Over the past three months,while searching for kits on e-bay. I always run across collections of tyco junk.Whats the deal with them ? Are they filler cars ,for yards. Are collectors really keeping these loco’s and cars for show and tell ? As a kid years ago,I had two tyco train sets…one was a Rock island baldwin sharknose,the other was a IC steel hauler. After they crapped the bed,so to speak.
I got rid of them…retired to the scrap yard. Whats the value of these make believe toy trains ? In my opinion…they were crap then and they are crap now. The only cool freight car ,tyco made and I still hunt for is the operateing clam-shell two bay hoppers. I just don’t understand ,what the big deal is about these tyco loco’s and car’s. I do realize that they have been out of production for years,but sheezzzzzz,26 bidders and 300 bucks for tyco junk. I don’t get it…I quess if thats your thing,you’ll collect rolls of toilet paper too. This post is not intened to tick anyone off…just my opinion.What that saying…opinion’s are like [censored] ,everybody’s got one.
Yeah, I’ve got opinions, too. I’ve also got 10 of those hoppers. (No, they’re not for sale.)
I just won a Mantua observation car to round off my passenger train. I’ve had a baggage car and coach for 40 years, and I’ve been looking for that observation car at every train show since then. There was no Ebay back then, of course.
I don’t know what the motivation is for TYCO collectors anymore than I understand why people buy old Lionel. That said I still have all my old TYCO’s because they have some sentimental value being my first HO stuff. No, not very good, yes, half the motors are broken because they were poorly designed and cheaply built. They will end up in a case above the new layout so I will be reminded every day how much things have gotten better. I can’t bring myself to toss the stuff and after all it is my railroad. J.R.
My brother likes the 70’s vintage cars with the advertising, I just seem to buy Virginian hopper cars at the local swap meets and the LHS that sells used locos and rolling stock. Are they prototypical not in this lifetime but they are cheaply priced and fix up nicely into rollers for a good sized coal train for cheap.
Patrick, your memories of Tyco are from late in the company’s history. If you back up into the 50’s and 60’s, Tyco was one of the better quality, low priced model trains. I still have several locomotives from this era and they run great. They’re from before the Consolidated Foods buyout (when they went to junk). At the same time, Athearn was the rubber band drive, running at 200+ scale miles per hour, Rivarossi was high priced, poor quality. The only one that was equal or better was Bowser, and they were about twice the price. And brass, WAAAYY out of reach.
The easiest way to tell the diesels apart (by era) is to look at the bottom of the trucks, between the wheels. If the bottom plate of the truck is plastic, they are, or soon will be, junk (Consolidated Foods era). If the plate is metal, this is the better quality truck from the 50’s and 60’s that probably still runs today.
The cars from this era had a cast zamac underframe. Most other brands had little or no weight added. Lightly detailed, these added weight at a low center of gravity which made them track well. The Tyco 2 bay operating hopper car today easily goes for $10 each on Ebay (I’d hate to tell you how many of these I have). They track well (again cast zamac underframe) and the doors do work with the unloading ramp.
To answer the “Lionel” question, you have to remember, this is closer to antique collecting than model railroading. Most people that buy these collector’s items display them, they don’t run them.
I have one of those hoppers, I think. It’s blue, BM road, operating clamshell doors actuated by a special piece of track, and used to dribble gravel all over my layout back in the 1970s. Except when it derailed, then it dumped gravel in piles. This time around I decided to go with a false load, and the glue is drying on it right now.
The couplers on mine are attached to the trucks, but it rarely derails. I’ll still probably replace them with frame mounted couplers, but the cars that cause more problems get new trucks and couplers first.
FWIW, I also have a Varney gondola, not painted, but the plastic is the finished color through and through. It has trucks with real springs in them and the old style wheels with the larger flanges on them. It has problems negotiating one old Atlas turnout with a frog large enough for the entire wheel to drop into, but other cars manage there ok. I’m going to add a load and weight it, then swap out the wheelsets if that doesn’t fix the problem, but I’m keeping the sprung trucks. Call me nostalgic, but this is the only car from my dad’s trainset left, and it needs to stay the way it was.
I kow he had it at least as far back as the early 1960’s, making it more than 40 years old, but he doesn’t remember where it came from or when he got it.
Here is a link to some info: http://tycotrain.tripod.com/tycotrains/index.html I have converted all my old Tyco rolling stock with Athearn trucks so they will stay on the track. If I had a Tyco engine I wanted to run I would just mount it on another drive. I guess that ruins the supposed value of it. To me it is more valuable because now it can be operated. Seems like every show I go to, tons of Tyco is for sale. Some items are probably rare but most are a dime a dozen.
Patrick, I think your final sentence defines the situation correctly.
When Tyco first separated from Mantua as a product, they were still items of reasonable quality for the perod. But as Tyco evolved into a toy train market item, in the 1960’s, they became junk and far, far below the quality level of Athearn, Riv., or most anyone else of the day.
To collect them today might be a matter of nostalgia for some but it’s mainly the equivalent of the toilet paper collector mentallity that drives the Tyco market. Very, very little in HO (outside of brass) is recognized as truly collectible and there is absolutely nothing about any Tyco product that is intrinsically collectible except in the minds of those who collect them!
I sold quite a few items last winter on Ebay in the Tyco part of HO, was trying to give it away, but ended up getting more than I dreamed for most of it. Most of the F units I had were in original boxes and had allot of bids, freight cars went from $2 up to $15 per car.
I have yet to figure out why they are bring so much money too. But there are people that want them.
Does anyone remember the Chattanooga Choo- Choo set? I got one of these for Christmas when they first came out when I was young. It ran for about 2 days and died from a burned up motor. I had it repaired 2 times, the motor! Gave up on the third repair and put it back in the box! These seem to bring top dollar on ebay now.
I agree with dragondriversteel, Tyco was junk then and is still junk. My first trains were tyco and almost all of them are gone and I’m better off for it. I have seen people pay attrocious amounts for it on ebay. If I still had mine I would sell it all to the highest bidder on ebay. And another thing…why do people use the word ( vintage ) so freely when talking about old junk???
“One man’s trash is another man’s treasure.” Collectors have a different mind set and objective. Some collect coins, some stamps, some old tools, some bottles, some Lionel trains, etc., and some Tyco trains. In each of these cases it’s the thrill or the hunt, completing sets, trading with other collectors, etc. that is the joy.
Actually you could change that to say “there is absolutely nothing about any product that is intrinsically collectible except in the minds of those who collect them!”. The collectible value is only what other collectors will pay. Admittedly that is more for Lionel than Tyco, but that’s because more people collect Lionel.
I buy them because I can get them for $1 to $3 most of the time. They are perfect for a number of things like practicing with the airbrush, kitbashing and just general running around. I guess the best way is to compare it to everyday dishes verses the good china. Most of the time it’s just me and the cats in the room anyway and they could careless although one complained about something not being prototypical and I just ignored her ;)… I don’t buy the engines only the cars.
Collectors are probably not interested in the operational quality of Tyco items. Some collectors like collecting even older stuff from the first half of the 20th century. By today’s standards, that stuff would be considered junk but age and the rarity of certain items are what makes them valueable to collectors.
Paul, this raises a rather interesting point about supply and demand, when it comes to pricing. That point being, so much of Tyco’s production has found it’s way to trash cans over time, the remaining stuff has new found rarity, thus maybe even value.
Are people really coming out of the woodwork to collect this stuff? How much of this phenomenon is directly related to Ebay?
Maybe the train world has a new collectable. Personally I would rather collect early Athearn, including Lionel HO. Much more interesting.
By the way, I had one of those hoppers with the clamshell doors. Pretty cool concept, but well short of the action that Lionel could muster with it’s size.
I think it just a bunch of guys that don’t know any better…maybe it’s a nostalgia thing with them that brings back memories of the tyco set they had as a kid for a couple of weeks before it broke down…what’s that saying?..a fool and his money are soon parted…[:D] chuck
i have a TYCO engine that’s been converted to a dummy after the motor went out years ago it’s and F7 or F-9 Chicago & Northwestern it looks kinda neat (except those stupid trucks tyco had)
The smoking 2-8-0 that’s actually a USRA 0-8-0 with the pilot deck lengthened to take a lead truck? I got one for Christmas in 1978 or so - first model I ever got with outside-motion valve gear: that engine must have logged miles (real, not scale) on my first 4x8. It would creep right along on pulse power, although it needs work now. It’s not as pretty as my other stuff, but I wouldn’t trade it - too many good memories.
I still have my old tender driven Chattanooga. It still runs well, smoke unit still works. The motor was a different story. I finally pressed in brass bushing to support the armature of the motor. That helped out a lot. It gets used as an “excursion freight train” now. All the cars have had the trucks changed out and the couplers are now body mounted(needed something to practice with). So it’s pretty neat to still have the loco and cars from when I was a 5th grader. Do I buy any more Tyco stuff? Nope. With that said, I do not know why they cost so much on ebay. I’ve seen Tyco stuff priced high at train shows too.