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Several years ago, my wife, Esther, and I attended an auction in Westborough, Massachusetts, where a number of Lionel trains were to be sold. The auction included one large lot of postwar Lionel products, including a highly prized No. 2245 Texas Special F-3 AB diesel engine in nearly perfect condition, a very nice postwar steam engine, some passenger cars, several freight cars, and some accessories. In retrospect, this Lionel collection might have been considered a train collector's dream. So I added up what I believed to be the value of this package based on prices in a Greenberg Price Guide and I came up with a total of about $1,200. This is more than I have ever paid for anything at an auction. I actually started thinking about how I was going to pay for all this assuming that I was the highest bidder. I had visions of selling the steam engine and many of the cars, and then I would be able to keep the Texas Special engine at a fairly reasonable cost.
When the Lionel lot came up for auction, bidding started at about $500. Bidding sailed right past my highest bid of $1400. At this point, Esther was starting to get pretty nervous. Then two other potential buyers brought the final sale to around $2,700.
About two weeks later, I was talking with the owner of a train store in a nearby town. We talked about the auction, and we both agreed that the final selling price was incredibly high. Then he told me that he knew the buyer, who already owned the same Texas Special F-3 engine, but he bought this one because it was in better condition than his old one.
If you are a seller, it would be wonderful if all toy train auctions ended this way; but don't count on it, particularly if the auction is on eBay. It is much more likely that even nice train items will not receive bids anywhere near what I call the Greenberg price. There is also some evidence that toy train prices may be declining. In the current Greenberg price guide there is an index and chart, something like a stock market chart, showing how train prices have changed over the years. If this is to be believed, toy train prices peaked in 1999 and have been declining since then. Even the famous prewar Lionel 700E engine had a price of $3,650 in the 2001 price guide, but now has a price of $3,500 in the 2002 edition. Still, if you are fortunate enough to find older toy trains in particularly nice condition, there is a good chance that they will bring very respectable prices even on eBay.
Look for Part 2 in the next issue of AuctionBytes-Update!
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