The lady of the house went out with a friend today. They were, of course, looking for household items and jewelry, but it got me thinking.
I’ve bought a couple of estate sale items on eBay. The first was an observation car that finished off my set of old metal streamliners, and the second a set of new-in-the-box Walthers Type 21tank cars.
I felt a special attachment to these. I wanted to make the former owner proud of where his items ended up, so I made sure they were in proper adjustment and the observation car got Kadees and was painted to match my passenger consist.
How about you? Have you acquired estate sale items? Are they somehow just a bit more special than some off-the-shelf item?
I love going to estate auctions. I do not think I have bought any model railroading items at these sales. I am looking for tools, anitques, and china sets.
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I only buy at about one out of every ten estate sales I got to, but I have fun bidding.
I bought a CMR turntable from the son of a MR on Ebay. I wondered how he would pack it to protect it. He put it in a box stuffed with plastic grocery bags. Parts came unglued and after I complained, he made a satisfactory adjustent in price and commented that his dad had problems getting engines to run on the bridge.
At the time CMR used pickup from ball bearing wheels, transmitted thru brass tubing axles, to which a feeder to the track was soldered. The was no continuity between the axles and the ball bearings on one side, so one rail was dead.
I did figure out how to install a wiper and get it working again. In that sense, it is special.
I recall going to an antique auction with my wife and some in-laws…not sure if it was for an estate or merely a house-cleaning, and was there when the auctioneer was about to offer a cardboard box-full of some brass locomotives.
Being a novice at such a gathering, I held back to see where the prices were going, and since I felt that the offers were unrealistically low, jumped in, and without too much effort, ended up as the winning bidder. I was shocked and embarrassed when the auctioneer asked me to pick out the one that I wanted - all along, I had thought that I was bidding on the box-load, not just one loco…my bid would have been a steal for the box-full, but was outrageous for a single locomotive. I politely declined…but of course, I still get reminded of my faux pas by those who were there.
I would guess that a fair amount of my railroad collection has come from estate sales, as the hobbyshops which existed in this area (they’re all gone now) all had “used” items for sale. That’s not to say that they were definitely from an estate, but at least two of those shops actively courted estate lots.
I’ve been in the larger one several times when an estate lot had just come in, and the owner was cataloging the items. On at least one occasion, he commented that the lot exceeded $100,000.00 in cost to him, and I’m certain that he had no intent to move the myriad of items at that price. I’m sure that such practice more than payed the bills for running that store.
A couple of years ago, a friend was visiting and we decided to drop in at a nearby hobbyshop, about 5 minutes drive from here. There was all the usual used stuff around, but some more interesting items in the owner’s office.
Among them was a Toby brass model of a CNR Northern, and my friend, an avid fan of the CNR, was immediately interested.
The tender had some minor damage, but the underside of the loco had a plate attached,
Yep, if being Motive Power or Rolling Stock, it will becomes a special piece of equipment in someway. Buildings/Industry will take on the name of the previous owner if known, as in (Scott) Scott’s Feeds, (Martin) Martin Scrap Yard, (Jack) Jackson Coal Yard, (Ruppert) Ruppert Furniture Manufacturing Co.
Over the years I have bought several cars,locomotives,structures etc from estate sales including some at auction.
The best auction bid was $33 and some change for a carboard flat box of Athearn BB locomotives containing 3 SW7s, 4 GP7 and 2 SD9s all lightly detailed and lettered for Ohio Midland. I also got the six OM Roundhouse two window cabooses for a bid of $15.00 (the only bid) I stated high because I wanted those cabooses. Those cabooses had marker lights and glass in the windows.
I never did repaint those engines and cabooses as I planned on doing.
I have been to two remarkable estate sales that featured model train stuff. The first was at the home of the late Art Curren, the master kitbasher who wrote articles for RMC and MR and wrote a great book on kitbashing for Kalmbach. My friends bought some of his structures at the sale. I bought a bag of leftover parts from his various projects (including bits of one of his favorite kits for raw materials, LifeLike’s Mt Vernon Mfg.). I have plans for the parts.
The other estate sale was a couple of years ago. The man’s name was Larry Penn and his daughters were selling off the entire contents of his house. I was mostly interested in the HO trains. This guy was a real craftsman who improved difficult craftsman kits and did a great job. I bought some freight cars - a little early for my era – but mostly what I wanted was his huge stash of detail parts, castings, hardware, and tools. I also bought some books. He had a huge collection of old magazines but they smelled so strongly of “damp basement” that I passed. Too bad as there were some rarities and all were neatly organized. In fact everything he owned was neatly organized.
His layout was all hand laid (brass) track but was no longer operable and had never been scenicked.
I could tell from the packages that he and I patronized the same hobby shops and I wish I had met him. But I suspect he might not have wanted to meet me in my business suits and ties. I learned from his daughters that he was a far left wing political operative, labor activist and organizer. Truck driving was his occupation. Some pretty inflammatory political pamphlets were in his basement. He was also a singer and surprisingly famous folk songwriter, and many of his songs were about trains. One was about John Allen’s Gorre & Daphetid! (contrasting it with the exploitation of workers on “real” railroads). I en
For estate sales, I went to the Lambert one. Someone came in and bought the lot but one room elsewhere was not included and we got some goodies. At train shows my buddy got a whole car load of MR and other train mags for free, just had to go pick them up. This was back when I could still read mags easily (you know aging and eyes thing) and ended up with them. Good reading for years. Bought at a few other estate sales and hit one or two bargins but I know others who used to do it all the time with good results. E-bay has really changed all that.
Estate sales can be a place to find good deals. It varies by the sale. An excellent resource to find them is https://www.estatesales.net/ most listed here will ba a tag type of sale- search by the keywords train and railroad. (There will be some false positives either with a Christmas train or a Lionel set- you just have to look) Some are higher priced that others and sometimes items can be both high and low in the same sale. I have found some great deals along side of items at nearly full MSRP. I live within an hour to an hour and a half drive of Raleigh, Winston Salem, Greensboro, Roanoke, and Lynchburg. Typically I see an estate sale with a decent amount of trains every four to six months. (Other places have more-if you live in Chicagoland there is one at least a month) Recently I went to one where they had boxed cars for 5 loose for 3 and engines for 5-10. I bought a bag of loose steamers for 7 and bought a tender seperate. One was inoperable but I got 3 working locos and two that need a little bit of work and a tender. (all were DC) I figured I might get one working out of the bag when I bought it. Some sales are higher than others but generally I find something that is at least reasonable. Parts can often be the best bargain.
There was a very odd estate auction near me, a couple months ago, that we talked about in Jeffrey’s Diner. From the pics you could see there were boxes of brass locos as well as Atlas and Athearn, but no descriptions - just pictures, no local viewing and if you won the auction you had to show up on a specific day at a site to be announced, to pick up your winnings.
Maybe somebody got a deal or got ripped off, no idea.
I always look online for train stuff at the local auction houses out here in the farm belt. Usually, they just post a photo of a box of stuff and you see if you can spot a nugget or two in the photo. A guy I know just recently bid on a box of so so stuff online and when he went to pick it up there was a brand new NCE DCC system in the bottom of the box with a second controller also new in the box all for $43.00.
I scored a brass Great Northen 4-6-2 for $35.00 once and should have grabbed a lot of the other stuff, however, I don’t want to resell stuff and I hate collecting stuff I will never use. It is still in the box on the shelf…Someday.[(-D]
The local auction houses do not ship, so if you can’t pick it up in person you are out of luck. There is a slight advantage for the locals at these auction houses. The local MRR hawks don’t seem to miss a thing.
Brent,Neither does the train show dealers…Some of these guys will run the bid up in order to out bid nonsellers and gain stock for their business. Now add the e-Bay dealers in on the bidding and the little guy is left holding a empty auction bag at the larger estate auctions…
I will mention this. While not a auction you can find model train goodies at yard estate sale. Of course you can find junk trains that seen better days or a very nice collection at reasonable prices.
I went to two of these sales last year and gain a very nice BLI DCC/Sound SW7 for $50.00 and several Atlas ACF Precision Design boxcars for $2.00 each at one and the other was a complete washout since there was nothing but Tyco,older Bachmann and Model Power train set stuff. A waste of time-----well maybe not seeing I stopped at Skyline Chilli…[dinner]
Earlier I did not list another site on estate sales https://www.estatesale.com/ Typicaly this lists more the auctions including some online ones. Typically I mess with the tag type estate sales more. I will note that there was one auction in the vicinity that had a tremendous amount of train stuff in it. I wasn’t there but the dealers bid up mainly the brass. One of the guys in our club got a lot of stuff there reasonably and sold some of it at one of our club meetings (we were kidding him that he gought in trouble for buying too much and was trying to unload it [swg]) I got a proto E5 A&B for 20-25 each. Instead of going to that auction I had actually went to another tag type estate sale and got a couple of beautifully assembled Campbell hits for $20 each most of the rest was high.
They do come in different shapes and sizes, on Ebay, the local hobby shop and through contacts at the local club. I found some really nice stuff, but very few steals (I’m not a very good bargainer, especially when I meet the widow or the aging railroader in person). Found some really nice brass and high quality stuff that way. But there is a whole lot of Tyco and old life-like stuff that is available for free out there. If someone wanted to start on the cheap, it is entirely possible to get a DC model railroad going for less than $50 (the price of one good used DC loco), if one doesn’t mind the low-end brass track, tyco cars and built-up LL buildings. And getting free lumber scraps to build a table is not that hard, at least not in Eastern Canada.
I have to think some items I’ve picked up on Ebay was probably estate sale stuff. Certain oddball “lot” groupings for example, where the seller has no idea what a lot of the items are, and is just moving it along. Some great finds can be hiding in some of those.
I did buy a couple locomotives from a LHS who was selling from an estate sale. Dan
I got mine on eBay it’s a Kato N Scale C44-9w #8110.
Like most used locomotives that I buy that do it’s missing the tank plastic insert, bubble wrap and the detail parts. (I contact person if the detail parts are inside or not. If not I don’t buy.)