t really matter? Thank you.
Original Post
Replies sorted oldest to newest
Why buy it if you're going to keep it sealed? If you paid near retail, it's probably not going to be worth any more than what you originally paid for in the future. Maybe less...
To state the obvious: if you do not want to run it or display it, and bought it for other reasons, definitely keep it sealed, if you are into that kind of thing.
"Why buy it if you're going to keep it sealed?"
Well, I disagree. I'm not a "traditional" O-gauge collector, but there are reasons to buy things that do involve just leaving them alone. You don't have to run it to enjoy it. I buy things to run or at least display (interesting- and cheap - old 2-rail, for example), but I have a couple (literally) of "old" locos that are totally NIB, and now I don't want to take them out....
One is an early MTH PS1 Greenbrier, and the other is an untouched Williams brass Southern (but black) 2-8-2. Funny. Got them both cheap, years ago.
I agree with the poster above - why buy it if you are just going to leave it sealed. I've bought nearly sealed, perfect, never on the track Postwar products and you better believe I'm going to run them! That is what they are made for. No difference in buying new sealed/vs used.
Open it up. Will never be worth very much.
As D500 wrote, if you enjoy the idea of owning a Lionel set in a sealed box, by all means keep it that way. There are plenty of people who do.
On the other hand, if you are looking at the set as an investment, I think you are going to be disappointed. Toy trains are not a good investment. The chances of it appreciating are slim.
It is a nice set.
there are two downsides to keeping something mechanical "new in the box".
1) you'll never know if it works or if there are any pieces broken or missing.
2) keep it in the box long enough and you can be sure it will never operate "like new".
If you do not want to open it buy a used one and run it if you like the new in box set to stay as is.
If it really has a train set inside.
Old conman trick was to put a brick inside an empty "new" box and try to sell it as "factory sealed"new.
I would never trust "factory sealed box" unless I purchased it from the OEM factory, and I have.
I have brought "new in box" items that were DOA, or broken in shipment or missing parts.
I caught the problems early because I opened them, and fixed under seller's warranty.
Just my opinion but, I think the real issue here is your ASSUMPTION, that it has "value".
Think about how you will get the value out of this one day. Sell on ebay? You have $50 shipping, eBay cut, and PayPal cut. Sell on the forum? You have $50 shipping. You can sell this on Craigslist, but will never get the price you want. Your only hope is to sell at a train show or otherwise in person.
Unless they are rare, it's tough to make much of a profit on sets because they are so expensive to ship.
I will never understand the thought process that says, "Let's buy this train set, but let us never open the box to play with it."
Somehow I don't think that's what Joshua Lionel Cowan had in mind when he put the Lionel Corporation together.
First post too..(?) ..Hi, don't sweat the flack. These folks are often dissapointed to have to post a hurtful truth. It's frustrating.
Speculation is always a gamble. The likelyhood of it becoming truly valuable is slim because it is "modern". Because folks really like the modern items, that has lead to a price drop on post war trains (most).
The same thing happened when trains for the most part, moved from tin plate to cast. Most tin dropped in value compared to the " new". A few decades later, these "cheap, unreliable, dinosaurs" in good shape, became a prized find. When MPC/Lionel came out, there was a resurgence of value in many old trains again (sort of held in check by recession)....Thats the 70s. But do you see a pattern. Did you note "most, some, many"are not inclusive enough to say " all? ; ..Speculation in stock has a higher chance of profit unless you really apply the buy low sell high well. Most don't succeed; just an fyi. I managed to do well in comics overall, but I'm not rich. I had fun, had good years, saw a possible "cliff" and bailed out just ahead of most folks realizing that market MIGHT plummet again. It did.
But to answer directly, as a collectible, sealed can often fetch a higher dollar amount in general. It depends on the buyer. I would want to see it run. Some would want the box sealed...at least in the past.
There are likely electeonics within that, that may have issues over time. Not train specific, capacitors in particular have a shelf life. Sure, some may last decades, but others will not. That is why the outlook on value rise is so pessimistic.
Hopefully you got something you like at a good price. The fun is the real value. Set it up and have some fun is my suggestion. Give it as a gift to a kid who you know, or better yet, one you know has family that can't or won't afford it. I remember those types of gifts most.
It was made to be fun for everyone, you too.
OGR Webmaster posted:I will never understand the thought process that says, "Let's buy this train set, but let us never open the box to play with it."
Somehow I don't think that's what Joshua Lionel Cowan had in mind when he put the Lionel Corporation together.
You are so right about this.Why buy and not play with it?Besides the 1990s are gone and so is thought of.'Lets buy this and put it away.Instead of playing with it."You brought it play with it get some use out of it.Because your not gonna get a whole lot of money for it.
Kind of like buying a brand new car. Putting it in a storage building/container. Shutting the door and never looking at it again. What's the point?
Train Nut posted:Kind of like buying a brand new car. Putting it in a storage building/container. Shutting the door and never looking at it again. What's the point?
well, let's see...
in 1954 for ~$10k you could have stashed away a Mercedes 300SL "gullwing" or better yet, ...4 Corvettes.
Man the Negative about NIB has me thinking. I have a set from 1988. Luckily I can see the cars are there but the engine is in a sealed solid box. But the comment about the brick Oh well now the only real reason mine is still sealed as no shelf to put it on and no layout to run it on. So I never thought of opening it.
To me it's not the value as I do not believe being almost 30 years old set new in the box is worth any more than what it was sold for
Given the 2008 6-31753 is a reissue of the 1960 #2551W, prospects of profiting much by keeping it sealed are not much better than opening it, taking good care of it and reselling in Like New condition when the attraction wears off. Several hobby shops currently offer New sets on eBay.
What, me worry?
overlandflyer posted:Train Nut posted:Kind of like buying a brand new car. Putting it in a storage building/container. Shutting the door and never looking at it again. What's the point?
well, let's see...
in 1954 for ~$10k you could have stashed away a Mercedes 300SL "gullwing" or better yet, ...4 Corvettes.
True. But this set is not a Mercedes or a Corvette.
I love looking at the X-ray photos of my boxed collection. One day they will make Color-Xrays so I can look at my trains in full color!!!
To be fair, when I started in this hobby only about a decade ago, I too, had a different expectation about the value of these things. I came in knowing absolutely nothing. We've all heard the stories about the various sealed toys from decades ago that are now worth a lot of money. And my naive self thought the same about the iconic name of Lionel and surely anything they produced would be considered rare and of heirloom value down the road.
I have no idea how new the original poster is to this hobby, but regardless, we need to remember that people come into this hobby at various knowledge levels and it takes time to learn the ropes and what is what. I would've asked a similar question when I first came into the hobby.
There's one on Ebay right now for $524.95 (Buy It Now) with FREE shipping. 
The vendor is open to an offer as well. 
Just sayin'.
Chief Bob (Retired) 
seaboardm2 posted:OGR Webmaster posted:I will never understand the thought process that says, "Let's buy this train set, but let us never open the box to play with it."
Somehow I don't think that's what Joshua Lionel Cowan had in mind when he put the Lionel Corporation together.
You are so right about this.Why buy and not play with it?Besides the 1990s are gone and so is thought of.'Lets buy this and put it away.Instead of playing with it."You brought it play with it get some use out of it.Because your not gonna get a whole lot of money for it.
You guys don't understand collecting.
Most collectors like to have their stuff in as nice condition as possible.
In general, as condition goes up, the fewer pieces still around.
Most collectors enjoy having pieces that are difficult to acquire.
You can't get any better than having something in a factory sealed box.
It isn't about money.
Lets see! If you bought one of Lionel's girls pink train sets back in the 50's for $30.00 or so, because no one wanted them and packed it away. Wait 55 - 60 years and NEVER opened it in the mean time and sell it at a local auction for $15,000. Now theres an investment.
The person who bought it at the auction (never opened it either) then turns around and sells it through a national auction house, I believe it was Stout Auctions, a few months later for about $30,000 or more. (don't remember the exact amount)
Yes it is a true story and the box was never opened!
Open it up and enjoy it because who wants to wait 55 years!
C W Burfle posted:You can't get any better than having something in a factory sealed box.
It isn't about money.
Then all you have is a sealed box worth $15000 or whatever. If you never open it, even if to make it a shelf queen it's nothing but a sealed box. Not much interest in staring at a box. Of course that's my opinion.
Better to invest in real estate with rental income. Toy trains are (at best hit or miss), meant to be played with and times change and what may be collectible today is not tomorrow. My crystal ball is broken.
Mark
Then all you have is a sealed box worth $15000 or whatever. If you never open it, even if to make it a shelf queen it's nothing but a sealed box. Not much interest in staring at a box. Of course that's my opinion.
Do you consider yourself to be a collector?
Regardless, collecting is an individual pursuit.
For many collectors, it isn't necessary to see the individual components. The collector knows that he (or she) owns it. Few collectors have room to display all of their collection. Some would argue that having too many items out lessens the impact of the display.
Louis Hertz discussed this in a section of his book, "The Toy Collector".
JDL posted:I recently purchased a Lionel 6-31753 set that is still factory sealed. Although it is only 9 years old, is it more advantageous to keep it sealed, or it doesn’t really matter? Thank you.
I don't think it matters. Open it up, play with it. It's a toy after all. Model trains aren't good investments. You'll get way more satisfaction out of it by using it than hoping for some future ROI which probably won't exist anyway.
C W Burfle posted:Then all you have is a sealed box worth $15000 or whatever. If you never open it, even if to make it a shelf queen it's nothing but a sealed box. Not much interest in staring at a box. Of course that's my opinion.
Do you consider yourself to be a collector?
No I don't. I never understood this aspect of collecting. I can understand collecting and at minimal displaying but never keeping it in a sealed box unless it is to make money off of it. That would be my only incentive to keep an item in a sealed box, for the money. The pursuit of a box with something I'll never see with my own eyes escapes me. More power to those who are satisfied with that endeavor.
You're right I don't understand or pretend to understand this line of thinking. It's a mystery to me why one would spend a lifetime having a sealed box with at minimum not enjoying the view of the contents inside. I guess when the collector passes his heirs can sell it for the value and move on.
Yardmaster posted:Lets see! If you bought one of Lionel's girls pink train sets back in the 50's for $30.00 or so, because no one wanted them and packed it away. Wait 55 - 60 years and NEVER opened it in the mean time and sell it at a local auction for $15,000. Now theres an investment.
The person who bought it at the auction (never opened it either) then turns around and sells it through a national auction house, I believe it was Stout Auctions, a few months later for about $30,000 or more. (don't remember the exact amount)
Yes it is a true story and the box was never opened!
Open it up and enjoy it because who wants to wait 55 years!
LOL, this post got me thinking about the one and only Lionel item I own still shrink wrapped from the factory.. It remains that way only because I switched to scale soon after buying it and this iconic O-27 sized engine from 2001 was the very last steam engine actually produced by Lionel. It was made from mostly PW tooling and assembled here in the USA. If anything, even though no collector value remains this engine to me still has some sentimental value. Not sure if I'll wait another decade in hopes my $500 investment/expense will finally bring rewards or just sell it like just about every other train I owned from that era and take whatever I can get.
Joe
Attachments
Images (1)
Yardmaster posted:Lets see! If you bought one of Lionel's girls pink train sets back in the 50's for $30.00 or so, because no one wanted them and packed it away. Wait 55 - 60 years and NEVER opened it in the mean time and sell it at a local auction for $15,000. Now theres an investment.
The person who bought it at the auction (never opened it either) then turns around and sells it through a national auction house, I believe it was Stout Auctions, a few months later for about $30,000 or more. (don't remember the exact amount)
Yes it is a true story and the box was never opened!
Open it up and enjoy it because who wants to wait 55 years!
If that was only true with any set other than a one in a million set.
You're right I don't understand or pretend to understand this line of thinking. It's a mystery to me why one would spend a lifetime having a sealed box with at minimum not enjoying the view of the contents inside. I guess when the collector passes his heirs can sell it for the value and move on.
If you at interested in an explanation that is better than one I could give, pick up a copy of the book I mentioned earlier, "The Toy Collector" by Louis Hertz. Long out of print, the book is available for less than ten dollars on Amazon.
As for heirs selling off the trains........ generally that is what heirs do.
Sometimes they give them away, or throw them out.
No different than what the heirs of model railroaders do.
Gloves and permission each time you'd like to touch one, even if you just set it down. 
Gramps wrote letters, called, waited for, and bought two first year GG1s in what was supposed to be Brunswick green (36?). An insider guaranteed him he got what he wanted, vs Brunswick. So one Blackjack became the runner while the other sat unopened with his name on the shipper. Still unopened in the 80s when I last saw it. I wonder who got it, and if it was ever opened.
Speculation over the GG-1 lines, stripe paint's metal content, and X-rays leading to damage was a reoccuring topic in my youth. Was any conclusion ever reached on that?
Really even collectors might prefer to see a train vs a sealed box since being in a box is no guaranteed C-9 or C-10. "It might be broken" is spot on even for old cast. Theres zinc pest possible anywhere too. (some just far more likely than others)
While it's not for me. I understand collecting to a point for people who buy things and display them. I personally equate buying something and keeping it in a sealed box and never seeing it the same but to a lesser extent, to the pickers you see on TV that spend their money on stuff just to throw it in a pile and never see it again.
overlandflyer posted:Train Nut posted:Kind of like buying a brand new car. Putting it in a storage building/container. Shutting the door and never looking at it again. What's the point?
well, let's see...
in 1954 for ~$10k you could have stashed away a Mercedes 300SL "gullwing" or better yet, ...4 Corvettes.
The present value of $10,000 in 1954 is $91,271
I bought this set at the April meet last spring for a excellent price ...I put it in the cabover bunk of my truck camper and when I got home forgot it was there and it sat there until my wife went out in early June to clean the camper up for a upcoming trip.
So I moved it down to the train room with the intention of running it. That hasn't happened yet ...maybe I'll just keep it sealed too.
Attachments
Images (1)
Train Nut posted:
While it's not for me. I understand collecting to a point for people who buy things and display them. I personally equate buying something and keeping it in a sealed box and never seeing it the same but to a lesser extent, to the pickers you see on TV that spend their money on stuff just to throw it in a pile and never see it again.
Collecting -- for the sake of collecting and OWNING something -- has always been somewhat of a niche market. But all the collectors often care about is that the market is large enough to sustain interest in what somebody else strives to own and is willing to pay the price for it. Failing that, I think collectors in general begin to lose interest in amassing "stuff".
Even as operators, we see a bit of this phenomenon from time to time. Case in point: the die-cast ES44 diesels. A few years ago, these wonderful locomotives enjoyed an ever-increasing price tag. And to a large degree, that's why many folks purchased them -- because they knew OTHERS desired to own them too... enough so that they could one day sell them for at least what they paid and hopefully more. Alas, the die-cast ES44's -- like many other "hot items" of their day -- have run their course, and they no longer enjoy the boundless asking prices of just a year or two ago.
By and large, we hear about the "collectible exceptions" much more than the rule. Another case in point: the post-war Girls train set. That's such an anomaly, that by its very nature it became collectible. Factor in the fact that the "original" sets are no longer made anymore, and you have the recipe for increased desirability among the collector's niche market. So a sealed set reportedly fetches premium dollars. Contrast that to a fast-forward into today's world of overseas train sets, that are produced as part of a never-ending technology treadmill... and you have the recipe for stuff that's nowhere near worth what you paid for it even a day after you purchased it. Why? Because there's an innate perception that it will be obsoleted by trains with more features within a year or two.
And to add insult on top of injury... keeping TODAY's trains (with all their modern electronics) sealed becomes more of a liability than a strong selling point. With importers waffling on warranty service and general repairs, it's conceivably more RISKY to buy a sealed, untested modern locomotive today... since the ability to repair it is often called into doubt.
Lastly, today's trains are now more than ever part of a technology treadmill that's moving WAY to fast. And that's one of the reasons why importers are now offering control of their trains by smart-phones and tablets. Oh sure, it sounds better to say they're doing that to draw in a younger audience. But there's another subtle reason lurking in the wings: think supply of electronic parts in proprietary controllers. Remember what happened a couple of years ago when Lionel couldn't make Legacy 990 kits -- reportedly due to a component in short supply overseas that was used in the CAB2 controller's display? Importers hate being caught behind that kind of eight-ball. So they're finally shifting away from those liabilities inherent with propriety technology vs. open technologies.
Now rewind back to the post-war Lionel trains. They may not have the silk smooth slow-speed operations that's more common with today's locomotives. But the repairable "field replaceable units" consist of tried-and-true parts that are still available (decades later) in stores which have built an excellent reputation of "fixing" trains of yesteryear.
The collectibles market has never been easily understood. And sometimes the why's and wherefore's defy all logic. But all of the things I mentioned above do come into play at one point or another. That we can count on for sure. But it still doesn't make our crystal balls any more clearer.
taycotrains posted:I bought this set at the April meet last spring for a excellent price ...I put it in the cabover bunk of my truck camper and when I got home forgot it was there and it sat there until my wife went out in early June to clean the camper up for a upcoming trip.
So I moved it down to the train room with the intention of running it. That hasn't happened yet ...maybe I'll just keep it sealed too.
Bob, a train shop I service for has one of these NIB. What do you think would be a good price if I were so inclined to buy it from them?
If you ever watch any of the collector car auctions on TV like Barrett-Jackson or Mecum; one thing that is evident is the value of anything - no matter how rare it might be - is dependent on having at least two people who want it real bad. I can't remember how many times I've seen Richard Rawlings from Gas Monkey Garage claim one of his builds is worth high five or low six figures only to leave the auction having barely broken even on the thing.
I would postulate "collectible" trains are in this same category; not only from the perspective of whether they are collectible but, their value to the two hypothetical collectors. And; having been back in this hobby now for 28 years; I believe I can safely state that if you find these two people who want it real bad; they'll both want it even more if its still factory sealed.
Curt
Reproduction sets, and that's what the 6-31753 is, will never have the rarity and collectability of the original.
