Lessons from York - Part 2A What We Didn't See

The Lionel/MPC Coke Set from 1974. This year, this
"collectable" was conspicuously absent from the vendor tables.

The Impact of Faux-Collectability
 (part 3 of a 4-part series)

In part one and part two I shared what items we saw a lot of (and our best guess as to why) at the Train Collectors Association Eastern Division toy train meet. it's one of the largest events of its kind, with attendance of around 15,000 - 18.000. So what trends at this show can be significant.

One thing I could always count on seeing was a Lionel/MPC Coke set. This train, initially offered in 1974, was instantly snapped up by collectors and put away. The purchasers were convinced that they had grabbed a rare collector’s item that would only increase with value over the years.

Well, over the years I’ve seen mint-in-the-box Coke sets, and seldom priced higher than $125 (close to the original selling price).  Last year it seemed as if everyone was trying to dump their set, without much apparent success.

This year, there was not a single Coke set for sale anywhere on the fairgrounds.

Why?

I don’t think it’s likely that the sets previously offered all found new homes. There has never been any real demand for the things – at least among train collectors. I have two theories.

First, it could be that vendors simply got tired of lugging the things to York and then packing them up to go home again. Even if you’re an amateur seller, there comes a point when you realize that large box that sits there meet after meet is just taking up limited table space that could be used to display something that’s going to sell.

Second, I don’t know much about the Coke memorabilia market, but it’s possible that those collectors have given these sets new homes. Before the rise of eBay, there wasn’t a lot of interaction between various collector’s markets. Now it’s easy to simply put the item up for auction, where any number of specialty collectors can find it.

I’m not sure which is the case with this item, but I’ll be on the lookout for it next show. If they all show up again, it may mean no one bid on them online either!

Part 1A - The Impact of a Specialized Product on its Core Audience


Part 1B - The Impact of an Aging Demographic

Part 2B - The Impact of Practicality

Lessons from York - a Setting for Sets

Dad and I just returned from the TCA Eastern Division Toy Train Show at York, PA. As always, it was an enjoyable time, and once again we waded through buildings full of toy train and toy train-related items (the latter is a pretty loose relationship, as you'll see). And of course the current producers of toy/model trains, such as Lionel, MTH, Atlas, et al. were there as well.

And as with previous visits, there seemed to be a pattern to what we saw -- although I'm not entirely sure of the reason behind it. Each meet we notice an abundance of a particular item (or type of item). We find them in every hall, sometimes several on the same table. But the next meet, they're nowhere around.

The last meet we attended together, the 1957 Lionel Girl's Train -- normally an exceedingly rare piece -- was everywhere. And so was the modern reproductions of that set. This meet, I didn't see any at all.

This time it was complete sets, with all the boxes. And not just the standard sets one usually sees, but really unusual and rare sets. It's usually pretty easy to track down a Lionel General set from 1965 with the original box, and the Lionel/MPC Coke train is always around (Many people snapped it up when offered in 1974 thinking it would be a highly desirable collector's item. It never happened, and current pricing for a mint-in-the-box set is approaching original list price.)

Only purchase this set if you really like Coca-Cola. It is NOT collectable.

The cheap
No, this time we saw a lot of Marx train sets, ranging from the 1940's through the 1960's. Now there are fairly rare because Marx trains were inexpensive, and unlike Lionel trains which might come out once a year for a Christmas display, were played with until the wheels fell off -- when they were thrown away. And when they were brought home, most Marx sets were taken out of their boxes (which were disposed of) and stored in the toy chest.

Remember, though, that value of any collectable is determined by three criteria: condition, scarcity, and desirability. Most of the Marx sets were in good shape for their age, and certainly rare, but many -- especially the most recent ones -- simply aren't that desirable. It was possible to pick up a complete set for as little as $40, which was actually a fair price.

Why were all of these inexpensive sets hitting the market at the same time? I don't know. My guess is that folks were trimming their collections, and sets take up a lot of room. But that's just a guess.

The very old
We also saw some pre-World War II trains sets in their boxes. This made a good deal of sense to me. Most toy collectors tend to collect items from their childhood -- either replacing long lost toys, or finally getting the awesome toys Santa never came through with. The founding members of the Train Collector's Association grew up in the early 1920's, so for a long time trains from that time period were the most desirable. My dad grew up in the lat 1930's so he's most interested in pre-war and early post-war trains. As for me, I  like the trains from the mid 1960's, which is sort of the twilight of toy trains.

The point is, most of the first generation of collectors have either died or closed up housekeeping. Which dumps their collections back into the market. Now my dad's 80 this year, and while he's still living in own house, many of his generation have downsized. Seeing all the early pre-war sets wasn't surprising. But the scarcity of sets from 1935-1945 was. Those should also be coming back into circulation again.

The very odd
The rules for what can be sold at the meet are very strict. All items must be toy train or toy train-related. Sometimes the relationship's clear -- like Plasticville buildings, which virtually every O-gauge layout from the 1950's on seemed to have. And things like figures, toy cars, model trees, etc. also make sense.

But what about this? We saw no less than three Tootsietoy Fleet sets. There were all complete, in near-perfect condition, in their original set boxes. What't the toy train connect? Tootsietoy cars were used extensively in the 1930's on train layouts. Therefore, anything by Tootsietoy is "train-related" -- including battleships and aircraft carriers, I suppose.

The Tootsietoy aircraft carrier. Very difficult to find without at
least one airplane's wings broken off.

Like Marx trains, Tootsietoys were not very expensive in their day. They were meant to be played with, and they were. The concept of keeping a toy in its original packaging to maintain its value was foreign to kids in the 1930's. The Depression ensured their parents didn't have a lot of money -- so if they were lucky enough to get a toy, you bet they were going to play with it!

The Tootsietoy battleship from the Fleet set. Having all the
turrets and masts intact is a rarity.

I must say, the sets were beautiful to look at. The ships are all cast metal, and it's rare to find any of them intact. The masts are often broken off, as are the wings of the airplanes on the carrier. I can't imagine how these three sets survived, but there they were. In different tables in different halls, but there they were. Why were they there?

I'm not sure. Perhaps the breaking up of the first generation's collections brought these to light. It would be consistent with the older train sets we saw (although better explained if there were more sets from the mid-1930's).

But that's part of the attraction. I know when we go back this fall, we won't see any of these sets. But we will see a lot of something else. But what? We won't know what that is until we get there!

#York

Lessons from York - A Skewed View 2

In yesterday's post (Lessons from York - A Skewed View 1) I looked at some collecting trends and speculated on their cultural meaning. The Train Collectors Association Eastern Division toy train meet. is the hobby's equivalent of CES -- both in relative scale and breadth of coverage. You will see all the latest products there, but more importantly, you'll see the ebb and flow of supply and demand.

The sudden appearance of some types of objects can suggest trends (which was what yesterday's post was about), but the disappearance of readily available objects can be equally telling. So what things did we not see at York this time?

Don't pay too much for this. You will not get your
money out of it.

No deposit, no return
We didn't see any Lionel Coke sets again. When MPC brought out this "collectible," everyone scarfed it up. After all, it's a Lionel train, and it's Coca-Cola memorabilia. With two markets to sell to, buyers were bound to double or even triple their investment, right?

Wrong.

It turned out that neither group of collectors were especially interested, and so mint-in-the-box Coke sets have been a staple of the York meets for years. The spring show I noticed their absence (and guessed as to why). But they haven't returned, and I'm not sure they will.

I suspect more than one of the vendors that used to sell them at York are now offering them on eBay. A quick search showed eight, ranging in price from $169 to $249. All mint, all "rare." It's neither. And if you pay more than $120 for it, you've been taken.

Boxing up the returns
Another thing that was conspicuously absent this time were MPC "collectible" boxcars. During the postwar era, Lionel came out with a series of boxcars, the 6464 series. From 1954 through 1966 this boxcar was given a variety of different paint schemes, offered in sets and sometimes for sale separately, and always with the 6464 prefix to the catalog number (6464-100, 6464-475, etc.). Just like stamps, many postwar-Lionel collectors strive to have a complete set of the 25 different 6464 boxcars (and the innumerable variations).

An original 6464-150 boxcar, made between 1954-1957. Still
desirable by collectors.

Lionel didn't plan to make these boxcars collectible -- they were just painting the same shell with different designs to go with their train sets and keep the product fresh. But the continued demand for the 6464 boxcars didn't go unnoticed by MPC when they bought Lionel in the 1970's, or indeed by any of the other companies who have owned Lionel since. And so a steady stream of "6464-style" boxcars continue to flood the market.

Part of Lionel/MPC's 1976 Bicentennial series.
Unlike the 6464 series this car is modeled on, interest
(and value) has dropped significantly.

The current Lionel company offers a Monopoly, college football, and Beatles series of boxcars to name a few. MPC had a series of 50 state boxcars, as well as Disney characters, Lionel history, the 13 colonies (for the Bicentennial), and several more. Collectors dutifully bought them all, confident that, like the original 6464's, demand and prices would only increase over time.

Nope.

For years I've seen MPC 6464 boxcars stacked on tables like cordwood, some priced as low as $10 (way below the original 1970's list price). Until this show. For the first time, most tables were clear of these faux-collectibles.

Why?

I think that this market has also moved to eBay. A quick search for "Lionel MPC boxcar" seems to confirm this.

Will this trend continue? I suspect so. And I'll be interested to see the impact on the York meet. Will we see fewer tables rented? Will the quality of the merchandise offered improve? We'll know more in the spring.

Lessons from York - We Saw It All (sort of)

Dad and I recently returned from our semi-annual trip to the Train Collectors Association (TCA) Eastern Division toy train meet in York, PA. This is the largest such show in the United States and provides an interesting snapshot of the state of the hobby. 

It can also hint at the current state of collecting in general. As is our tradition, we spent a lot of time discussing what we saw a lot of (and what we didn't) -- and more importantly, the reasons behind them

Since I started writing about this show in 2008, we've seen various trends cycle through the hobby. For the most part, toy collectors try to recapture their youth. So that means either replacing what they had or getting those items that Santa never brought. When Dad first joined the Train Collectors Association in the early 1970s, most of the membership was interested in toy trains of the 1910-1920s.

Over time, that focus shifted to those of the 1930s and pre-WWII. Then post-war trains increased in demand, and finally the trains of my youth -- the mid-1960s. As I've mentioned in other posts about this, time has marched on, and later eras are gaining in popularity.

Gauging the demand

But the focus has remained primarily on either standard gauge trains (popular through the early 1930s), or 0-gauge trains (slightly smaller, and popular from the 1930s-onward). S-gauge (smaller still), American Flyer's post-war choice was always a distant third. But the smaller post-war gauges -- H0, N, and Z -- weren't to be found at the show.


That's because most of the people using those gauges were considered modelers as opposed to toy train collectors.

 Off the shelf and onto the layout

With the inevitable demographic shift in the hobby, there's also been a change in focus. Lionel (or American Flyer) trains at Christmas ceased being a thing in the late 1960s. Smaller H0 and N scale trains replaced them. And increasingly, year-round layouts became the norm.

So current TCA members are more likely to be interested in running trains, rather than having them sit on shelves (as I discussed in 2014). And vintage H0 and N scale trains started to show up at the York meet.

True equilibrium?

So what did we see this show? Unlike previous shows, there wasn't one particular thing (or category of thing) that stood out. Formerly under-represented gauges were there in abundance -- American Flyer S gauge, early H0 and N scale sets of the 1960s and so on.

There were lots of examples of late pre-war trains, but nothing much earlier than 1932. Lots of vintage Lionel, but plenty from later years as well.

The hardware chain Menards has entered the toy train market in a big way.
Their products were not only on sale at their booth but at several others
throughout the halls.  

It was easy to find something to fit whatever scale layout you happened to have. But there was something missing, too.

No standouts

As mentioned, the really old pieces weren't there -- but then again, neither were their primary buyers. Mainstays like the Lionel/MPC Coke Set were missing (I only saw one this time). Ditto Industrial Rail rolling stock. While there was some of everything, there wasn't much that was very remarkable -- or that I hadn't seen many times before.

I've never seen this Industrial Rail tank car at the York meet.
This time, I didn't see any Industrial Rail tank cars at all. 

Are the (relatively) younger collectors holding on to what they have, and only releasing the less interesting (and valuable) items back into the market? Hard to say. We'll see what happen in the spring.