Interestingly, the item ended prematurely as it is "no longer available". What strikes me as odd (more than the rest) is that of if someone were selling a whistle like this is if someone really wants to know how much something like this goes for on ebay they could check out worthpoint.com.

http://www.worthpoint.com/worthopedia/s ... ck-3-chime

http://www.worthpoint.com/worthopedia/h ... m-20081714

You have to pay or sign up for the free trial to see what it's worth. I have seen a hancock whistle go for as little as $3,700 (it was unmarked with no physical evidence as to heritage) and as much as $9,000 something (was from a "J" with some sort of proof of heritage).

It sounds like this guy bought some line as to what it is, bought it thinking he can turn it for a profit and is only now finding out that he messed up.

Anyone here know how UP marked it's whistles???


Some peoples children.....

Not to sound spiteful, but there is a small since of victory in causing this guy to remove the whistle from eBay.

This auction has been relisted multiple times in the past couple of months.

Cross posting info back here, some of your questions can be answered, but one of the previous owners commented about it.
http://www.hornwhistleboard.com/viewtop ... f=3&t=7393
http://www.hornwhistleboard.com/viewtop ... f=3&t=6959

Thanks for the info, it seems this guy is a bit off his rocker. Asking 50,000 for that whistle is really out there. Oh well, made for some good entertainment.

Edward A. Fagen, the author of "The Engine's Moan: American Steam Whistles", the definitive book on steam whistles in North America, and also the editor of "Horn & Whistle Magazine" for a decade or more, told me many years ago, "Of twenty-five Hancock long-bell three-chimes that were on UP Big Boys, there are approximately a hundred and fifty in collectors' hands. Of two hundred and seventy-eight Leslie A-200-156 air horns that were on Pennsy GG1s, approximately eight hundred are in collectors' hands."

The upshot of this statement is that unless you personally removed the whistle/horn from the locomotive, OR there are photos or a bill of sale involved, unless the specific design is extremely distinctive (a hand-fabricated "whipporwill" or "pan-pipe" whistle, or a unique design like the PRR "Banchee" freight whistle or B&O "tumor top" whistle), whatever the seller says is worth the time you took to hear it, and nothing more. Caveat emptor in extremis.

Now, there are exceptions. If you buy it from the guy who shut down the cotton compress, and there are photos of him slinging the thing off the smokestack, and maybe taking the whistle off the shop switcher to boot, that may be a stronger case. Aside from that, I would have extreme trouble believing anything said about any steam whistle.

It's also been my personal experience that most of the "best" whistles never reach eBay, but instead are brokered between hard-core collectors on a face-to-face basis at swap meets, whistle blows, thresher reunions, and the like.

Here's some food for thought...

Let's say you have a railroad museum. In that museum, you have two whistles in a display case.

Both whistles are Hancock long-bell three-chimes. They look identical to one another since you removed the whistle lever so you could put them in the cabinet.

Whistle #1 was used on a Big Boy. You have 8 mm home movies of the guy who sold you the whistle taking it off the engine before they shipped it to the scrapper.

Whistle #2 was bought on ebay. The seller said "I'm a TV star on 'Storage Locker Wars' I found this in a storage locker in Cheyenne. I think it's a train whistle?"

Why is whistle #1 so much more valuable? What if the labels are on the wrong whistle? (Uh, you said the whistle on the right was from the Big Boy, but was that "on the right" as I stand facing the display case from the front, when I open it up from the back?)

Bonus question. Does the first whistle show or tell your visitors something the second doesn't? What if the second one says "This whistle is the type of whistle that was used on the world famous Union Pacific Big Boy, blah, blah, blah..." When you hook them up to steam lines for the annual fourth of July whistle blow, don't they both sound the same, and doesn't that sound replicate the sound of the Big Boy?

This is not entirely a philosophical discussion. There is more than one railroad museum with a locomotive in a paint scheme that is not original. Is that appropriate? Is it OK to have a Chinese loco masquerade as being New Haven? What about a loco of the same type and style as the original, i.e. A PRR E8 painted as UP?

Or, you buy a box lot of steam whistles all made by the same maker at the same time but used by different railroads on different classes of locomotive and never marked by any of them........ONE of the locomotives one came from is famous for some reason.

Which is more valuable than any of the other identical possibilities?

It's all about the emotional appeal to a willing buyer, not a rational assessment of its worth, given it is a mass produced bit of machinery, nothing handcrafted or artistic about it relative to any other.

Which doesn't mean a seller can't try to exploit any emotional motivation......and it doesn't mean a buyer has to allow himself to be manipulated.

dave

I very much agree with your statements, in my response to this guy I told him that these whistles were an off the shelf item sold to many railroads. I could care less what railroad, or locomotive it came off of, I just want it for its sound. I was more amazed that a simple question got that type of response.

Sounds like this guy might have just a little anger control issue...

I've found two types of whistle/horn collectors out there. One type collects what they can get from their chosen railroad(s)--they're looking for whistles that were carried, or could have been carried, on their favorite locomotives. The others, more steam technology guys than rail enthusiasts, collect whistles/horns for what they are--Lunkenheimers, Crosbys, Hancocks, Nathans, etc.--typically with the intent of putting them to use or blowing them if possible. (A separate sub-set of the latter field even builds or modifies whistles/horns to maximum efficiency or better sonic/tonal quality than the original builders achieved.)

Some of this is no different from other collecting-versus-preservation situations. Is the local fire company saving the old fire truck because it's a 1928 American La France or 1952 Mack fire truck, or because it served that very community for forty years? Are those railroads using Lackawanna MU coaches because they're saving DL&W equipment or because they want an "old-time" coach? Would that old Studebaker still be in the family if it hadn't been Grandpa's?

The fact remains that you can get a lot more attention, and probably money, if you make outlandish but ultimately unprovable claims about the provenance of something than if you present it for what it is. If you want further proof, look no further than that Grand Central Terminal supervisor that persists in marketing the old, outlandish story about a "mystery" track under the terminal with an "armored auto carrier that may have secretly carried FDR to and from town" or whatever he's said the most recent time around........ viewtopic.php?f=1&t=32359

It's common enough in eBay that long-time eBay sellers and buyers could probably compose several volumes' worth of such illiterate or obscenity-laden anecdotes.

An awful lot of this nonsense goes both ways. I'm sure many perfectly reputable sellers and knowledgeable folks suffer a lot of untold grief from semi-literate folks who insist on "correcting" them with their utterly "infallible" knowledge that the railroads cast the number of the loco into every whistle they made, or that Matthew Brady personally took every Civil War photograph, or whatever codswallop they expound. And, of course, when someone with legitimate knowledge of the industry, history, etc. attempts to correct a fanciful tale spun by someone whose mother told them that "this whistle was used on your great-grandfather's very own locomotive on the New York Central, and he made it himself" (never mind that it's a safety valve with a lever, and a model only used on steam threshers or whatnot), it's not going to go over very well. Nor will it go over very well if the guy was defrauded by the minister or good friend who sold him his father's misidentified or worthless antique in good (or questionable) faith for quite a large sum of money. I sincerely wish Antiques Roadshow had the nerve--and the permission--to show visitors getting hostile or angry when they're informed that what they thought was something valuable is instead a worthless piece of junk. That has to happen now and then.

"You literalists just will never understand that a sexy legend beats the pedestrian truth any time, and it will long outlive you." -- Herbert H. Harwood

Yeah, I find it funny especially among military collectors, you go on those forums and people will post at how 'offended' they are that, say, a medal was mislabled as a WW2 one when was Korean war era. Then people say they'll PM the seller to let them know what it is (always to the detrement of the seller. None of them ever say, "I need to let him know that medal is worth 20 times that much"). But WHY should the seller take any random word for anything? You can't establish with a total stranger that you really know what you're talking about. Such a shame that people can't understand that point...

If you go to jasonsobcynski's post and click on the first link he provides the answer to all our questions is the first reply on the second page of that topic. As the poster said he was the one who sold it to the cracker jack on ebay. It was a whistle off a UP engine but which one and what class he said he didnt know. It did come with the original curved handle that the UP put on the whistles. He also went on to say that this seller was creating crazy stories and way over pricing it. Hope this helps clear things up!
-Stuart

That was SR6900 that had the pertinent links, but here is what you refer to.


Cheers, Jason

It looks like we'll have to call this myth.....BUSTED.