How to best sell rolling stock??


T

TomR

Member
I have hundreds of HO scale cars of many types from all sorts of large to very obscure railroads. Most are probably from the 1980's and onward. They range from what look like nice quality to poor, but most are better than good except most have old horn hook couplers or need couplers. Most are plastic wheels. Several cabooses and so on.

What on earth is the best way to sell these?

Would they be better grouped by region, type of car (like tanker or reefer), or quality?? Made into train packages? Sold as a lot?

I'll never ever use them or most of the ~50 locomotives I have. I will probably only keep BNSF, PRR, Amtrak, and NYC and related lines like Penn Central.

This is a daunting task, looking at all this. Some are new old stock even.

Or are they even worth messing with at all, and I should just sell them as one big lot?? Should I put them in a big list and let people pick what they want like $5 each or what? I can make my wife type the list, while I take a long nap. :)
 
Selling the peices individually will maximize your potential profit, but it won't be without it's downfalls. It will take much more time, and there's the chance of getting stuck with the leftovers.

Putting the items in small lots might work. I would sort the lots by era, rather then by roadnames or type. People may have a favorite railroad or type of car, but they generally only model a certain time period.

I can help you date some of it. Anything with BNSF is from at least 1995, because the BNSF was not even created until the merger of the ATSF and BN in 1995. The only other thing against this may be that the model is custom painted. Perhaps the model was made pre-1995 and repainted 1995-present.

I would certainly suggest you list your items here first, as eBay will slap you with fees and people here are more likely to give you a better price. A train show are only at certain times and you'll probably need to pay for a space.
 
Littlefoot14 said:
I can help you date some of it. Anything with BNSF is from at least 1995, because the BNSF was not even created until the merger of the ATSF and BN in 1995. The only other thing against this may be that the model is custom painted. Perhaps the model was made pre-1995 and repainted 1995-present.

I would certainly suggest you list your items here first, as eBay will slap you with fees and people here are more likely to give you a better price. A train show are only at certain times and you'll probably need to pay for a space.
Click to expand...

Well, there is a show coming up in Warner Robbins.

I started sorting the stuff by railroad and then region. Not by era. :)

Like I put all the Detroit middle Michigan cars in a group, and then Chicago area stuff. If it is more likely people collect by time period, that might be a little more involved for me.

I can certainly do it differently though if the era is a better way. I guess the first step for that would be to make a giant list of cars by layer and box and get it all in an excel sheet for sorting.

Thanks for the help.

Tom
 
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