Whats the deal with Tyco collectors ?

[CNJ831]

For two reasons, Dave. They are allowing themselves to be ripped off out of sheer ignorance of the object's true value, non-rarity, whatever...an example of the old adage that a fool and his money are soon parted. Secondly, and arguably more importantly, if others observe or see record of such a purchase it can establish an artificially high value for the rest of us when the next example is offered up for sale. I was into antique book collecting at one time and saw this happen repeatedly. I've also seen folks pay $200 or more for common repros of MR Vol. 1 passed off as the originals. It is also not uncommon that, once an inflated price is established because of some fool, it becomes a "standard" among sellers, who will not lower the price of the next example offered back to the real range even if the item fails to sell repeatedly. Yet another class of fools!

CNJ831

[areibel]

QUOTE: Originally posted by davekelly

If someone sees something they want and are willing to pay a certain price for it and it makes them happy, why are they ignorant?

AMEN!!

I'm glad there are so many Master Modelers on this forum that can look down their noses at all that inferior junk that some people like!
Too bad they don't start quality posts!!

[davekelly]

If someone sees something they want and are willing to pay a certain price for it and it makes them happy, why are they ignorant?

[CNJ831]

QUOTE: Originally posted by IRONROOSTER

QUOTE: Originally posted by davekelly

Makes you wonder what happened to those weird folks that collected glassware made during the depression. That stuff was junk. To have such a collection today . . . . . . .

It's also fascinating to visit antique stores and see ordinary things from my childhood on sale for $5, 10, 20, or more. Makes me wish I could have saved all my toys and Mom's everyday dishes[:D]
Enjoy
Paul

Sadly, this is today a vicious pricing cycle being driven, in part, by shows like Antique Roadshow, Find! and similar venues to public TV. Viewers see some old, time-worn but genuine item that gets appraised for umpteen thousand bucks and think, "Hey, I've got something just like that (but really not) in the basement." The result? Instant valuable antique!

Same goes for many "antique" shops and flea markets. Simply because its old and on display, it must be worth money, no matter how broken or crummy it is. Folks walk in, see the price tag on this junk and say, "Wow, these people must know what they're doing so it must be valuable." In my youth this was called scamming and some disreputable shops even had a shill on premises to aid in boosting the discussion of price/value. Today the practice has gone mainstream on eBay and the like.

Yes, there certainly are valuable antiques out there but junk is forever junk...except to the ignorant!

CNJ831

[IRONROOSTER]

QUOTE: Originally posted by davekelly

Makes you wonder what happened to those weird folks that collected glassware made during the depression. That stuff was junk. To have such a collection today . . . . . . .

It's also fascinating to visit antique stores and see ordinary things from my childhood on sale for $5, 10, 20, or more. Makes me wish I could have saved all my toys and Mom's everyday dishes[:D]
Enjoy
Paul

[davekelly]

Makes you wonder what happened to those weird folks that collected glassware made during the depression. That stuff was junk. To have such a collection today . . . . . . .

[Anonymous]

QUOTE: Originally posted by dragonriversteel

Over the past three months,while searching for kits on e-bay. I always run across collections of tyco junk.Whats the deal with them ? Are they filler cars ,for yards. Are collectors really keeping these loco's and cars for show and tell ? As a kid years ago,I had two tyco train sets...one was a Rock island baldwin sharknose,the other was a IC steel hauler. After they crapped the bed,so to speak.
I got rid of them...retired to the scrap yard. Whats the value of these make believe toy trains ? In my opinion...they were crap then and they are crap now. The only cool freight car ,tyco made and I still hunt for is the operateing clam-shell two bay hoppers. I just don't understand ,what the big deal is about these tyco loco's and car's. I do realize that they have been out of production for years,but sheezzzzzz,26 bidders and 300 bucks for tyco junk. I don't get it...I quess if thats your thing,you'll collect rolls of toilet paper too. This post is not intened to tick anyone off....just my opinion.What that saying...opinion's are like [censored] ,everybody's got one.

Patrick

Many people out there collect various items. What may be junk to you may be useable by someone else. .

[Anonymous]

I wanted a few 40 foot gondolas to haul pulpwood loads, like I watched as a child in Nekoosa Wisconsin. I picked up a few Tyco gons at yard sales or swap meets, replaced the cast on grabs and stirrups with metal wire ones, drilled out the boltsters and inserted a sleeve made from plastic tube, tapped that for a screw. mounted GOOD trucks with metal wheels, and added Kadee couplers, carefully selected and mounted to specs. With the weight of the load (REAL wood pulp sized logs I made and glued together, they opperate well, and look good. I decalled them for the roads that served NEPCO in Nekoosa, and I'm happy with the results.

Now I am converting a few talk cars in the same manner, adding weight to the inside of the tank as I go.

They STILL might not look as good as the 20 dollar cars I could buy, but I enjoy doing it, and they run well.

[Anonymous]

There's a "new Boxed" Tyco Turbotrain on ebay UK at the moment - £15 (about $25) - I wonder how hard it would be to fit DCC to one of those...

[CNJ831]

In all the foregoing discussion I think that a critical point never brought up is that there is a vast chasm between a group of items considered to be a collection and items that are collectible.

A collection may consist of just about anything but may or may not be of any intrinsic value. A collectible, on the other hand, by virture of its historic importance, artistic appeal, great craftsmanship, etc. is recognized within a given field of interest as of intrinsic monetary value. You may be a collector of string but it will never have value except to yourself. If you collect paintings by Jasper Cropsey you'll have something worth a fortune.

In HO, perhaps unlike Lionel, there are very few items worthy of recognition as potential collectibles. The pre-war sheet brass consolidations by Varney and Mantua, AF's pre-war Hudson, PennLine's RDG Crusader, even Laconia's Mathieson dry ice reefer, could rank as collectible, since they represent either early milestones in the hobby or totally unique rolling stock only ever offered once (outside of brass). Rarely, items from a historic layout would be classified as collectible - the engines, rolling stock, or structures from John Allen's G&D would command a great price if they still existed.

On the otherhand, a grouping of fiber and sectional Atlas track, McHenry couplers, or Tyco rollingstock is just simply a collection and has, nor does it deserve, any excessive or special monetary value. As mentioned by others upstream, there are individuals who are willing to spend outrageous sums on just about any item you can name...but that does not necessarily make the item in question truly valuable or a collectible. And junk is ever junk.

CNJ831

[IRONROOSTER]

BTW for those interested in collecting Tyco, check out this site http://tycotrain.tripod.com/tycotrains/
Enjoy
Paul

[Anonymous]

Don't get me started on the Hotwheels collectors. I've heard horro stories from people who work at stores.

Anyway. This http://www.shortpacked.com/d/20051116.html is probably my favorite take on collectors, and fandoms.

I really need to dust my Transformers collection....

[rolleiman]

QUOTE: Originally posted by jeffers_mz

My dad probably has the largest collection of brass garden hose nozzles on earth.

Ask him why and he can't tell you.

Just bitten by a bug I guess.

For the same reason anyone collects anything.. For some reason he enjoys them.

The thrill of the hunt is a powerful collection builder.. I have friends, and I'll never fully understand it, who have sunk $$$ THOUSANDS $$$into Hotwheels.. I mean to the point of second mortgages on thier homes to cover the credit card bills from them.. I've seen them spend $400 on a Single Car.. JUST because it had a certain Stipe on the Wheels or 4 spokes instead of 5... This is a car mind you that if you found it at a Wallymart would cost all of a $1.25. They have Networks of collector buddies working in these places who will dig the Choice pieces out of the crates and set them aside... You want to talk about insane??? Remember BEANIE BABIES?? How much did the fools sink into THOSE worthless bean bags?? People actually Fought over them in the stores.. I don't think people enjoying collecting Tyco trains have ANYTHING on these people. Even the Tyco collectors have a limit.

Jeff
[8D]

[jeffers_mz]

My dad probably has the largest collection of brass garden hose nozzles on earth.

Ask him why and he can't tell you.

Just bitten by a bug I guess.

[choochin3]

I thought model railroading was supposed to be FUN!!!!
No matter what scale,gauge,or other.

Carl T.

[AntonioFP45]

Got rid of all of my 1970s Tycos. I kept one Santa Fe wood deck flat car for sentimental reasons as it was from my dad. I'm converting it into a "freelance" SCL M.O.W car. I do regret not keeping the F9 shell as it was "workable".

My wife's cousin "updated" some of his Tyco and old Bachmann cars. They do look better with the P2K trucks and body weathering.

As for me, I'll use Tyco, Bachmann, and LifeLike (non-Proto) rolling stock shells as Air Bru***esters.

[andrechapelon]

Have you priced some of the Broadway Ltd. locos in HO lately. When the train collection is worth more than the house above it, something is wrong with the picture.

Yes, I have. I own one (Santa Fe #3751) and paid $270 for it at my favorite LHS. Adjusted for inflation, the price is no worse than a $49.50 PFM Southern Ps-4 from the early 60's. In fact, it's a better deal since it's sound equipped and already painted. Nobody's ever offered a kit for either the Southern or the Santa Fe loco. To the best of my recollection, the only 4-8-4 kits ever offered were Varney's lump of brass in the 1950's and the current Bowser offering (which has some serious shortcomings).

Did you ever see the prices of Varney locomotive kits from the 50's? A friend of mine has a Varney Super Consolidation (the one based on a Reading I10sa, not the "Old Lady"). The thing was definitely not cheap (see below)

I scored a 1950 vintage Varney Casey Jones off EBay a few weeks ago. It's been around the block a few times and is going to be rebuilt and super-detailed. In the box on the back side of the tender instructions is a 1950 price list for some Varney kits.

1. Super Consolidation - $57.50 (without tender)

2. Super Pacific - same price also sans tender.

3. Super Mikado - 1 buck more. No tender.

NOTE: The above were equipped with an enclosed 7 pole skew wound motor and gear box. They also had sprung drivers.

4. Economy Northern: $49.75. No tender

5. Standard Pacific: $41.75. No tender. (There are several on auction at EBay now. They do include tenders).

6. Economy Mikado: $41.75. No tender.

Tenders for these engines ranged in price from $3.75 for the 32 foot tender (like the one that comes with the Bowser Casey Jones and Old Lady) to $9.00 for a semi-Vanderbilt.

Compared to wage levels in 1950, these are outrageously expensive. In 1950 my dad was making $175/month.

There is one thing that's too bad about the demise of Varney. They had sets of self quartering drive wheels on 1/8" axles. Those would really come in handy for locomotive regearing projects.

As for modelling, there's nothing that says a stock RTR model has to remain stock. After all, Iain Rice created a Central Vermont N-5a from a Bachmann Spectrum 2-8-0. Athearn's 2-8-2 has appeared in print in the guise of a UP version and L&N version (Model Railroader) as well a Chicago and Illinois Midland version (RMC). John Pryke re-detailed a P2K USRA 0-8-0 to match a New Haven prototype.

Sometimes I wish MR would reprint some really old articles. Like the one Malcolm Vordenbaum did sometime in 1957. He had taken several Penn-Line (now Bowser) Pennsy prototype locos, filed off the Belpaire fireboxes and detailed them with Kemtron (now PSC) castings to make some really attractive locomotives. Admittedly, they were free-lanced, but they sure did look good.

Sometimes it doesn't take much to make a stock loco look different. Roger Traviss added an air tank to the pilot deck and extensions to the coal bunker on this Spectrum 2-10-0: http://tinyurl.com/d79m2

2-8-0 with shortened tender: http://tinyurl.com/bueeg

Andre

[Anonymous]

QUOTE: Originally posted by loathar

I've seen people collect less prototypical and more worthless looking and running trains than Tyco.

Yeah, Lionel.

[cbq9911a]

Tyco trains - when they are good, they are very, very, good. But when they are bad they are horrid. I've got a B & O Royal Blue Pacific and a (reboilered) Royal Blue Mikado. Both good runners; better than anything in RTR HO steam prior to 1990.

For the bad, a Tyco GG1. I bought one because of its sheer badness; it's an awful model as far as looks go (but it's a reasonable runer - not as good as Athearn BB, but better than Lima or Model Power). But it has 5 stripes like the real GG1.

The operating hopper cars are cool. I've got around a half dozen of them. I was able to find the special actuator and installed it on a coal trestle on my layout. Still need to try it out with real coal, though.

[mnwestern]

I rarely buy anything Tyco now, but like some, I still have my first HO train set, a Tyco set, still in the box, from about 1969. It has a blue and yellow Santa Fe F-unit, a 50-foot El Capitan box car, a WM flat with culverts, a red three-bay hopper and a red ATSFcaboose, with power pack. The engine has the rubber traction bands (missing one now). Rarely run it, but will never part with it.
In those early years, I bought a few other Tyco cars, some AHM and a couple of Athearn. The Tycos were better than AHM. I've converted a few, especially boxcars, to Kadees by cutting off the horn-hooks and mounting the No. 5 draft gear box. They then run pretty good. Rarely have trouble with the all-in-one plastic wheel sets, (unlike Athearn which has as least one misgauge axle, if not more, on each car).
One of my favorites is a 60-foot Green Giant car. Once sold mine, and kicked myself until finding two at flea markets. I grew up 15 miles from Green Giant's headquarters in Le Sueur, Minn., the "Valley of the Jolly Green Giant."
I met people who are just starting out that aren't going to spend $30 for an Intermountain car or $190 for a Proto 2000 with sound, who like the Tyco. The cars are fine, for the most part, and at $2-$6, they are economical for beginners, especially for kids.
I usually recommend, however, that they spend a little more on the motive power and at least get an Athearn, and perhaps a good Atlas, Athearn or MRC pack if they aren't going DCC right away. (I have put some of my old Tyco packs to use, however, powering switch machines so that they aren't drawing on my good packs.) And I also recommend they avoid the brass track so common lumped in the boxes with the cheaper cars.

I once met a man who would buy a lot of the flea market junk boxes, get the stuff running, create a simple layout and then donate the works to some kid he thought needed a hobby. He did this several times. What a neat thing to do!

Really, we shouldn't be so negative of those collecting affordable Tyco equipment. After all, what does it say about the rest of us, if as many have pointed out that there really is not rationale for collecting anything, that many of us are forking out $30 for cars all put together for us, and $200 for locomotives all put together for us. Where's the modeling? Aren't we really collectors, now rivaling the most expensive Lionel or Standard guage stuff. Have you priced some of the Broadway Ltd. locos in HO lately. When the train collection is worth more than the house above it, something is wrong with the picture.

[mustanggt]

QUOTE: I just seem to buy Virginian hopper cars at the local swap meets and the LHS that sells used locos and rolling stock

And speaking of those Virginian hoppers, anyone remember the Tyco Burlington Northern 50 foot boxcars? I have about 10 of them from various flee markets, and see at least a dozen or so at every show I got to.

[Darth Santa Fe]

One reason for Tyco stuff going so high in price is because some were pretty rare. The GM&O GP20 was only made for less than a year, and they are now selling for around $200 each on eBay.

For some reason, whenever I see a nice condition Tyco or an easily fixable broken engine, I show more interest in it than in a nice brass or Kato or P2K engine. I've spent a countless amount of time digging through the junk drawers in my LHS looking for cheap, fixable, low quality things.

[davekelly]

Anyone who doesn't value or buy the same things I do is a fool and is wasting his money. Kinda like the idiots that buy old foreign stamps - what good are they? You can't use them to mail stuff from the U.S. Some of them are even cancelled making them totally worthless!!! The kicker is that some folks will pay hundreds of dollars for a stamp that says 2 cents right on the thing!!

Just joking in case anyone thinks the above is serious.

[rrgrassi]

I still have my old tender driven Chattanooga. It still runs well, smoke unit still works. The motor was a different story. I finally pressed in brass bushing to support the armature of the motor. That helped out a lot. It gets used as an "excursion freight train" now. All the cars have had the trucks changed out and the couplers are now body mounted(needed something to practice with). So it's pretty neat to still have the loco and cars from when I was a 5th grader. Do I buy any more Tyco stuff? Nope. With that said, I do not know why they cost so much on ebay. I've seen Tyco stuff priced high at train shows too.

[MidlandPacific]

QUOTE: Does anyone remember the Chattanooga Choo- Choo set? I got one of these for Christmas when they first came out when I was young. It ran for about 2 days and died from a burned up motor. I had it repaired 2 times, the motor! Gave up on the third repair and put it back in the box! These seem to bring top dollar on ebay now.

The smoking 2-8-0 that's actually a USRA 0-8-0 with the pilot deck lengthened to take a lead truck? I got one for Christmas in 1978 or so - first model I ever got with outside-motion valve gear: that engine must have logged miles (real, not scale) on my first 4x8. It would creep right along on pulse power, although it needs work now. It's not as pretty as my other stuff, but I wouldn't trade it - too many good memories.

[Anonymous]

i have a TYCO engine that's been converted to a dummy after the motor went out years ago it's and F7 or F-9 Chicago & Northwestern it looks kinda neat (except those stupid trucks tyco had)

[cwclark]

I think it just a bunch of guys that don't know any better...maybe it's a nostalgia thing with them that brings back memories of the tyco set they had as a kid for a couple of weeks before it broke down...what's that saying?...a fool and his money are soon parted.....[:D] chuck

[loathar]

I've seen people collect less prototypical and more worthless looking and running trains than Tyco.

[Big_Boy_4005]

QUOTE: Originally posted by IRONROOSTER

"One man's trash is another man's treasure." Collectors have a different mind set and objective. Some collect coins, some stamps, some old tools, some bottles, some Lionel trains, etc., and some Tyco trains. In each of these cases it's the thrill or the hunt, completing sets, trading with other collectors, etc. that is the joy.

QUOTE: Originally posted by CNJ831
... there is absolutely nothing about any Tyco product that is intrinsically collectible except in the minds of those who collect them!

CNJ831

Actually you could change that to say "there is absolutely nothing about any product that is intrinsically collectible except in the minds of those who collect them!". The collectible value is only what other collectors will pay. Admittedly that is more for Lionel than Tyco, but that's because more people collect Lionel.

Enjoy
Paul

Paul, this raises a rather interesting point about supply and demand, when it comes to pricing. That point being, so much of Tyco's production has found it's way to trash cans over time, the remaining stuff has new found rarity, thus maybe even value.

Are people really coming out of the woodwork to collect this stuff? How much of this phenomenon is directly related to Ebay?

Maybe the train world has a new collectable. Personally I would rather collect early Athearn, including Lionel HO. Much more interesting.

By the way, I had one of those hoppers with the clamshell doors. Pretty cool concept, but well short of the action that Lionel could muster with it's size.

[jecorbett]

Collectors are probably not interested in the operational quality of Tyco items. Some collectors like collecting even older stuff from the first half of the 20th century. By today's standards, that stuff would be considered junk but age and the rarity of certain items are what makes them valueable to collectors.