Selling off a collection

[crblue]

Last month, my father passed away. He went into the hospital to remove a non-cancerous growth, encountered complications, was stuck in the hospital for a month, then finally got home. A week later he died from cardiac arrest. Life's funny like that. He leaves behind, among other things, a collection of O scale, O guage, standard guage, G scale, and some train paraphernalia. My sister is delegating dealing with all of his train stuff to me, even though I live some 350 miles away.

He was an operator (as opposed to collector), and a few years ago lost a good portion of boxes and random items in a mixup while emptying his old business, so not only does he have some items with boxes, and some without, but some sets are partially boxed, or even just partial sets. The majority of his items are in 25 large plastic bins, wrapped in brown paper lunch bags and secured with rubber bands.

Where do I even begin? I'd like to just take everything out, put it on the floor, and see what's there, but the floor gets wet when it rains (not just damp) and so this seems like a bad idea. And there's not enough space in any other room in his house to pull everything out at once to itemize things. Is there a foam that I can buy, that I can use instead of keeping them wrapped up in brown paper? I'm not interested in keeping probably 95% of it - is there a good way to sell off his collection, or should I just hand it over to somewhere like trainz.com?

It's a bit overwhelming, to be honest, so any insight or advise would be appreciated.

[typhoon]

I through something similar a few years ago when my father passed. He has a large collection of brass interurban and streetcar models, that I knew nothing about. The best advice I can give you is to get rid of one item at a time if you choose to sell on an internet site like eBay. Slowly chipping away at it, and maybe doing things that you are more familiar with will make things less overwhelming. Do some research on each item before listing it, there is a lot of info out there on the web. Even if you know a lot about the item, look for information about it on the internet, it will at least help you find good sites to search for items you don't know much about.

It sounds like trainz.com is a rip off, if what is reported on the HO forum is true, so I would stay away from that.

[Deleted]

My sincere condolences.

As I said elsewhere, I am very happy with Trainz.com

Trainz.com gave me approximately half the current ebay retail value of the stuff I sent them so far this year, no hassles whatsoever. All I had to do was make a list on their provided excel worksheet, send them the list, sign their offer contract, box it up and ship it to them. I no longer wish to deal with the hassle of ebay myself. I have a good job and literally don't have the time to deal with the demands of today's ebay shoppers, which are different than they were 10 years ago, when people were more cooperative to say the least.

If you sell a coin collection, you will be lucky if the coin dealer gives you half of what it's actually worth. They are in business to make a profit and they can be absolutely heartless. That's also why investing in gold or silver bullion bars is a not the best idea--you pay a premium to get them and you will likely pay a commission when you sell them, thus eating heavily into any gain you might actually make.

For those who don't know what exactly they have Trainz will actually send people to come pick it up, package it and transport it away, but they are going to charge you the same 50% of what they are going to sell it for, so they just told me yesterday when I inquired about consignment selling. They may ask for photographs to help them determine if it is worth their while. They typically want to pay out a minimum of $1000, so that means they would like to get $2000 worth of models to be able to make that minimum payout to you. Again this is based upon their estimated ebay selling price.

I can sell items on consignment at my local train store, but it is hit and miss. Some things sell fast and some things can take years. I just took 10 locos that weren't selling locally (all Santa Fe or BNSF) and boxed them up for Trainz, with other stuff as well. Piece of cake. All I have to do is deliver the box to FedEx (or call them to come get the boxes, but I deliver in person on my way to work).

[lvrr325]

Is it old, new, a mix? Scale O or tinplate?

Likely it's older stuff and the values of most of that have taken a crap. I have some postwar Lionel and some scale O now and it's a tough sell. Like in HO, you can buy O tinplate now with digital control and so forth, they've reproduced or replicated lots of the early pieces which work better and because it's new you can run it and not worry about ruining it, so people are buying that. Where the older Lionel is selling, it has to be mint in the box to bring good money, the same piece in an original box might have a $2000 difference in price without the box. I'm not kidding, I just looked up one the other night, the boxes are worth more than the train is.

Lionel however is relatively easy to ID, there's sites online and they usually had the catalog number right on the piece. Scale is tougher to ID, and the value greatly depends on what it is.

G is much the same, it was over-produced at the height of popularity then declined. Without boxes, it would be rough to try to ship to someone. I picked up a Bachmann Big Hauler set last week only because it's $5 and a friend offered me some scale O as a swap, I am probably going to do that. (I only have some of the Lionel because I paid under $10 a car for that, too).

I used to buy sheets of foam at Ollie's Outlet stores but they seem to have discontinued it. You can get a floor underlayment foam in rolls for about $20 that while thin might do the job better. You might have to just go one tub at a time and make a list from there. I would bring a camera with me and take pictures of each piece as you go through.

But your best bet is probably to sell to a dealer or someone who will resell. They'll take all of it and they can deal with trying to piece it out. Particularly given the lack of boxes, trying to ship the pieces to anyone is going to be a real pain. I would look up as much as I could so I could get an idea what it's worth and go from there.

[crblue]

LVRR, it's a bit of a mix of everything. There's even some very european looking G scale mixed in with one of those Big Hauler sets. Strangely enough, the Big Hauler set is so old it has metal gears, making it a better quality one than some of the new sets, but my sister wants to keep it on display so we will be keeping that... Then there's both new and reproduction tinplate - O and standard guage - it's an eclectic mix of so much stuff. The camera idea is a good one, I will make sure to bring one with me. And go tub by tub for a weekend or two, it should be interesting.

[mowingman]

I would suggest contacting either Stout Auctions, or Cabin Fever Auctions. I don't know how they charge for their services, but they will dispose of everything for you, and get a good price for each item.

[locochris]

What state is this in?

[crblue]

Pennsylvania, outside of Philadelphia.