On-line auction of massive G scale collection

M

Moonraker

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There is an on-line auction of a deceased estate in South Australia on Sunday 2nd June. You can see it at $160K COLLECTION - DECEASED ESTATE. The whole thing is being sold as one lot. There are a large number of boxes under the layout so most of the stock and track, possibly all, is boxed.

Sounds like a great opportunity for someone who wants to buy the lot and then break it up for resale.

Regards
Peter Lucas
MyLocoSound
 
Certainly an impressive collection - organising, sorting and re-selling that lot would be a full time job for a couple of years for someone....

Jon.
 
The auctioneer said that, if it is not sold as one lot, then they will sell everything as separate lots. I assume that would not happen on the same day as everything would have to be catalogued and lot numbered.

If anyone wants anything checked out the site is only ten minutes from my home and I could go up there when they are open late next week.

Regards
Peter Lucas
MylocoSound
 
Moonraker said:
The auctioneer said that, if it is not sold as one lot, then they will sell everything as separate lots. I assume that would not happen on the same day as everything would have to be catalogued and lot numbered.

If anyone wants anything checked out the site is only ten minutes from my home and I could go up there when they are open late next week.

Regards
Peter Lucas
MylocoSound
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I am interested but I can't look at the condition and such. I would make an offer but what would the total really be worth if i bought it all individually. I would would buy to only resell on "evilbay" but my two questions are how much of a market is there for LGB in Australia? secondly, how much is the total resale value worth and how much of them come in boxes? I have a a friend who would pick them up at site but he knows nothing about model trains so i can't ask him about resale value.
 
Incredibly lazy and speculative piece of marketing by the auction house. If I were were the estate's executor I'd sack them on the spot for this "effort". Then again there may not be the market in Australia to make it worth cataloguing and selling lot by lot or even in bundles as a specialist auction house, say Vectis, in the UK would do. Shipping out to the ROW could/would be prohibitive and limit sales opportunities too I suppose. Items dusty and no original boxes shown. Max
 
160k seems a bit much. There is a lot there but not enough to warrant that sort of money. I wonder who valued it
 
My take on this. Assuming AUD 160,000 was the cost (roughly GBP 85,000), then if you could resell it all on ebay you'd be lucky to get half of that back, once fees deducted. As someone above said it would be a couple of year's work to list, pack and post this lot, probably more. So even if someone gave this to you, you'd be working minimum wage for two years to get rid of it. So commercially it makes little sense.

They need a buyer who wants to keep a significant part of the collection I would think.

If this was in US then they could take the whole lot to some big garden rail show and sell it direct. But I guess there is not the same mass market in Oz.
 
With some exceptions, predominately 0-4-0's, 2 axle cars and Big Hauler. Not the top end of collectibles.
They won't get top prices in Australia and I doubt anyone will buy the lot unless near half the market resale value, whatever that may be.
 
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The prices on the inventory list are 'cost prices' not the expected selling price. I have seen a few large collections by older gents who paid full retail price for everything over the years being not too keen on the Interweb dealers. Unfortunately that has no bearing on a second hand resale price as some often think. Collections of mainly starter set items from moulds made several decades ago are not going to stimulate high bidding activity with the small number of potential buyers here in AU. Out of everything, there is not much that would interest myself. There is also the 10% buyers premium. All that boxed dust and transportation/shipping from a less populated part of Australia.
A VGC Stainz will only fetch AU$250 or so here in AU. Schweiger 2 axle dining cars at AU$250 each? They were US$30 close out! DRG&W Sheep car with sound at AU$2,160? Pull the other one, it plays jingle bells. :giggle:
A circle of R3 track at AU$1,280? That's over AU$50 per foot folks. They're dreamin! :snooze:
On average, the LGB items are only worth about half their specified 'cost price' although the AristoCraft and Bachmann prices are closer to being realistic.
To sell the lot to a re-seller to make it worth their while, halve it again. I doubt someone would recoup most of AU$40,000 invested from reselling the best items quickly either. No one in Australia is in a hurry to purchase a generic LBG item on eBay unless cheap. They wait till a local one with low shipping comes up at a 'nice' price, often with few other bidders present. It is a buyers market here but typically not much on offer beyond basic, except for the latest stuff which is astronomical.
 
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As they say - Location, location, location. Big heavy and costly to ship items for sale in an isolated and limited market are never going to make much. When I sold off my motorsport book collection, as one means to pay for this hobby, I noted that a lot of out of print UK published titles, and some mediocre ones at that, were making very good money when being sold in the US market (keep and eye on Abe and suchlike) compared to their "home" territory. Of course the problem was immediately apparent - books are heavy and international postage costs from the UK, for a private seller, are vastly higher than internal shipping costs in the US for well practiced dealers there. The added on cost of the shipping obliviated the higher margins seemingly available selling into the US from the UK of that type of item. That and the minefield known as "condition" dissuaded me from trying. The buyer is quite capable of doing the math(s) ;)

Flipside - I also sold off most of my model racing car collection at the same time for the same reasons. A lot being hand built from artisan UK and EU makers. Small, light, high value items and as a result cost effective to ship. Because of listing like items in groups on auctions this made them even more cost beneficial to acquire for the buyer - because they were "winning" multiple lots with discounted postal rates. Result - most of my old collection now resides in far off places like the US, China, Russia, UAE, Saudi, Spain, Germany etc'. The books went as a job lot to a start up UK dealer looking for some decent "seed" stock and for a good price because of that.

Moral of the story - If you are even thinking of a return on your "investment" then, if you must, take care that you have bought into the right thing for resale into your future accessible markets. The only problem then is changing tastes, fashions and the world economy - Note the destinations of my cars, would they have found ready buyers most of those places 30 years ago ? Would I have even sold them at any halfway decent price because Evilbay is what has made this all possible. No Evilbay, probably no switch to garden railways. (Other reselling methods are available)

Now what to do about that big heavy all metal Accucraft K-28 live steamer when I can no longer use/need/want it. I think I might be taking a big hit on that one (I'm sure nobody will shed any tears on my behalf). Then again we may have made "the most beautiful" trade deal with the US that will make it practical to sell and ship back there at some point in the future. :D Max

Thread drift on ?
 
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Gavin Sowry said:
That is what the cost price was for all the items. The value, is whatever someone is willing to pay.
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It looks like the cost price at the horrendously inflated Australian retail prices - which are often far more than twice the cost price of the same items when bought from German retailers. I would never buy such items at these ridiculous local prices. Anyone buying at these prices would have far more money than sense - though not for long!
 
I figured that was about it's worth to a re-seller here in Oz. One quarter of it's claimed new value of $160,000.
Now I suspect a stream of second hand eBay ads here in Australia which will be a good change from the regular grandiose retail priced listings of new items which clog up the G Scale category.
I did also notice a few 'nice' higher value items which were in the pictures but nowhere in the items list.
 
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