I have noticed online, in hobby shops, and even here on rypn that over the past year or two an increasing number of railway items from estate sales are appearing on the market. These range from plastic and brass models, to full size bells, headlights, and even 1:1 scale engines and rolling stock. I've also noticed prices for these artifacts are dropping too. A bell in a local hobby shop originally asking $5,000 quickly dropped to $2,500 or best offer and online too, I've seen first generation diesel headlights go from $800 to $200 and remain unsold. Is it that the under 40 generation of railfans aren't interested in steam-era artifacts or simply a case of supply from a passing generation overwhelming demand from a much smaller base of people interested in trains to begin with.

I'm curious from those of you who deal in these things regularly who is buying old iron these days and will there still be a market for it in 20 years or will the next generation of estate sales just have to put them on the $10 table at the closest garage sale or church bazaar?

Observations/comments
1. My adult children and grandchildren are not collectors of anything. "Take one home for your (fill in the blank) collection" is not a part of their tradition so they have no interest in the "stuff" that is coming on line now from any theme, be it trains, coins, stamps, Barbie dolls, dishes, etc. For this reason I sold most of my 1950s American Flyer collection just recently. The kids don't want it. I did ok in the market because I had original boxes and instruction sets to make complete sets. I kept one small set to set up a small traditional Christmas garden layout if the mood strikes.

2. I own a set of Hummel porcelains that were my grandmothers. In the 1980s the Hummel market was hot with speculators and back then the figurines I inherited were worth several hundred dollars each. Grandma thought she had the holy grail. Guess what - all of grandma's greatest generation passed on and the market is flooded. As a result it has collapsed for the reasons stated in #1 above. Now the Hummels are worth several hundred dollars for the whole lot.

3. I see an even more limited market in 20 years.

4. Our Museum is now receiving duplicate sets of slides, books etc. as the greatest generation passes on. I can foresee that we will someday turn "valuable" stuff away. How many copies of 100 Years of Capital Traction do we need?

Wesley

I've seen the opposite. I've bid on railroadiana auctions on Ebay and lost most of them to some very high bidders. There are still collectors out there with money to spend.

I am 63 years old and new (13 years) to railroading compared to many here. My observation of what is happening in our hobby has resulted in the following statement that I use at my museum: Prepare to be smaller before you plan to be larger.

I believe it's a generational change. I'm probably younger than most on this forum and am a collector of both railroadiana and Lionel tinplate (plus a few other classes of antiques and collectibles), and I can say with certainty that very few people my age (I was born in the mid-1970s) or younger are interested in owning these items -- even among those who are railfans. Toy trains in particular have been dropping steadily in value since 2000 or so, and I consider this a meaningful market index of sorts because most items are actually quite numerous, with very few pieces that are truly rare or unique. For example, a Lionel 773 Hudson may be considered desirable and "rare", but there are literally thousands of them out there, all more or less the same -- and more are coming onto the market all the time as their former owners sell off their collections or die. The situation with regard to these pieces is more or less as Wesley describes.

There is still strong demand among deep-pocketed railroadiana collectors for the genuinely rare, as Rock Island Lines has observed, but I think even this is going to have to subside at some point. It can only be matter of time.

Is this situation good or bad? I suppose that depends if you're buying or selling. :) I personally would love to acquire a nice steam locomotive bell, and while there's no way I could afford to pay $5000 for one right now, I might be able to swing $1000 or $1200. Should I just bide my time and wait a few years for prices to come down? Good for me, at least in the short term, but then what happens when the time comes for me to dispose of my own collection a few decades from now? Will anyone want it, or will someone just end up tossing it in a dumpster when they clean out my house?

-Philip Marshall

seems like a combination of interest and economic situations.

Collectors and collector markets are fickle, and ebay is a terrible appraisal tool. Someone sells what would typically be a mundane object (old diesel headlight) and 2 or 3 people, who don't know or care that they could get the same thing for free if they talked to the right scrapper, bid it to silly price, and then people see that, pull their rusty relics out, and some hit paydirt and some don't. Tickle me elmo anyone? The market gets flooded, and reality takes back over. Hummels got nuts, people wanted the whole set, and before the internet you had to work a LOT harder. Now, most of them (and many others) ALWAYS have an active ebay listing...how can it be rare?!?

Disagree. As your example you use a common diesel headlight part, and say it gets overbid. Well, that may be true, and I notice there is always someone trying to sell a spike to some sucker on Ebay too. But when a quality item goes up for auction, such as a semaphore blade or a wig-wag part, the bidding is consistently high. If the claim here is that prices are falling dramatically on railroadiana, I'd like to see data backing that up, because my own experience doesn't support that claim.

If something is straight up rare, it's always going to be rare. But being rare and in demand are two things. Demand will drive up price, even if the item is not rare.

Certain categories of railroadiana, I can categorically say, have dropped quite substantially in recent prices, as judged by a combination of internet sales prices (not offering prices, actual sales), live auction prices, and over-the-counter sales prices.

Books. Common kerosene lanterns (your typical PRR/SP/NYC Adlake, for example). Timetables/ETTs. China. Magazines.

Certain items are at least holding steady in value, albeit not adjusted for inflation. Numberplates. Builders plates. Steam whistles. Station signs.

Bloodbaths may still occur for unique items--such as GG1 manuals/plates, highly-coveted station signs, an Otto Mears silver pass, an EBT padlock, etc. If a UP Big Boy plate ever comes up for auction......

The dilemma with books is that ages ago it used to be that the only way you would learn about some lines--the Ma & Pa, for example, or the Maine two-footers or the Santa Fe branches in Arizona, as but three examples I have intimate familiarity with--would be to buy the sure-to-be-out-of-print "definitive" books on the subject(s). It would take you years of scouting the train shows, or book dealers or hobby shops, to find such a book, if you even could learn such a book existed. Now, you can find all of them with a few keystrokes, and have them sent to your doorstep with a few more. But you don't need them, because in all probability there is a Wikipedia entry on it as well as a half-dozen websites dedicated to it all. It's now at the point where there's a new "definitive" book out on a region's railroad history, and I can't even talk the area's library system into ordering a copy for their permanent reference/local history collection, because they think all the relevant info is available elsewhere!

The rest of the dilemma is a complex examination of all of the factors previously mentioned--collecting has become passée, the internet now substitutes for both hobbies and socialization, more people have less disposable income for a variety of reasons (am I the last person in my city not collecting Social Security without cable and a smartphone?), the tendency for young people to have the overall historical awareness of a mayfly, the dramatic reduction of railroading's presence in American culture, etc.

There are still sellers, especially Antique Stores, sitting on the stuff because the customers won't pay the posted price.
And some auction prices are distorted because both the buyer and the seller have to pay commission, and maybe Sales Tax.

I noticed this trend starting several years ago. I attend a large railroad collector show in Chicago at the College of DuPage. When I first started going there, the place was full of tables and there were even people set up outside. Now they are not even 2/3 full. I ask one of the older men with a table how he felt about it. He said, take a look around you at those that have tables and tell me how many young people you see. There are some young people getting in to it, but the high prices of many items limit their entry.

You can see the same thing at the Gaithersburg, Md. show. I had a table there last year and I thought the number of people going through there was down, I did not even cover my expenses. I will attend the show this year, but will not have a table.

I like history and old things, not just railroad. The younger generation could careless about history, if it never happened in their lifetime, it never happened.

I use to farm and collector tractors were bringing big money. Some prices were really unreal. I took the last of my parts to a sale for collector tractors and the man that helped me unload was also a collector. He told me that in 5 years, much of this equipment would have little value. He told me that his children told him to find homes for his equipment collection, as they did not want it.

While there are still avid collectors, many are of the baby boom generation that are trying to relive their youth, have been successful in life or their kids are finally out of home and they want to have thing that they had when they were younger or wanted then.

Some items still are fetching high prices, but not the common items as much. Disposal able income has a lot to do with it. I would like to have a few pieces of railroad china, but can not see paying the prices many are asking for it.

The Ultimate in Ebay RR Bidding, a truly rare item but good grief!

VINTAGE NPRR NORTHERN PACIFIC RAILROAD LANTERN 5-1/2 INCH COBALT BLUE GLOBE

$10,100 was the final bid by a solid ebay bidder with good feedback.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/201441427135?_trksid=p2055119.m1438.l2649&ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT

Steve

I could make some snarky comment about "the rich get richer...." or such, but I digress.

Meanwhile, this just in from the promoters of a certain well-known model railroad show which also gets overlap into collectibles, books, etc.:



Just sold last week on eBay: an N&W "hooter" whistle for $3,500:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/STEAM-WHISTLE-N ... SwwbdWGB9F

The value of collectables is much like the stock market. There are some of us who will have items of historical value and will never sell. Also, there are certain items that will never see the light of day as they will be sold in private transactions. Value is based upon published prices.

Personally, I foresee prices eventually declining as time goes on.