** I know this may be a strange topic but
ho mth & bli are beautiful models but electronically are a disaster and most
people rip out the decoders to put in the tsumami2s and TCS WOWS and such.so down the road when these are " collectibles will the originals locos with original electronics be worth anymore then the " modified locos ??. just curious **
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No one knows for sure, of course, but I doubt it.
BLI makes pretty nice locomotives, especially steamers, so the value going forward will be associated with the locomotive itself. But that is just my opinion.
Rich
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In my opinion they would be worth more with non BLI decoders. At least to me.
Regards, Chris
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Iâve wondered that too but I really doubt it. Especially in the case of MTH. MTH was never really welcomed into HO and their electronics were just bad for HO. They were never valued outside of their models. I think people may pay more fore OEM BLI but not out of collectability but out of fear of stuff that isnât stock. Thereâs no guarrantee that the person who ripped the Rolling Thunder out did any better than BLI did.
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My experience with MTH concerns the O gauge RailKing locomotives. I started with an early N&W 0-8-0 switcher with smoke and whistle before ProtoSounds was anything. I still have that locomotive but the smoke unit caught fire years ago and the whistle part of the electronics stopped working soon after. I removed both the smoke unit and the sound board and the locomotive continues to run well using the reverse electronics on the original board.
Then came the one and only locomotive I ever preordered: a 20th Century Limited Dreyfuss Hudson, the first one MTH cataloged. It had ProtoSounds 2 and did all kinds of neat tricks. However, I was using an MRC Dual Power O27 power supply and nobody knew that MTH (QSI) electronics were incompatible with that kind of power supply. But the engine continued to run but sometimes it was finicky.
Then followed a series of basic starter sets I purchased: a bantam Daylight set, a non streamlined Hiawatha set, a Southern Crescent set, and a 2-6-0 Santa Fe switcher. All weâre amazing and a lot of fun to operate. But still there was that lurking power issue that was going unaddressed.
During the years I had them MTH recognized that the batteries included in their ProtoSounds sets were not working as well as expected. The problem turned out to be a simple loss of charge over time. ProtoSounds batteries charged themselves only while the locomotive was operating. So if you let the locomotive sit for extended periods of time youâd slowly lose the ability to run them at all without charging them for quite a long period of time. And most of us didnât want to have to leave our engines sitting on the track unattended just to recharge the battery.
Back to the MRC issue. Not only was something in the power supply not properly charging the battery, but something about the power itself was causing the locomotive to lose itâs mind. Over time the problem multiplied to the point that even software engineers at Rockwell Systems Automation couldnât make heads or tails of it ( My friend and I took some ProtoSounds boards over to her lab on a Sunday afternoon and ran them through some tests)
Of the six locomotives and sets I owned I only have 2. The N&W switcher and the Hudson. The other 4, the daylight, the 2 Pacifics and the 2-6-0 I ended up selling. But not before I had removed their electronics and hot wired the motors directly to the power pick ups. (The Dreyfuss is also hotwired.). I ended up purchasing an Aristocraft power supply and I use it for the Hudson and 2 MPC era Lionel locomotives that run on DC.
So for what itâs worth those are my experiences with MTH.
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Iâm very inclined to ask in a separate thread, âWhat is a collectable?â but fear it could get out of hand, quickly!
Cheers, the Bear. 
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Nah, it wonât get out of hand, give it a try.
Rich
+1
Years ago I purchased a used brass locomotive with a Zero1 decoder installed. Didnât impact the cost of the locomotive in any way.
Probably could have made a few bucks selling the Zero1 decoder.
If you are wondering what Zero1 isâŚ
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Go with the standard answer: "20 years old or of such great artistic or technological value as to be declared an instant classic ". Some stuff will always be collectable. Others, maybe only because they were so badly made that only a few remain.
For serious collectors where the desire is to have and/or display the models, any modification lowers the value. The fact that the âas manufacturedâ locomotive runs like a wounded snail and sounds like a broken dishwasher
is not relevant.
But not everything becomes a valuable collectible. There are people who collect Tyco. But Tyco trains are not very valuable because there arenât many people collecting them - still for the collector âas manufacturedâ is the most desired.
Personally, I am a casual collector so I run my stuff, upgrade wheels. couplers etc.
Paul
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More to the issue, even once you define collectible, the purpose and intent of buyer is changeable. My wife sells vintage home goods (Pyrex, mid century modern decor, etc.). Some people would rather have a damaged piece that has original non functional parts just because thatâs the more authentic one. Other people prefer a functional one. I retrofit ceramic Christmas trees with modern plugs, new wiring, and LED bulbs to make them more usable, but thereâs definitely buyers whoâd have rather had one of those old semi lethal plugs that are almost impossible to grasp without touching the prongsâŚ
Good question. On Ebay, I rarely see vendors mentioning the type of decoder of the engines they are selling. Most often, theyâll mention if itâs new out of the box, new old stock or used. These are probably the major drivers of a sell. Many vendors donât go beyond that. I wonder how many people actually ask the question (type of decoder), and how many vendors actually know!
Simon
At least for BLI, I think it might be more accurate to say âsome peopleâ rip out the decoders. BLI started about 25 years ago, and decoders made back then - regardless the manufacturer - are not as good as the ones available now. My most recent BLI engines (Milwaukee 261 and Baldwin Centipede demonstrators) are excellent the way they came. My oldest is a first run NYC Hudson, which still has the original decoder (with the added update chip) from the early 2000s. Still works fine.
Anyway, although it may be changing, HO stuff (except maybe brass) hasnât really been âcollectibleâ the way old Lionel or American Flyer trains have been. Changing the decoder isnât really going to change the âcollectibleâ value one way or another, and if itâs a better decoder, it could make it better. (I got a great deal on an early Athearn Challenger, but the sound decoder was made during the MTH lawsuit so didnât have back EMF. The sound was good, but putting a new Wowsound decoder with Back EMF made it run much nicer.)
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Itâs tough in Lionel land but I think itâs easing up a bit. Back in the 90âs you could get lynched for putting a mint in the box anything on your layout, and the people who labeled themselves as "collectors " didnât even have layouts unless the layout came from Lionelâs display department. There was a bit of a war going on between the collectors and the operators. Classic Toy Trains magazine had to have the tag line âFor the Collector and Operatorâ emblazoned below the masthead.
Sadly, the reason opinions are changing these days is simply based on the laws of nature. As time marches on thereâs simply fewer people who were wanting to buy back mint examples of the toys they had in their childhood in the 1950âs. I got to know some really great guys who just arenât with us anymore.
I was born in November 1969, officially the very end of the original Lionel Corporation when Lionel leased the rights to manufacture the trains to General Mills. Iâm mixed on the subject. I wonât run a mint in the box piece made before 1969 if I know itâs super or sought after by the majority of collectors. Stuff made in my own lifespan is fair game to me and most baby boomers didnât regard stuff made after 1969 to be worth worrying about.
My sense is that most collectors of HO scale locomotives arenât what youâd call serious or hardcore collectors. Clubs in many way drive the hobby and collecting, and a lot of the potential collectors belong to clubs, so being able to reliably run the model is going to be important to them, meaning the LokSound, SoundTraxx, or WOWSound would be a plus.
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Most of the collectors in HO focussed on brass locomotives. They didnât care if the locomotive ran poorly, because they usually were taken straight from the box to a display cabinet.
There was value in brass as some examples were very rare, and most models were never produced in large numbers. There is also value in preserving the original box and paperwork.
Some of the larger collections get into six figure values at current market prices. Of course, that changes when these collections start being liquidated, depressing the price. That also depends on the amount of interested buyers too.
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Given the inflated dollar and any one of a number of shifts in the hobby, the price of HO brass is already in tumble mode.
And, it seems that much of it is being bought by operators, not collectors.
HO âcollectorsâ have always been a unique and hard to define group, that likely did expand a bit with the birth of high detail/high quality RTR over the last 20-30 years.
I have lots of old rolling stock, dating to to the 50âs. I run them, I upgrade the trucks and couplers, I lightly weather them, I even use them for kitbash fodder. And I have a few I may not build just for the historical record. But I donât have to make that decision until the unbuild stock gets lowâŚ
All my locomotives, be they moderately recent RTR, or some form of kit, are far from stock - so much for the collector/resale thing. Most are not that old in my mind, others will have a different perspective. Most are no more that 30 years old, a few are very recent.
I have never bought a model train with any concern for it resale value, in my lifetime or after.
They are not an investment, at least most are not. And I can count on one hand the items that I have that do not fit the theme of the layout.
My BLI locos have had their decoders removed for DC operation, some have had their tenders swapped, and been repainted to my freelance road - guess that really kills the collector thing.
Sheldon
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Paragon 4âs are solid runners.
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Welcome to the forum, AJGuzik!
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