I have a very large collection of train magazines I would like to sell. Does anyone know of someone who be interested in buying. I have Model Railroader Magazine from issue 1-1939 through Jan,2002 . Does anyone know how much a collection like this would be worth?
Check on Ebay under Models RR, and in the search box enter Model Railroader. They go from about a buck a magazine looks like. That will give you at least a feel for what they are selling for.
Most magazines don’t sell for very much. A big reason for this is the cost of shipping such heavy items as magazines. You would probably have the most success selling them off a year at a time but I wouldn’t expect to get more than a few dollars profit for each year’s worth of magazines. Typically a newer year’s complete set will sell for around $10-$12 dollars before shipping. One thing you have to your advantage is that you have a complete set. Most people who sell MR on eBay have incomplete sets from various time frames for sell. You can get a premium price for a full year’s worth of issues. From what I’ve seen the older issues usually sell for much less than the newer ones since the modeling information in these newer issues is more up to date.
You might want to look at this forum: http://www.trains.com/community/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=4464
I don’t know what goes on on eBay, but this is exactly the opposite of my experience. My local hobby shop sells older issues for $2.00, and more recent issues for $1.00. (Although they probably only paid a nickel or less for them.) One hobby shop here sells Hundman Publications magazines, whether twenty years old or two days old, for full cover price. The older magazines are rarer, and somebody hunting them down for a project or some esoteric bit of information is more desparate.
Whether you’re buying or selling, your best bet is to have your collection organized into complete year sets.
See my comments in the thread linked in my previous post.