The “Toy Story” movies brought up the subject of “in the original box,” and sometimes we see something about the value of Lionels in their original boxes.
A post in the “Dating Kits” thread got me to thinking about those original boxes. I have a bunch of them. Why do I keep them? I can’t imagine any enhanced value from the original boxes of my Proto subway cars, or an IHC Mikado. I don’t travel with them, and if I were ever to move and have to pack everything up, I would probably do more damage trying to put cars back in their original containers than just packing them loosely, but securely, in another box with noodles around them.
We still have the original boxes for computers that we junked 10 years ago.
For vintage cars, the vintage box is a huge plus.
Nobody is going to buy my subway cars as “vintage Trains” anyway. Still the boxes are on the shelf.
I should toss them, then I would have more room on my shelves. I think I will put them in a bigger box (Wine Case… we got lots of wine cases) and stash them under the train table. Of course in order to do that I would have to clean out the junk that is already under the train table.
Round and round it goes.
If it would stop, we would all fall off.
I guess most keep them for the same reasons. Boxes for most rolling stock and locos are stacked all over the basement. For some strange reason I must have them, like I’m going to box them up for some kind of “resale”. I know that when we wander about shows looking @ pieces, I’d rather see them in the origional box, not just tossed out on a table. But realistically, are we all going to just box up our collection and sell it off? If we kick the bucket in the middle of the night, then you think all that stuff will be boxed and sold off for the $$$$. Maybe, especially if a friend will step up to the plate and can rebox the entire lot. This thread really is" food for thought". Just think of all the shelf space I’ll have for “new” stuff…
I keep them for one simple reason, in most cases, they really are the best way to transport stuff if you move, especially locomotives in most cases.
Unless you invest in those big foam lined boxes designed for rolling stock, orginal boxes are good to have if you move. I would never even consider just packing rolling stock one on top the other with some sort of packing around it.
I don’t care if it’s just an Athearn Blue Box kit - I paid money for it, I take care of it.
I still use them to hold some cars, but mostly I keep the boxes to hold parts. A few old blue box boxes are holding scrap wood and styrene bits. A few others hold projects together. For instance, I have a few tank cars I need to cannibalize, and boxes help hold all the pieces together with the bodies.
Yes,I keep the newer RTR boxes since they add to the value for resell or trade-collectors wants the original boxes as do many modelers including myself.
What Sheldon said. Guess it was the way I was brought up, to always take care of my things, be they toys or serious tools. Anything I bought that came with the box, still has the box. Sometimes things won’t fit back in the box withotu disassembly, like my new Atlas Trainmaster - once I put the end handrails on, it won;t go back int he box. Or the Proto locos, that come with the shella nd chassis seperated, they do not go back in the box put together. Still I hang on to the boxes. The piece of foam that supports the shell in the P2K boxes makes a great handle to hold the shell while painting handrails or other details.
Normally I keep my off-layout rolling stock in plastic drawer units from WalMart, padded with bubble wrap. When I moved, I put everythign back in the original boxes and loaded them into plastic tubs. The train stuff, along with my computer equipment and flat screen TV, I carried myself in my car, NOT on the moving truck. Always have. The tubs now store the empty boxes, and some stuff that is still in the box - I have a few locos that have not yet had decoders installed, for example.
I keep all of my models in the boxes they came in, and keep many of the original boxes for things like my cell phone (I think) computer and some other things when I have them. In the case of the trains, I do not have another way to store them, at least until I get carrying cases, so the original boxes are best. I do think once I get the carrying cases I’ll keep them in there as my collection will take up significantly less room which will be a big plus if I move to an apartment this summer.
I don’t keep boxes at all. I have appropriate storage for spare parts. I don’t keep the boxes for TVs or electronics either and I’ve moved 7 times in the last 10 years. No equipment lost.
If you have room for keeping your original boxes you either haven’t built a big enough layout or don’t have enough rollingstock.
My wife has been after me for years to get rid of the old car kit boxes. I keep them in plastic storage containers. Maybe they could give me some leverage in negotiations for more right of way!
Hmm, I kinda have to change my thinking of dumping all those old boxes.
Going through all kinds of old pieces, I decided to sell off that stuff collecing dust for years. Most I will never use. Boxed up over 60 items to place on the White elephant table/s for our upcoming show. I gues they actually do come in handy. Now all these sale items are in origional boxes- far more attractive for the buyers.
With all my Athearn BBs, the reason I keep them-apart from storage utility- is that the sight of them reminds me of the good old days, when the prices on the end of the box were still valid, and when there actually WAS a LHS to go to and buy them from! Sigh! ( a big Charlie Brown one) Cedarwoodron
The following statements apply specifically to the person making them. They are not general rules.
I have only kept boxes for those very few items that spend time in boxes - US prototype locomotives and a few box cars with model railroad club decals.
Many of my models came as unassembled kits. The assembled item wouldn’t have fit in the box, so keeping it would have been a waste of space.
As a resident of minimalist housing during my military career, my rolling stock had to be packed efficiently. One carefully organized carrier the size of a dozen BB kit boxes easily held twenty cars, two locomotives and a caboose for storage at home or trips to the club. The original boxes made an early entry into the trash stream.
At present I prefer to keep rolling stock on rails, not in boxes.
The few items I have sold were sold `as-is,’ usually standing on rails. I do not expect to sell any of my rolling stock - every piece has a place in my master plan, and I expect to leave this house for a National Cemetary (but not soon!)
The recent rolling stock additions to my layout are kitbashes - wild feats of imagineering with no known prototype (or acknowledged parents.) Has anybody ever seen an original box for a seven axle articulated hopper? If I put my Kawasaki-design 2-6-6-2T into a Mantua box I could be accused - legitimately - of false advertising. As for the Golwe…
If my executor has a problem disposing of my estate because I didn’t keep original boxes, too bad!
It was nice when I moved a few years ago to be able to put at least some of my engines and passenger cars in their original boxes for transport to the new house. Easier and safer than trying to come up with packaging to move them in.
However, outside of brass, our train equipment isn’t “collectible” the way the toy trains are…so having the original box or not doesn’t really affect the relatively limited value of the piece. Lionel and MTH generally only make items for a limited time (and change roadnames on items each year) in part to make them “collectibles”, and valuable Lionel, American Flyer etc. pieces often change hands several times as they are sold or swapped between collectors.
I am glad I have saved all my boxes. I am out of standard gauge HO after 50+ years and just into HOn3. 100% of the hundred or more HO locos and cars I have accumulated over the many years are now in storage and in their original boxes. Some of the stuff, admittedly, isn’t worth keeping and I may do a sell off of some of the stuff soon. You can certainly ask just a wee bit more for a 70’s Athern assembled kit in the clean old blue box than putting it loose in a barrel with 15 other HO cars. The only cash value in the box in HO is that you can and should ask more for a well built model that has been cared for enough to retain its original box.
For Lionel, the box can we worth up to $100.00 as I had a friend who paid almost that much for a near mint empty box for the 50’s Bascule Bridge that he had in mint condition. This pushed his sale value up by an appropriate additional amount. (This suggests that a good biz could be started up around making counterfeit boxes)
Story is, that he had tried to sell the near flawless item for over two years for what the going price was…No dice! Everyone’s first complaint was No Box… No sale, but they would give him $150 less than he was asking, as is. Once he got the box, he up’d his price by $150.00 and sold it at the first big Lionel collectors show he went to at his higher asking price. Lionel folks are whacky about those boxes as they seem to have been the first thing tossed out on Christmas day, circa 1951.
I understand, from a consignment buyer who I know that hunts for wealthy Japanese looking for Lionel, that they are paranoid about the boxes and have the cash if you have the boxes.
Yes I do. I also hunt up older out of production things in their original boxes too. Why, because they look cool and, to me, show the evolution of the hobby. I have boxes from old Varney, Red Ball, Flecher, Ambroid, Ulrich, etc. Of course, I still have in my dream to-do list a model railroad museum.
A model of a 1960 Athearn Pickle car looks so much better displayed with its original Yellow Box. How many people even remember the Athearn celophane see through top boxes for RTR cars from the early 1970s?
I keep a “few” of them for transport to show them off, or in he occasional case I discover something doesn’t quite fit my prototype or my era, and I want to sell or trade it off. For instance, this old ca 1970 model of a Missouri Pacific Eagle Merchandise Service boxcar doesn’t fit my Santa Fe layout because these cars ran only in captive service on the MoP.
As crude as the model is, and despite its inaccuracies, it is closer to the cars than ran on the Mop pre-1950 and I would like to pass it on to a MoPac modeler who would really like it. And I have a box to ship it.
Not THE original box, and not the package insert and certainly not the “factory air.”
I normally keep my rolling stock not on the layout (pretty much all of its in the present state of construction and non-construction) in foot-square lidded “tray” boxes by car types…
You got all kinds of good info and opinions, and may I add mine…
Whether its Lionel, HO stuff, firearms, electronics, or stuff like that, I have saved the boxes. For resale - which I have done a lot of - they make a major difference. In fact, I have sold old beat up Lionel boxes for major money on Ebay.
Years ago I stockpiled HO stuff, building up to 70 power units and 600 plus cars. About half have been sold on Ebay in the last 4 years - all with original boxes and paper. Especially for locos, this is a major plus.
Of course you may feel like you will have your stuff “forever”, and that may be true. But, it might not be. So my advice is that if you have the room, at least hold on to the loco and more valuable item boxes.
