Final ebay price, divide by half or more depending on how easy you think the thing will be to shift on, that's the basic way just about every second hand/pawn broker comes to a price on such things these days. Maybe they give you a fiver more if the sob story about why its being sold to them is good 😅
A buddy of mine inherited a collection a few years ago which had stock similar in age to your stock. He was offered 220 euro for the lot by a dealer. He was about to take them up on the offer but by chance he found out that I had models as well. We tidied them all up, serviced the locos and listed them on a facebook railway selling page. In the end he made well over a 1000 euro from the sales and he let me pick a few bits out for me too keep. With the steel track, give them a good rub down with a track rubber, replace any dodgy fishplates, sell the straights and curves in job lots and the points as single items. With the coaches and wagons offer deals for multiple purchases. With the locos, post videos of the locos working and a few decent photos, make sure to say they have been recently serviced.
Hi Rob. How much you'll get on Ebay depends on your sales strategy: - In my experience fixed price is usually better to get the best price. Auction for quick sales, damaged items or when you're not quite sure what something is worth. - Selling rolling stock as individual items or in rakes. You tend to get more doing the former as you have a bigger market (Not everyone needs a full rake), but selling rakes/job lots is less work and is useful when selling a lot of low value items e.g. old unboxed wagons, accessories, odds & sods, etc. - For auction items make sure your auction finishes at a time when most people are at home and not busy. e.g. Evenings and weekends. Sunday evening is best, Monday evening is good too. Like most things the more work you put into selling on Ebay the more you tend to make, but there's also a balance between how much time you have or wish to spend doing it which is different for everyone. Good luck. And I suspect letting your viewers know when you've put the items on sale will help drum up additional interest too!😀
Thanks for the mention. Ebay have apparently now dropped all their seller fees, which is great news, because they used to take quite a hefty sum. Also thanks for telling me the easy way to look up sold items on ebay - I had been doing it the hard way by watching and buying if appropriate!! (lol)
Older (and comparatively lower value) stuff like this is absolutely ideal if you're making a railway set for you young child though... it's not only more robust than the new stuff, but when it does inevitably get abused to death, it's either easily repairable, or cheap enough to simply replace.
Another interesting video. If you go the Ebay route be prepared for some returns. I used to sell on Ebay but over the last few years people buying on Ebay seem to think all sellers are retailers and I got quite a few returns as people decided they didn't want the items once they had received them. I listed everything exactly as was its condition with clear photos including condition of boxes etc, but these customers still decided they didn't like the items and want their money back. Once you've paid for postage and packaging it only takes one in five customers like this and you soon are hardly in profit. I have stopped selling on Ebay for the moment as this seems to be getting worse. Despite you saying no returns in the description unfortunately under Ebay terms and conditions every seller must accept returns up to 14 days and if you refuse Ebay simply takes the cash back out of your PayPal account to refund the customer and you are out of pocket with no models either. I have always had 100% positive feedback, so it is not the quality of the models that causes the issue.
If you have a physical shop in the UK you fall under Trading Standards and Distance selling rules - The reality of this is that expectations are higher for a shop than for an internet auction. Auction houses are a third level - all sales are final, sold as seen - this reflects in the price - the auction house is acting only as an intermediary and charges fees for this service. Already second-hand presents greater risk to a shop as most items are sold on the internet and not face to face with a customer. People rave about old models because they are affordable To be honest Prepping a collection for sale is massively labour intensive. 1. Identification - Presented with a list of items you have to research every one - basically wading through previous sales and internet sites to work out when the model was made, what quality to expect and what people are currently willing to pay for them (Disclaimer - Past performance is not indicator of future prices) There will be un-sellable items in a collection, you don't get a choice on these so your quote has to take these into account. At this initial point you've already invested hours into a collection as you search and generate records for future use. At this point you have to judge if you are potentially receiving stolen goods - This is not as easy as you'd think. I've heard some horror stories over the years. 2 Quoting - This will be based on how likely you feel the items in the collection are to sell. Remember once you give a figure, your reputation is on the line. News gets around that you have massively underquoted so even though you have already invested hours of time in identifying the list - now is the time to cut and run. (Shops are already under enough pressure) Quoting low because you don't really want it is dangerous. 3. Once you have the physical items - Do they match the list? - by this stage they may have been several changes of hands - is the box it arrives in the box it had at new -sometimes everything has be re-packed and not necessarily in the correct boxes. Is the condition acceptable? Unless the discrepancies are egregious, you cannot really re-negotiate at this point. 4. Inspection - Look for damage, clean dust and deposits. Service the locos. Separate out models that have obvious faults. As you progress you will find undisclosed issues - previous botched repairs and models that were just bad when new. Clean off old prices - It may have been £8 in 1977 but this is only going to cause a fight if you leave it on - you have to price for 2024. 5. Go through damaged items to salvage what you can - There are no spare parts and manufacturer support has long gone so a retailer lives by their wits here. Here's where any profits are destroyed. 6. Re-pricing - based on what you have found, you may have to adjust down many of your original prices - Sometimes they may go up but this is not the norm. 7. Accounting - Second-hand messes with your VAT - It is still a Value Added Tax so you pay 20% on your profits - at the start it is not clear cut what your profits will be as many re-negotiations will occur before the whole collection is disposed off - Accounting is expensive. Just ask an accountant. 8. Prepping the website - This is not a case of pressing the button and a listing appears. Go back to your initial research and cross-reference with other listings. Good clear photographs have to be taken then edited. More valuable items may even be filmed to show what to expect - This is all part of your advertising - how will anyone know that you have a new collection to sell. 9. Accurate description of condition - this will hurt. You want to sell the item and not have it returned because there was not full disclosure. Unfortunately condition is subjective - your "Not bad for 40 years old" is not the same as "I expect it to be as new" Remember there are banking and postal charges for sale and return journeys - you aim to have just the sale part happen. 10 Order administration -Taking payment means spending on payment gateways (The bank will always get paid, even on refunds) Make sure you have clear delivery instructions and understand every special requirement the customer has added to the order. Keep calm as aggressive negotiations will occur - remember you can say no, really you can. Try to block out all those bills on your desk. If they ask to convert a model to DCC, don't panic but do start praying that the 40 year old model will behave well on DCC as once you have converted it you are committed - sometime best to say no and lose the deal. 11. Post and packing - suddenly those 200 separate items are selling but each to an individual buyer so you have to find 200 suitable boxes (£1.40 each) and bubble wrap (£67 per roll) tape and time - Remember the shop is utterly responsible for getting each item to it's destination - The courier service is not responsible for anything (apparently) So now your done, you have successfully processed and dispatched a collection At this point you add up all your running costs and the time involved Congratulations you have worked for significantly less that the National Minimum wage! This is a difficult truth for a small independent retailer, but we carry on. We do it because we want the hobby to succeed. It's fun to see classic items again and to see a customer enjoying a great hobby. There is huge satisfaction from preventing an item going to landfill, as a observer of the gratuitous wastage of the online fashion and tech world. I wish you well with the collection - remember it is worth more that just cash - They have paid for themselves in entertainment over many years. Cheers Chris
an interesting video. That is a rather common problem when you want to sell a big collection. But you also have to value the time you would use when you want to sell it all yourself. Time is money. I sold my marklincollection a year ago and didn't want to have the hassle with selling every engine and freightcar and then send it away and in worst case deal with complaints . My auction house made 14 lots and put down quite some time on taking photos and preparing the lots for their website. yes they charged me a bit, but as soon as i had left it all to them i could just wait and see. I did well, very much thanks to their knowledge. Try an auction house with a smaller lot and see how well they will do. If they succeed , let them sell the rest. Good luck !
Wow. The responses from the model shops are certainly sobering. Indicates to me that my collection is not worth nearly as much as I like to imagine and will be worth even less in 20 years.
I like it how you're so reasonable and also actually try to view it from the point of the reseller. I figured it would be about a hundred pound offer. Apart from your understanding of what the reseller has to endeavour in order to move stock on, the actual age of the models isn't necessarily to do with desirability or comparison with the quality of more recent models. A coach 3 years old or 30 years old is the same. It takes the same amount of effort to ready for sale. The same effort for photography. The same size for storage. The same cost for cataloguing and advertising etc. But, of course, with a more modern coach they can get more money for it and recrue costs better. Hornby back in the thirties started up a buy-back programme for their old 0 stock, where they would provide a re-purchase price that would go towards an allowance on a new loco. This was quietly dropped later as it reduced the profit margin on a new locomotive, as mentioned previously it cost hornby a lot in cataloguing and reselling, and the re-purchase price didn't allow for any profit on the used loco. The hornby retailers were the ones that had to provide the buy-back service, allowances being made in the retailers trade purchases from hornby. Now, it was a popular scheme, but hornby also quickly realised that if they retailed these trade-ins in any great numbers, it would eat into sales of their own new locos, defeating the purpose of why the scheme was implemented in the first place. Apparently large stocks of the buy-backs were dumped in the Mersey: it was more cost effective to just remove them completely from the market than it was to resell them.
This was to be aspected, recently at a small collectors swap and sell fair organized by the local railway club their where models of the same age sold, and the guy selling them told me they where from a late member, the shops also offered his wife also such a small amount. So the club stepped in and started to sell them on their regular swap fairs, and they were now already over the £2000 mark. Problem with selling to shops, and the responses already confirmed this, is that they are offered so much stuff that there stock rooms just overflow. A problem that people who want to sell their collection will face more and more, because the main group of model train collectors is slowly coming to the point that they are to old or pas away unfortunately. And here the rule of demand and offer steps in, the more offer the lower the prices, and the old stuff like you have, will be victim first of this. Selling it individually and special around Christmas will bring you the highest value. Would be interesting to hear what it brings in the end…
Excactly. Our generation that was into model railroading during the golden years of 1950-1980 are dying out. There is such a huge amount of collections being put on the market at the same time that it is overwhelming the sales channels. We have been asked to stop taking in any more model railroading items at the Railroad Museum where I work because it is filling up our limited storage space. We also walked away from a layout being sold by a widow because we simply had no place to store or display it if we had cut it up and removed it.
First of all good luck with your disposal of these items. I have recently purchased a few items from auction houses, and got a few bargains, partly because some items are poorly described, for example three Fleischman N gauge locos, as new in boxes £60, yet the desciption failed to mention all three had factory fitted DCC decoders. Many of these auctions are live-streamed, Hornby & Bachmann seem to generally sell well, watching a auction might give you another view on prices. I feel I must mention Best Model Toys, who are specialist auctioneers for collectable models and toys. Almost alone, they test everything they sell and clearly state models are ruuners or non-runners.
I have quite a bit of 80s stuff, especially i have 2 HSTs. I buy it and give it a lift, I feel prices of new stuff is a tad hig, its good stuff being manufactured today but wow$110 for a mk2b coach when Lima coachs are $20 pop in flush glazing $7 and a repaint then it takes on a new lease of life. A lighting suit isn't very expensive so for $35 i have a relatively nice looking coach. And watching a train go by whether expensive or 😊updated coaches they pretty much look the same.
Of course the difference between what viewers believe its worth and what a commercial entity will offer is the amount that the commercial entity would expect as a profit on reselling.
a very interesting short video giving insight into the resale value of 2nd hand (older) model railways, you did get an offer from Rails but it was a joke in my opinion. I think you are doing the right thing making them look as good as possible and putting them on. eBay make sure you describe them properly and don''t be to ambitious with reserves and starting prices good luck with your quest regards Ron
As these are old items, you're looking at selling in a very limited market. That is collectors or someone who doesnt know how much model railway stock has improved over the last few years never mind 15 - 20 that most of this stuff appears to be. The best bet is EBay Im afraid. The good news is EBay have removed seller fees so you dont need to wait for 80% discount promos. There's also talk they will shift postage costs onto buyers although this may be sometime in the future. Good luck!
Or someone who doesn't *care* that much about how it's improved. I don't want to pay 40 pounds per coach when trying to assemble a full HST. Some of those models are still sold today, eg the Lima PGAs are substantially identical to R60214, which is up for preorder over a year away!
I'm quite shocked by the low prices and non-offers. There's quite a lot there that would be valuable to the right persons. I've bought quite a bit of 80s Marklin myself,which is very reliable, but maybe the market for second hand Hornby is different and I only own newer Hornby trains myself.
EBay with no selling fees is ok I’ve recently started selling a few bit I have too many of or no need for including steel track. I wrap it and arrange post and collection from home via the post office app rather than eBay it’s been ok so far. Lucky I kept a load of bubble wrap and card from stuff I bought in the ultimate recycling bin. Good luck.
Very interesting . So all these ads in the model railway press about taking your old trains are largely spurious . They basically want items post 2000 and probably only 5 years old ideally . Your collection is worth much more than £110 , but I suppose you just need to think about postage and packaging if using eBay . Good luck with it !
I think the retailers only really want the more update locos and rolling stock because they can get more for it. I did wonder if the value of the collection would be affected by the age of the items only the sold price will answer that. I would aim at selling the items at beginners as it ideal for them.
The retailers will also need to account for 20% VAT on any value they get when they sell them on and so a private sale is usually likely to get you a better overall price.
I can't believe the negativity of the retailers. There is certainly a market for what you have. I for one prefer older 2nd hand models, not everyone wants, or can afford the latest offerings.
Try monty's models in bridlington they sell second hand trains and they buy and sell too they are indepentent their not like rails of sheff or other shops just do there own thing
With Ebay realizing that their fees were putting sellers off, and dropping them, then it has become the place to sell again. Having to overprice your stuff to get the price you want was never a good way to do things.
zero one stuff does sell. a bloke came to our exhibition this year wanting help setting it up. He had just bought a bulk lot and thought it was the latest tech.
All items and especially collections are currently hard to sell and I see a mve towards new items as technology changes and people are maybe not comfortable working on older electronics themselves.
Old trains are a hard lot to gauge, I personally don't have much desire in them since they typically are the more "large name brand" companies at the time, I'm in the US so that'll be brands like Tyco or Bachmann and quite honestly there was nothing special about it stuff of that era. It doesn't stop people from trying to upsell their stuff by referring to it as "vintage" though, with the impression that because it's old it has to be worth more, but that's a big fat skip for me unless I can get old cars for dirt cheap.
Don't throw those zero 1 decoders out though... remarkably, they still sell (albeit for not very much) on eBay... there must still be some Zero 1 diehards out there...
![Tee Grizzley - Robbery 8 [Official Video]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/34_vkNV6wrU/mqdefault.jpg)
Final ebay price, divide by half or more depending on how easy you think the thing will be to shift on, that's the basic way just about every second hand/pawn broker comes to a price on such things these days.
Maybe they give you a fiver more if the sob story about why its being sold to them is good 😅
Good news for you, Ebay has now dropped all private seller charges so you will get the full selling price from now on.
Fantastic timing! Couldn't believe it
Still have to pay 35p listing charge per item but that's a hell of a lot better than the 13% or so they used to charge
@@shauntaylor9251 Don't they allow 300 listings per month before the 35p charge?
A buddy of mine inherited a collection a few years ago which had stock similar in age to your stock. He was offered 220 euro for the lot by a dealer.
He was about to take them up on the offer but by chance he found out that I had models as well.
We tidied them all up, serviced the locos and listed them on a facebook railway selling page. In the end he made well over a 1000 euro from the sales and he let me pick a few bits out for me too keep.
With the steel track, give them a good rub down with a track rubber, replace any dodgy fishplates, sell the straights and curves in job lots and the points as single items.
With the coaches and wagons offer deals for multiple purchases.
With the locos, post videos of the locos working and a few decent photos, make sure to say they have been recently serviced.
Hi Rob. How much you'll get on Ebay depends on your sales strategy:
- In my experience fixed price is usually better to get the best price. Auction for quick sales, damaged items or when you're not quite sure what something is worth.
- Selling rolling stock as individual items or in rakes. You tend to get more doing the former as you have a bigger market (Not everyone needs a full rake), but selling rakes/job lots is less work and is useful when selling a lot of low value items e.g. old unboxed wagons, accessories, odds & sods, etc.
- For auction items make sure your auction finishes at a time when most people are at home and not busy. e.g. Evenings and weekends. Sunday evening is best, Monday evening is good too.
Like most things the more work you put into selling on Ebay the more you tend to make, but there's also a balance between how much time you have or wish to spend doing it which is different for everyone.
Good luck. And I suspect letting your viewers know when you've put the items on sale will help drum up additional interest too!😀
Thanks for the mention. Ebay have apparently now dropped all their seller fees, which is great news, because they used to take quite a hefty sum. Also thanks for telling me the easy way to look up sold items on ebay - I had been doing it the hard way by watching and buying if appropriate!! (lol)
Yeah, eBay couldn't have timed that better!
Beat me to it. I was just about to say Ebay have dropped their fees.
That’s the best intro’ yet. Good luck selling your items.
Older (and comparatively lower value) stuff like this is absolutely ideal if you're making a railway set for you young child though... it's not only more robust than the new stuff, but when it does inevitably get abused to death, it's either easily repairable, or cheap enough to simply replace.
Another interesting video. If you go the Ebay route be prepared for some returns. I used to sell on Ebay but over the last few years people buying on Ebay seem to think all sellers are retailers and I got quite a few returns as people decided they didn't want the items once they had received them. I listed everything exactly as was its condition with clear photos including condition of boxes etc, but these customers still decided they didn't like the items and want their money back. Once you've paid for postage and packaging it only takes one in five customers like this and you soon are hardly in profit. I have stopped selling on Ebay for the moment as this seems to be getting worse. Despite you saying no returns in the description unfortunately under Ebay terms and conditions every seller must accept returns up to 14 days and if you refuse Ebay simply takes the cash back out of your PayPal account to refund the customer and you are out of pocket with no models either. I have always had 100% positive feedback, so it is not the quality of the models that causes the issue.
If you have a physical shop in the UK you fall under Trading Standards and Distance selling rules - The reality of this is that expectations are higher for a shop than for an internet auction. Auction houses are a third level - all sales are final, sold as seen - this reflects in the price - the auction house is acting only as an intermediary and charges fees for this service. Already second-hand presents greater risk to a shop as most items are sold on the internet and not face to face with a customer.
People rave about old models because they are affordable
To be honest Prepping a collection for sale is massively labour intensive.
1. Identification - Presented with a list of items you have to research every one - basically wading through previous sales and internet sites to work out when the model was made, what quality to expect and what people are currently willing to pay for them (Disclaimer - Past performance is not indicator of future prices) There will be un-sellable items in a collection, you don't get a choice on these so your quote has to take these into account.
At this initial point you've already invested hours into a collection as you search and generate records for future use. At this point you have to judge if you are potentially receiving stolen goods - This is not as easy as you'd think. I've heard some horror stories over the years.
2 Quoting - This will be based on how likely you feel the items in the collection are to sell. Remember once you give a figure, your reputation is on the line. News gets around that you have massively underquoted so even though you have already invested hours of time in identifying the list - now is the time to cut and run. (Shops are already under enough pressure) Quoting low because you don't really want it is dangerous.
3. Once you have the physical items - Do they match the list? - by this stage they may have been several changes of hands - is the box it arrives in the box it had at new -sometimes everything has be re-packed and not necessarily in the correct boxes. Is the condition acceptable? Unless the discrepancies are egregious, you cannot really re-negotiate at this point.
4. Inspection - Look for damage, clean dust and deposits. Service the locos. Separate out models that have obvious faults. As you progress you will find undisclosed issues - previous botched repairs and models that were just bad when new. Clean off old prices - It may have been £8 in 1977 but this is only going to cause a fight if you leave it on - you have to price for 2024.
5. Go through damaged items to salvage what you can - There are no spare parts and manufacturer support has long gone so a retailer lives by their wits here. Here's where any profits are destroyed.
6. Re-pricing - based on what you have found, you may have to adjust down many of your original prices - Sometimes they may go up but this is not the norm.
7. Accounting - Second-hand messes with your VAT - It is still a Value Added Tax so you pay 20% on your profits - at the start it is not clear cut what your profits will be as many re-negotiations will occur before the whole collection is disposed off - Accounting is expensive. Just ask an accountant.
8. Prepping the website - This is not a case of pressing the button and a listing appears. Go back to your initial research and cross-reference with other listings. Good clear photographs have to be taken then edited. More valuable items may even be filmed to show what to expect - This is all part of your advertising - how will anyone know that you have a new collection to sell.
9. Accurate description of condition - this will hurt. You want to sell the item and not have it returned because there was not full disclosure. Unfortunately condition is subjective - your "Not bad for 40 years old" is not the same as "I expect it to be as new" Remember there are banking and postal charges for sale and return journeys - you aim to have just the sale part happen.
10 Order administration -Taking payment means spending on payment gateways (The bank will always get paid, even on refunds) Make sure you have clear delivery instructions and understand every special requirement the customer has added to the order. Keep calm as aggressive negotiations will occur - remember you can say no, really you can. Try to block out all those bills on your desk.
If they ask to convert a model to DCC, don't panic but do start praying that the 40 year old model will behave well on DCC as once you have converted it you are committed - sometime best to say no and lose the deal.
11. Post and packing - suddenly those 200 separate items are selling but each to an individual buyer so you have to find 200 suitable boxes (£1.40 each) and bubble wrap (£67 per roll) tape and time - Remember the shop is utterly responsible for getting each item to it's destination - The courier service is not responsible for anything (apparently)
So now your done, you have successfully processed and dispatched a collection
At this point you add up all your running costs and the time involved
Congratulations you have worked for significantly less that the National Minimum wage!
This is a difficult truth for a small independent retailer, but we carry on.
We do it because we want the hobby to succeed. It's fun to see classic items again and to see a customer enjoying a great hobby. There is huge satisfaction from preventing an item going to landfill, as a observer of the gratuitous wastage of the online fashion and tech world.
I wish you well with the collection - remember it is worth more that just cash - They have paid for themselves in entertainment over many years.
Cheers
Chris
I absolutely love the song at the beginning, Rob. 😆
an interesting video. That is a rather common problem when you want to sell a big collection. But you also have to value the time you would use when you want to sell it all yourself. Time is money. I sold my marklincollection a year ago and didn't want to have the hassle with selling every engine and freightcar and then send it away and in worst case deal with complaints . My auction house made 14 lots and put down quite some time on taking photos and preparing the lots for their website. yes they charged me a bit, but as soon as i had left it all to them i could just wait and see. I did well, very much thanks to their knowledge. Try an auction house with a smaller lot and see how well they will do. If they succeed , let them sell the rest. Good luck !
Wow. The responses from the model shops are certainly sobering. Indicates to me that my collection is not worth nearly as much as I like to imagine and will be worth even less in 20 years.
I like it how you're so reasonable and also actually try to view it from the point of the reseller.
I figured it would be about a hundred pound offer.
Apart from your understanding of what the reseller has to endeavour in order to move stock on, the actual age of the models isn't necessarily to do with desirability or comparison with the quality of more recent models.
A coach 3 years old or 30 years old is the same. It takes the same amount of effort to ready for sale. The same effort for photography. The same size for storage. The same cost for cataloguing and advertising etc. But, of course, with a more modern coach they can get more money for it and recrue costs better.
Hornby back in the thirties started up a buy-back programme for their old 0 stock, where they would provide a re-purchase price that would go towards an allowance on a new loco.
This was quietly dropped later as it reduced the profit margin on a new locomotive, as mentioned previously it cost hornby a lot in cataloguing and reselling, and the re-purchase price didn't allow for any profit on the used loco.
The hornby retailers were the ones that had to provide the buy-back service, allowances being made in the retailers trade purchases from hornby.
Now, it was a popular scheme, but hornby also quickly realised that if they retailed these trade-ins in any great numbers, it would eat into sales of their own new locos, defeating the purpose of why the scheme was implemented in the first place.
Apparently large stocks of the buy-backs were dumped in the Mersey: it was more cost effective to just remove them completely from the market than it was to resell them.
This was to be aspected, recently at a small collectors swap and sell fair organized by the local railway club their where models of the same age sold, and the guy selling them told me they where from a late member, the shops also offered his wife also such a small amount.
So the club stepped in and started to sell them on their regular swap fairs, and they were now already over the £2000 mark.
Problem with selling to shops, and the responses already confirmed this, is that they are offered so much stuff that there stock rooms just overflow.
A problem that people who want to sell their collection will face more and more, because the main group of model train collectors is slowly coming to the point that they are to old or pas away unfortunately.
And here the rule of demand and offer steps in, the more offer the lower the prices, and the old stuff like you have, will be victim first of this.
Selling it individually and special around Christmas will bring you the highest value.
Would be interesting to hear what it brings in the end…
Excactly. Our generation that was into model railroading during the golden years of 1950-1980 are dying out. There is such a huge amount of collections being put on the market at the same time that it is overwhelming the sales channels.
We have been asked to stop taking in any more model railroading items at the Railroad Museum where I work because it is filling up our limited storage space. We also walked away from a layout being sold by a widow because we simply had no place to store or display it if we had cut it up and removed it.
First of all good luck with your disposal of these items.
I have recently purchased a few items from auction houses, and got a few bargains, partly because some items are poorly described, for example three Fleischman N gauge locos, as new in boxes £60, yet the desciption failed to mention all three had factory fitted DCC decoders.
Many of these auctions are live-streamed, Hornby & Bachmann seem to generally sell well, watching a auction might give you another view on prices.
I feel I must mention Best Model Toys, who are specialist auctioneers for collectable models and toys. Almost alone, they test everything they sell and clearly state models are ruuners or non-runners.
I have quite a bit of 80s stuff, especially i have 2 HSTs. I buy it and give it a lift, I feel prices of new stuff is a tad hig, its good stuff being manufactured today but wow$110 for a mk2b coach when Lima coachs are $20 pop in flush glazing $7 and a repaint then it takes on a new lease of life. A lighting suit isn't very expensive so for $35 i have a relatively nice looking coach. And watching a train go by whether expensive or 😊updated coaches they pretty much look the same.
Of course the difference between what viewers believe its worth and what a commercial entity will offer is the amount that the commercial entity would expect as a profit on reselling.
a very interesting short video giving insight into the resale value of 2nd hand (older) model railways, you did get an offer from Rails but it was a joke in my opinion. I think you are doing the right thing making them look as good as possible and putting them on. eBay make sure you describe them properly and don''t be to ambitious with reserves and starting prices good luck with your quest regards Ron
I wish you well, sir. I'm sure almost all the items will be of interest to somebody (including me!).
One man's trash is another man's treasure.
As these are old items, you're looking at selling in a very limited market. That is collectors or someone who doesnt know how much model railway stock has improved over the last few years never mind 15 - 20 that most of this stuff appears to be. The best bet is EBay Im afraid. The good news is EBay have removed seller fees so you dont need to wait for 80% discount promos. There's also talk they will shift postage costs onto buyers although this may be sometime in the future. Good luck!
Or someone who doesn't *care* that much about how it's improved. I don't want to pay 40 pounds per coach when trying to assemble a full HST. Some of those models are still sold today, eg the Lima PGAs are substantially identical to R60214, which is up for preorder over a year away!
As long as you sell less than 300 items, eBay will not charge you
I'm quite shocked by the low prices and non-offers.
There's quite a lot there that would be valuable to the right persons.
I've bought quite a bit of 80s Marklin myself,which is very reliable, but maybe the market for second hand Hornby is different and I only own newer Hornby trains myself.
EBay with no selling fees is ok I’ve recently started selling a few bit I have too many of or no need for including steel track. I wrap it and arrange post and collection from home via the post office app rather than eBay it’s been ok so far. Lucky I kept a load of bubble wrap and card from stuff I bought in the ultimate recycling bin.
Good luck.
Very interesting . So all these ads in the model railway press about taking your old trains are largely spurious . They basically want items post 2000 and probably only 5 years old ideally . Your collection is worth much more than £110 , but I suppose you just need to think about postage and packaging if using eBay . Good luck with it !
I think the retailers only really want the more update locos and rolling stock because they can get more for it. I did wonder if the value of the collection would be affected by the age of the items only the sold price will answer that. I would aim at selling the items at beginners as it ideal for them.
The retailers will also need to account for 20% VAT on any value they get when they sell them on and so a private sale is usually likely to get you a better overall price.
Zero seller fees now on eBay, about time.
I can't believe the negativity of the retailers. There is certainly a market for what you have. I for one prefer older 2nd hand models, not everyone wants, or can afford the latest offerings.
Try monty's models in bridlington they sell second hand trains and they buy and sell too they are indepentent their not like rails of sheff or other shops just do there own thing
With Ebay realizing that their fees were putting sellers off, and dropping them, then it has become the place to sell again. Having to overprice your stuff to get the price you want was never a good way to do things.
Ironic. I pretty much only want these older models. Oh well :shrug:. Do let us know - I’m very interested in a number of the lots you have there.
zero one stuff does sell. a bloke came to our exhibition this year wanting help setting it up. He had just bought a bulk lot and thought it was the latest tech.
With model technology so advanced these days people don't seem interested in classic model railway items . . . shame.
All items and especially collections are currently hard to sell and I see a mve towards new items as technology changes and people are maybe not comfortable working on older electronics themselves.
It is well worth cleaning and taking good photos.
Old trains are a hard lot to gauge, I personally don't have much desire in them since they typically are the more "large name brand" companies at the time, I'm in the US so that'll be brands like Tyco or Bachmann and quite honestly there was nothing special about it stuff of that era. It doesn't stop people from trying to upsell their stuff by referring to it as "vintage" though, with the impression that because it's old it has to be worth more, but that's a big fat skip for me unless I can get old cars for dirt cheap.
One of those things is what I am after.
Don't throw those zero 1 decoders out though... remarkably, they still sell (albeit for not very much) on eBay... there must still be some Zero 1 diehards out there...
How about you give us an idea what you think you would be prepared to accept for the collection
What do you want for the Lima 09 (as is)?
Have you tried Facebook selling page
I'm a bit nervous about using FB marketplace. Have you used it successfully?