A local hobby shop marked down a Greenbergs Lionel Trains pocket price guide 1901-2005 to $5.00 to sell it to me. The guy said it would be "close" to what my stuff is worth now. How accurate is that statement? Most of my stuff is 70s to 05 Lionel 027. I have lots of starter set 027 gondolas, flat cars and 31 of the CN #9013 hopper cars. Book lists the 9013s at Exc $4, New $8.
Modeling the "Fargo Area Rapid Transit" in O scale 3 rail.
Why don't you just look at closed ebay auctions to get an idea of what your stuff would sell for.
It wasn't that accurate when it was printed.
These show up on Amazon quite often for just a penny.
Rob
I buy the Greenberg's Lionel pocket guide every so often. I have the 2004 guide and recently bought the 2010 guide. The 2010 guide shows the 9013's at Exc $5 and New $8. Between the 2004 and 2010 guides, I noticed prewar prices were almost exactly the same. Postwar fluctuated, some higher in the new guide, but most were lower. Modern era had fewer fluctuations, but the bigger ticket items, such as the lift bridges, were priced lower in the new guide.
It would be interesting to know the methodology used by Kalmbach to compile their pocket guide prices each year.
Robert
http://www.robertstrains.com/
I wouldn't even give a penny for one of those price "guides". IMHO opinion they arent worth the paper they are printed on. When I go to a show and ask about an item and the seller reaches for one of those, I walk off before it even gets unholstered.
research ebay for real world pricing, remembering that there are occasional abnormalities in sale prices.
For five bucks you did just fine. Remember, when you buy a guide on Amazon for a penny, you still have to pay $3.99 shipping. So you paid a dollar extra and didn't have to wait for the postman.
The value on common O27 pieces should be pretty stable. After all, they didn't have a lot of value to lose in the first place.
I've seen the merits of price guides debated over and over and in lots of different venues. A "proper" methodology, going back to my college statistics class, would be to get an estimate of the number produced and/or still in existence, then there's a standard formula you can plug that number into to get a sample size. It's just like election polling. You can go ask 100 people who they're going to vote for, and in an election for a small town, that's more than enough. But for a presidential election, 100 opinions is meaningless. Once you determine the sample size, then you try to locate that many recent sales, note prices, normalize for condition, throw out the outliers, take an average, and you have your price.
Ideally, these should be sales data, not asking price data. But you take what you can get, of course. The closer you're able to get to the ideals, the better your price is going to be.
Simply searching eBay for recent sales is just as flawed as any price guide, if not more so, based on limited sample size alone.
The other problem is our natural prejudice. When we buy, we're prejudiced toward believing the lowest price we can find, whether it's Greenberg, O'Brien, Standard Catalog, some eBay search, or something else. When we sell, we're prejudiced towards the highest we can find.
You should use any sample price, whether it comes from a price guide or your own research, as a guide. Right now I'm in the market for some tinplate street lamps. Prior to last week I'd never bought any. So I consulted some price guides to get an idea of value before attending a train show. Having a price in mind kept me from overpaying too badly. Knowing the lamps I wanted have a book value of around $30, I knew to jump when I saw a pair of them for $15. Score! Likewise, I jumped when I saw a couple more for $20 apiece. When I saw a couple of people selling singles for $40, I had to make a decision whether to buy, haggle or keep walking. Frankly, $40 wasn't too far out of line but I kept walking. Those were all I found.
Now let's do the math. Had I bought all of them, I would have spent $135 for six lights, an average of $22.50 per light. Still below the expected book value of $30.
That's why I say the $40 wasn't too far out of line. It's high, but was I complaining about those sales that were $10 or more below book value? No.
The most important thing the price guide did was keep my expectations realistic. I walked in pretty certain I wasn't going to get my lights for 5 bucks. And I knew that if I saw some marked $100, to stay far away. Not having looked at a guide beforehand, I could have missed that $15 bargain, or I could have overpaid if someone hypothetically had been asking $100.
Before I bought some price guides, I know I overpaid for some items AND I missed some bargains.
While the price guides do explain how they derived their numbers, they also state that the listed price is MIB. I have one from '05, but it is mostly for the information of sets, etc. I am no expert on the different offerings and the guides have helped me. If you are looking at selling your items, only use the guide as a "high water mark" as I said, the prices are for MIB. You will only get what someone is willing to pay. With the advent of modern manufacturing, we have very realistic scale trains with all the bells and whistles that garner much of the attention. The demand for older items may have slacked off a bit and so they are not getting the prices they have at some times in the past. Just have a realistic idea before selling if that is what you intend to do.
Good Luck,Dennis
TCA#09-63805
Boyd,
Since, you mentioned Greenberg's Pocet Price Guide, I want to make mention that Deputy, a forum member, was kind enough to give/send me a 2007 Greenberg pocket price guide.
You, also may be lucky.
I just, want to notify all forum members of that fact,
Good Luck,
Merry Christmas,
Ralph
cwburfle: It could take forever to track the selling prices on ebay for probably over 100 Lionel and other brands of cars, engines, transformers, track, switches, bridges, accessories etc etc that I own. And my layout fits in my bedroom.
The various price guides are exactly that, a guide, better for item reference than value confirmation. The Bay gives you real time selling or buying pricing. Unless you have a rare or very limited item it probably is on the Bay.
Bill T.
As stated above the guide gives you a good idea on values. As for the bay, it seems to me that many items sell for way more than I would pay locally. Refer to the guide and use good judgement. As for 2005 or 2010 prices don't change that much on most items.
"IT's GOOD TO BE THE KING",by Mel Brooks
Charter Member- Tardis Train Crew (TTC) - Detroit3railers- Detroit Historical society Glancy Modular trains- Charter member BTTS
Forget the price guides. The value of an item is established when seller and buyer both agree on the price.
If you have checked the various auction sites, train meets and other venues, you will see that transactions vary wildly. It's how keenly the seller wants to sell, and how keenly the buyer wants to buy.
The 2010 Greenberg was $13 asking at York 10/09. Briefly considered one for consolidated inventory purposes until I flipped through a couple of pages and saw only MIB prices. I certainly would not want to be seen at any meet with that cynical piece of nonsense.
Re: Pricing? At what time of year? The second week of December will fetch the highest prices whether retail/storefront or auction. Nobody paid list 55 years ago (except some uptown Madison Hardware types); why would anyone today? Starting about March 30%-50% MIB is about right at train show or auction.
When I get around to it, this price guide will be used to establish the value of my trains when I get insurance on them and my Hot Wheels collection.
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