Train Show Bargains! More Trains, Less Money!!

Finding Train Show Bargains on this episode of Toy Train Tips and Tricks. Hello again, this is Mike with Toy Train Tips and Tricks. Sticker shock. That's what most of us experience when we see the prices of new toy trains, such as in my regular Tuesday video series, What's New in O'Gage. It's easy to see these prices and think, who can afford this hobby these days? Well, in this episode, let's discuss one of the best ways to find good-running budget trains and a couple of examples to prove it. In previous episodes, I have demonstrated how I find bargains through online auction sites like eBay, but my favorite source of bargains is local train shows. Train shows generally come in three varieties. There are local train shows, which are often fundraisers for charities, school groups, or local chapters of organizations like Local Train Collectors Association, National Model Railroad Association, or local train clubs, and they are often hosted at local schools, churches, and other civic centers. While some regional or national touring vendors may appear at these shows, they also feature a good number of local dealers and collectors who are looking to thin their collections. And you can often find great bargains at these shows. Local dealers and collectors would rather sell their surplus items to another hobbyist than to pack it up and take it home. These fellow collectors can also be a great source of knowledge. If you see something you haven't seen before, ask, and they will usually give you the full backstory of the item. Check the boxes underneath the tables, too. These are often great sources to find track by the box load and less-than-perfect items that are great for parts or repainting. Another type of show is the national traveling show, such as Greenberg's Great Toy and Train Show. These shows are generally for-profit and can be hosted at larger venues like convention centers. Expenses are higher, so these shows tend to feature more regional and national vendors, area brick and mortar dealers, and sometimes even manufacturers and distributors. But some bargains can still be found, and the large number of dealers means you can see lots of trains that you've never seen before. So these shows are a good opportunity to observe the wide variety of available items and to find that one item that you've been trying to add to your collection. The last type is the mega show. These shows are destinations for hobbyists from around the nation and around the world. The best example is probably the Eastern Division Train Collectors Association show hosted twice a year in York, Pennsylvania. This show is known among hobbyists simply as York, and it is the place to be for collectors, dealers, distributors, and manufacturers, and someday I hope that I'll be able to attend as well. This show is a mix of both types. TCA members sell their surplus items to other TCA members looking for a bargain to add to their collections, as well as major retailers, distributors, manufacturers, all displaying and selling their latest and greatest items. So what kind of bargains can you find? Well, look at these four cars, all in excellent condition, with original boxes and packaging that I found at a local train show last weekend, at an average price of just $7.50 each, or even if you include the admission to the show, they set me back on average around $10. Let's take a look at these items. All right, so first let's flip the box over for the great reveal, and we have a Soo Line operating box car. I recently did a video on operating box cars. This is the number 9217 from 1982, MPC era car. It's basically a reissue of the post-war version from 1957 to 1958, even has metal trucks, metal couplers, very nice car, and there's our operation. And here not only do we have metal trucks and couplers, but sprung metal trucks and couplers. The couplers by themselves are worth more than $10 in this case. In really good shape with its original box, very low mileage, very very little wear on the wheels. Certainly a bargain. I'd pay $10 for that on the shelf, wouldn't you? And here in the box we even have our original paperwork. We have our original one-year warranty card. I think I'm a little late on that. Here we have the instructions for the operating box car. Cool. Looks just like the post-war instructions. And we have the list of available dealers from 1982-1983. There we go. Look at all those Lionel dealers. This part's getting a little bit yellow from a little bit of exposure to the sun. There we go. All right, so that was cool. All right, our next bargain car comes from a little bit later. This is the 616332 Lionel Depress Center Transformer car. This is basically an updated version of the 2461 and 6461 cars of 1947-49. There's our original cardboard insert, and let's pull this out. Now, of course the original post-war car, the flat car, was die-cast. This one is plastic, so this one's a much lighter weight, but it matches a lot of the other Lionel flat cars. Nice graphics, and of course being unusual with the Depress Center and this nice big transformer on here. Maybe I can deliver a new transformer to my Menards power plant using this Lionel car. So yeah, this is from 1991, and there's some nice detail there. Very new. I see nowhere on the wheels. We have our original cardboard and styrofoam inserts. I wonder if the paperwork is in this one still. Well, this is an operating car, so this one wouldn't have had any paperwork. So yeah, probably if it's been out of the box at all, not very much. So again, for $10, basically treating this as a brand new car. Nice. Next on our list of bargains, we're going to pull this one off the bottom, and here we have a Menards box car. This is the Grand Trunk Western Menards box car from 2019. Yes, 2019, built by Menards. This is their typical box car with the metal wheels, the metal couplers, the simulated sprung trucks. You see the springs, but nothing actually moves, unlike the Lionel car here where these springs actually compress. So this is a car that I wanted to add to my collection, but why go out and pay $24.99 before rebates on a current car when I could get one at the show for about $10. And again, this looks pretty much brand new. I don't see any wear on the wheels. It's just barely been out of the package, and very little run time, if any at all. So another great bargain for under $10. And last but not least, I know many of you already recognize this as a Menards car, and we have another 2019 car, this time the Delaware & Hudson Covered Hopper. And let's open this one up. Now it has been open before, the tape is broken, but we still have a really crisp clamshell here. All right, so again, it's a copycat of the Lionel Covered Hopper, which was based off of a Norfolk & Western Cement Hopper. As with most Menards cars, good graphics here, except for our shiny little number here, where they are all individually numbered. This one also, we've got our metal trucks, our metal couplers, no wear on any of the wheels. So it looks like if this had any track time at all, it was very little indeed. I do like the Lionel version of these a little bit better because these are sprung and they want to stay up a little better. A nice car for under $10. And here's an example where Menards gets a little sloppy with the numbering. Notice the DNH7614 on this side, and notice the location on this side. This sticker is just a little crooked and out of the way. I hope you enjoyed this video as much as I enjoyed making it, and if so, please let your friends, neighbors, and YouTube know by giving us a like, share, subscribe, or tell us about your greatest bargain finds in the comments section. So go find some bargains and keep the trains running, and we'll catch you next time on Toy Train Tips and Tricks!