Is it really worth as much as you bought it for?

[The Johnster]

I assume that any model I have bought becomes immedieatly more or less worthless at the point of sale, because as soon as I get it home or as soon as it is delivered, I mess about with it.  I call this process various names such as detailing, renumbering, altering, improving, weathering, &c.  I have never sold any of them and never intend to, though I've swapped or given them away occasionally, as the amount of money I'd get for them would be nowhere near enough to make selling, i.e. cataloguing, pricing, advertising, packaging, and postage, worth the time, faff, and bother.  So far as I'm concerned it's all landfill to anyone other than The Johnster, and I've had my value and more from it in the enjoyment of improving &c it and operating it on the layout.  It owes me nothing so long as it's given me good service, and if it hasn't it's a loss I have to write off anyway unless I've managed to return it under warranty.

 

I found the story very sad.  One only hopes that the previous owner had got enjoyment value from his collection, which was only apparently newsworthy because he was an oddball, one of those toy train nutters, daft enough to have it at least inferred that he'd filled a small terraced house with it instead or living like a normal person (the report showed something like a medium-sized roomful of stuff, but that didn't fit the story they wanted to tell); a £300k collection of antique cameras, watches, shotguns, or stamps would have not been reported.  The journo confirmed my suspicions by asking what, was it thought, was the attraction of model railways, as if any adult interest in the subject was somehow odd and had to be explained, the normal lazy journalistic attitude and completely inapprorpriate for what is by any standards a mainstream hobby that has, IMHO, no need to explain itself to those not aware of it; that's their problem, not ours and certainly not mine!  If anyone asked me why I was 'into' model railways, I'd probably tell them it was none of their business; the question presupposes an unsympathetic and riduculing approach that I haven't got time for.

 

And there is no doubt that some of our beloved chisellers of mendacity will have benefitted from and take future profit from the auction, which is never good news!

[westernviscount]

4 hours ago, The Johnster said:

If anyone asked me why I was 'into' model railways, I'd probably tell them it was none of their business; the question presupposes an unsympathetic and riduculing approach that I haven't got time for.

Totally agree. Anyone who ever asks those types of questions, very much like "so explain to me how paint splatters is art?" or "how is this music?" have no interest in discussion. 

 

 

[Michael Hodgson]

On 14/04/2023 at 21:28, RFS said:

I did browse the auction and was gobsmacked by how much there was being sold off from a single collector. Even more amazed when it came from a small terraced house! The problem with a mass sell-off like this is the difficulty of finding enough willing buyers for this amount of stuff all at once.

Very valid point. Prices drop whenever there is a glut in a market, and there are bargains to be had if you have spare cash at the time.  An honest auctioneer would be fully aware of how much stuff is normally readily available without flooding the market with all  this and advise you to split it into several auctions. 

[Andy Hayter]

That's a tough one @Michael Hodgson.

 

On the one hand you are right and saturating the market in a single sale will lead to decreased prices.

On the other hand the sale of a "collection" attracts buyers when a series of part collections may not - and perhaps especially in smaller auction houses such as Mitchells. 

 

SAS have no trouble selling mass model railway items at their trains galore auctions and other houses such as Vectis have dedicated monthly railway sales.   Admittedly in both those cases the models are sourced from a number of sellers rather than just one.  

[BR traction instructor]

There is an important distinction to make here too between collectors and modellers. A collector will typically desire mint boxed examples of whatever gladdens their eye and might show them off in a glass case on the wall/sideboard etc. Collecting all variants produced of a certain type might then attract an increased price value. Modellers on the other hand will often see their purchase as simply a starting point on a journey to recreating something in the image that they desire. Very few real pieces of rolling stock resemble what the RTR manufacturers churn out in terms of being pristine etc anyway. I would argue that I add value in making manufacturers products appear near to how they looked on a day to day basis during their working life, a collector on the other hand might see my model as worthless because I’ve changed it from how it appeared in the catalogue and thrown the box in the bin 😬. Some wannabe modellers make such a hash of their interventions that the item becomes worthless to a collector and certainly isn’t an accurate representation of how the real thing appeared in everyday service. My main criteria in selecting a starting point being that it is dimensionally accurate and not badly interfered with/knocked about. Many others are best described as collector/modeller because they simply remove toy couplings/change running numbers etc.

 

BeRTIe

Edited April 16, 2023 by BR traction instructor

[hayfield]

 

I think there is a distinct difference from collecting with an eye on profit and just collecting, many folk including railway modellers/interested in model railways do collect for the fun of it rather than its value. There are of course those who take it to the extreme others become obsessive. In some cases the more we have in some cases fuel a lust for more

 

I like many modellers have far too many locos and kits, the vast bulk not having much value. I am trying to reduce what I have and am succeeding to a limited effect, but my pleasure is in building not using so mentally its difficult to let go of some items

 

Not of too much value but I have a complete collection of K's 4mm scale wagon and coach models including the rareBR  car transporter. As folk like me who remember K's when they were being produced get smaller their value decreases. In fact I doubt how much any of my locos of loco kits will have any value at all in 30 years !!

 

I should learn less is more

 

 

[Hibelroad]

I don’t see the sale of 1000 00 gauge locos as flooding the market, type 00 gauge locos into eBay and you get 34000 results. Not all of those will be actual individually boxes locos but it does put things into perspective. Looking at it another way 1000 is probably an average production run of any particular model from current manufacturers. 

[Enterprisingwestern]

18 minutes ago, Hibelroad said:

I don’t see the sale of 1000 00 gauge locos as flooding the market, type 00 gauge locos into eBay and you get 34000 results. Not all of those will be actual individually boxes locos but it does put things into perspective. Looking at it another way 1000 is probably an average production run of any particular model from current manufacturers. 

 

Maybe, but the eBay ones don't have to be shifted in a 6 hour period.

 

Mike.

[Steamport Southport]

14 minutes ago, Enterprisingwestern said:

 

Maybe, but the eBay ones don't have to be shifted in a 6 hour period.

 

Mike.

 

I would also reckon most bidders were "locals" as well, as I doubt many people not in that area knew about the auction and those that did are probably dealers who all bid low as they want to sell everything on at a profit.

 

As for the OP question, I hope they would at least keep their value.

 

I watch the prices of SH models and they're only going up and the only RTR I buy now are things that are very good quality or were total bargains. I don't really have much in the way of old collectables. But I would expect something like a £150 Hornby Duchess to still be worth at least that in twenty years time.

 

 

Jason

[hayfield]

45 minutes ago, Hibelroad said:

I don’t see the sale of 1000 00 gauge locos as flooding the market, type 00 gauge locos into eBay and you get 34000 results. Not all of those will be actual individually boxes locos but it does put things into perspective. Looking at it another way 1000 is probably an average production run of any particular model from current manufacturers. 

 

 

If you look on eBay and at the Auction section (excluding buy it now etc) the number of lots for locos reduces to 9500, this is for all gauges and scales some lots are for multiple locos but many lots in the search are not for locos.  filtering to 00 locos come down to 5.9k and many items fall out of the format being sold. We are not talking about the total number of locos on sale but what is available in 4 mm scale at auction.

 

Such a large number of items coming on to the wholesale market at an auction will depress prices

 

Yes the collectors will be out, but also will be the second hand trade wanting to hover up at a price as low as possible, in this case they will not need to bid each up by as much as they would normally have to given so many items were available at the same time.

 

No doubt many of these locos will turn up at shows, swap meets, on line and on eBay in the near future at s/h retail prices and will be slowly absorbed at much higher prices

 

In one way you are correct overtime prices will be unaffected excluding this auction

[Steamport Southport]

19 hours ago, The Johnster said:

I assume that any model I have bought becomes immedieatly more or less worthless at the point of sale, because as soon as I get it home or as soon as it is delivered, I mess about with it.  I call this process various names such as detailing, renumbering, altering, improving, weathering, &c.  I have never sold any of them and never intend to, though I've swapped or given them away occasionally, as the amount of money I'd get for them would be nowhere near enough to make selling, i.e. cataloguing, pricing, advertising, packaging, and postage, worth the time, faff, and bother.  So far as I'm concerned it's all landfill to anyone other than The Johnster, and I've had my value and more from it in the enjoyment of improving &c it and operating it on the layout.  It owes me nothing so long as it's given me good service, and if it hasn't it's a loss I have to write off anyway unless I've managed to return it under warranty.

 

I found the story very sad.  One only hopes that the previous owner had got enjoyment value from his collection, which was only apparently newsworthy because he was an oddball, one of those toy train nutters, daft enough to have it at least inferred that he'd filled a small terraced house with it instead or living like a normal person (the report showed something like a medium-sized roomful of stuff, but that didn't fit the story they wanted to tell); a £300k collection of antique cameras, watches, shotguns, or stamps would have not been reported.  The journo confirmed my suspicions by asking what, was it thought, was the attraction of model railways, as if any adult interest in the subject was somehow odd and had to be explained, the normal lazy journalistic attitude and completely inapprorpriate for what is by any standards a mainstream hobby that has, IMHO, no need to explain itself to those not aware of it; that's their problem, not ours and certainly not mine!  If anyone asked me why I was 'into' model railways, I'd probably tell them it was none of their business; the question presupposes an unsympathetic and riduculing approach that I haven't got time for.

 

And there is no doubt that some of our beloved chisellers of mendacity will have benefitted from and take future profit from the auction, which is never good news!

 

I beg to differ about them having an agenda and only mentioned it because it was "toy trains"

 

The BBC has an auction story almost every day. It fits in with all those antique programmes they fill the air time with. Look at the dates of these and there are hundreds of these stories.

 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/topics/cpz7wxr2zyqt

 

Alarm clocks anyone?

 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-nottinghamshire-65260653

 

Or Pokémon

 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-derbyshire-63132278

 

 

Jason

[Michael Hodgson]

33 minutes ago, Steamport Southport said:

 

 But I would expect something like a £150 Hornby Duchess to still be worth at least that in twenty years time.
 

Maybe, but I doubt it will still be worth that in fifty years time.  I think there is a life cycle to collectable stuff.

 

Look what has happened to the once very popular hobby of stamp collecting.  Even rare and once valuable stamps are now almost worthless, mainly because there's nowhere near as many people collecting now.

I remember railwayana collectors started bidding silly money for BR totems (the old station nameboards).  The bottom fell out of that market a good many years ago and a lot of money was lost, although I understand the values have crept back up again.

And then there's the just plain silly - the tulip mania of the 17th century, the hopelessly uneconomic proposed routes of the Railway Mania in the 1840s or bitcoin as an "investment" - Elon Musk's Tesla Inc  lost $140m last year on that last year, but at least he can afford to.

[BachelorBoy]

9 minutes ago, Michael Hodgson said:

Maybe, but I doubt it will still be worth that in fifty years time.  I think there is a life cycle to collectable stuff.

 

Look what has happened to the once very popular hobby of stamp collecting.  Even rare and once valuable stamps are now almost worthless, mainly because there's nowhere near as many people collecting now.

 

 

I've read reports that stamp collecting is entering the upward part of the cycle again, thanks to interest from rich people in China. 
 

(Stamps are great too for laundering money. Might be connected. Might not be.)

 

 

[Michael Hodgson]

4 minutes ago, BachelorBoy said:

 

(Stamps are great too for laundering money. Might be connected. Might not be.)

 

Great for smuggling money out of a country with exchange control restrictions etc. 

Like diamonds, they're small and portable.

[BachelorBoy]

4 minutes ago, Michael Hodgson said:

Great for smuggling money out of a country with exchange control restrictions etc. 

Like diamonds, they're small and portable.

And unlike diamonds, they don't show up X-ray photos.

[Andy Hayter]

1 hour ago, Steamport Southport said:

 

I would also reckon most bidders were "locals" as well, as I doubt many people not in that area knew about the auction and those that did are probably dealers who all bid low as they want to sell everything on at a profit.

 

 

Jason

 

That depends on what you define as local Jason.  The auction got quite a lot of publicity on BBC Look North (NE&C)for a day or so before the auction took place.  So that would cover  Berwick to York to Keswick to Carlisle.

 

Thinking further about why the auction may not have delivered as much in sales value as perhaps expected*, almost all of the models covered a relatively tight time span of the real railway.   The interest is therefore more limited than say Ebay or Vectis or Trains Galore where there is a spread of time periods as well as geographic location.   On that basis I would conclude that there was indeed something of a flooding of the market.

 

*  My own expectation would have been that the models (and mine for that matter) would achieve 25-33% of their purchase price and on that premise the sale value just reached the bottom expectation.  You can of course improve on that - with a lot of work - by slowly releasing through individual listings.   And that leads me to the next point.  The inheritors would quite probably have no real knowledge of model railways and would have looked for a simple way to release funds.  That might well be the local auction house.  Of course it may have been specified in a will that the models be sold through the local auction house - who it seems are more set up for selling livestock, agricultural implements and properties, than a model railway collection.  

[Michael Hodgson]

29 minutes ago, Andy Hayter said:

 

That might well be the local auction house.  Of course it may have been specified in a will that the models be sold through the local auction house - who it seems are more set up for selling livestock, agricultural implements and properties, than a model railway collection.  

I used to go railwayana auctions in Malton.  Most railwayana auctions were/are run by specialists who knew what they were dealing with and its likely value, and they might get through perhaps 500 lots in a day.  The chap running Malton normally did livestock and properties, and he hadn't a clue as to what he was selling, but got though 1000 lots in a day (admittedly a lot of it was junk).  They did have enthusiast helpers who had tried to catalogue the lots, but it was not unusual for the lot being held aloft for the bidders was different from the catalogue entry.  A good deal of it was obviously clearance, since the bidding would go "lot 789 not sold.  Bung it in with the next one.  Lot 790, a whatever that thing is,...."  You could bid successfuly on one lot and take home half a dozen other things too!

[RFS]

If anyone's interested in the Mitchell's auction that was the subject of the original post, you can view all the lots and prices realized here. Bear in mind buyers will be paying 36% fees on top of the hammer price, plus any costs of having their lots posted to them.

[hayfield]

23 minutes ago, RFS said:

 Bear in mind buyers will be paying 36% fees on top of the hammer price, plus any costs of having their lots posted to them.

 

 

I always thought 18-20% plus VAT for both buyers and sellers was expensive !!

 

Given these charges and the prices fetched it makes me think eBay charges are great value for the seller. As for discounted fee weekends especially worth doing

[montyburns56]

These Trix Footplateman Construction kits are interesting as as I've never heard of them before. They seem to be kit versions of the Trix locos, a bit like the Triang CKD kits.

 

https://www.the-saleroom.com/en-gb/auction-catalogues/mitchells/catalogue-id-srmit10172/lot-0498817f-5e02-45d6-82aa-afce010b5b9a

 

[andyman7]

7 hours ago, Hibelroad said:

I don’t see the sale of 1000 00 gauge locos as flooding the market, type 00 gauge locos into eBay and you get 34000 results. Not all of those will be actual individually boxes locos but it does put things into perspective. Looking at it another way 1000 is probably an average production run of any particular model from current manufacturers. 

 

7 hours ago, Enterprisingwestern said:

 

Maybe, but the eBay ones don't have to be shifted in a 6 hour period.

 

Mike.

And also the prevalence of certain types - that was a LOT of Westerns, Warships and Class 22s to dump on the market in one go!

 

6 hours ago, Michael Hodgson said:

Maybe, but I doubt it will still be worth that in fifty years time.  I think there is a life cycle to collectable stuff.

 

Look what has happened to the once very popular hobby of stamp collecting.  Even rare and once valuable stamps are now almost worthless, mainly because there's nowhere near as many people collecting now.

I remember railwayana collectors started bidding silly money for BR totems (the old station nameboards).  The bottom fell out of that market a good many years ago and a lot of money was lost, although I understand the values have crept back up again.

And then there's the just plain silly - the tulip mania of the 17th century, the hopelessly uneconomic proposed routes of the Railway Mania in the 1840s or bitcoin as an "investment" - Elon Musk's Tesla Inc  lost $140m last year on that last year, but at least he can afford to.

 

Absolutely. There is a reason that Model Railways are treated by the tax man as 'wasting assets' - they are not things of permanent value, but consumer goods to be bought and used. Values rise and fall but the market is sustained by enthusiasm, not investment.

 

2 hours ago, RFS said:

If anyone's interested in the Mitchell's auction that was the subject of the original post, you can view all the lots and prices realized here. Bear in mind buyers will be paying 36% fees on top of the hammer price, plus any costs of having their lots posted to them.

 

Or a mere 30% if you left bids with the auctioneer or bid in person rather than bid online 'live'.

 

2 hours ago, hayfield said:

I always thought 18-20% plus VAT for both buyers and sellers was expensive !!

 

Given these charges and the prices fetched it makes me think eBay charges are great value for the seller. As for discounted fee weekends especially worth doing

At last, someone making the point that ebay is an incredibly cost effective way to sell. It's unbelievable that so many moan about the costs when it is possible using offers to shift things to a worldwide audience at 5% commission.

The guy who collected these items has passed on so the value is nil to him; such a huge collection would take hundreds of hours to catalogue and sell by an experienced person so I am not surprised that the executors took the easier way out - and assuming it forms part of the estate why would anyone want to do all that work to give 40% to the taxman?

[melmerby]

The collection seems to have no rhyme nor reason, with an awful lot of duplicates.

i can understand collecting as many as you can of one, or more than one class rather like trainspotting. Trying to fill the gaps.

Three, or four the same just seems odd.

[melmerby]

If I was still living in Keswick, I would've been there to see whether there was any locos that fit my layout's raison d'etre.

At least you can have a quick browse before bidding.

[melmerby]

I notice that one lot comprised 6 Lenz LH100 & LH101 and a couple of the LZ/LVZxxx as well as connecting boards and it went for £95 +%

That was a bargain.

[newbryford]

59 minutes ago, montyburns56 said:

These Trix Footplateman Construction kits are interesting as as I've never heard of them before. They seem to be kit versions of the Trix locos, a bit like the Triang CKD kits.

 

https://www.the-saleroom.com/en-gb/auction-catalogues/mitchells/catalogue-id-srmit10172/lot-0498817f-5e02-45d6-82aa-afce010b5b9a

 

 

Footplateman was the loco series.

Coachbuilder was the errr.. coach series

and Wagonmaster was wagons..