Estate Disposal

[JimC]

I've been asked to provide some advice to an acquaintance who's got the task of clearing the house of a rail enthusiast, but has no great interest or knowledge.
What seems to be there (judging by 30 secs of video I've been sent) is a very large collection of magazines (I'm seeing titles like RAIL, Britains Railways, Modern Railway Pictorial, Railway Magazine and the like rather than specialist interest ones,)  and a far number of models, by the looks of things standard Triang, Hornby and the like, but all unboxed, and no kind of cataloguing.

My first guess would be that in this state, and without a lot of effort there is essentially no value there. The best that could be done would be to contact a local railway society and see if they were interested in a donation. If all the models were sorted and catalogued, which would need expertise, then I'm guessing unboxed locomotives might fetch £10-30 depending on rarity.  Magazines, maybe £10 for a run, and all the problems of delivery.

Does that seem like reasonable advice?

[Grovenor]

IMHO Magazines are zero, you struggle to give them away, not worth any effort.

Locos and stock, either a quick sale to a dealer for little or put the effort in to sell on EBay and get the returns JimC suggested above.

[TheSignalEngineer]

I've tried giving magazines away and failed, no market unless you are looking for a particular article, then some of the more recent ones are available online.

 

Individual wagons and coaches not much value unless recent models or some boxed excellent condition old ones. I've got silly money on a couple of occasions when two or three people got into a bidding frenzy. Locos tend to be hit and miss what with all the historic mazak problems and plastic degradation. Typing the maker and loco or coach running number into the Ebay search and choosing 'Completed Listings' will soon show if there is any interest in a particular item and the price they have sold for.

 

Unless there are some rare collectable items I don't think it is worth much effort other than getting a dealer in or approaching a heritage railway group that has a  tat shop railway memorabilia stall at galas etc or shop. 

[Steamport Southport]

Have a look at somewhere like Hattons.

 

They seem quite good at buying both good quality stuff and what could be described as tat.

 

https://hattonsmodelmoney.com/?utm_source=hattonsmain&utm_medium=1456banner&utm_campaign=hmmpreowned

 

You might not get a lot for the models if they aren't anything special, but they are good at selling things to people like me. Very few items last long on their website.

 

As an example. This coach is nothing special, but someone will buy it.

 

https://www.hattons.co.uk/636702/lima_l305332w_po42_mk_1_bsk_brake_second_corridor_m25290_in_br_maroon_pre_owned_minor_rusting_on_/stockdetail.aspx

 

 

Jason

[J. S. Bach]

1 hour ago, Steamport Southport said:

 ...snip... As an example. This coach is nothing special, but someone will buy it.

https://www.hattons.co.uk/636702/lima_l305332w_po42_mk_1_bsk_brake_second_corridor_m25290_in_br_maroon_pre_owned_minor_rusting_on_/stockdetail.asp

Jason

Someone must have, it shows as not in stock.

[Steamport Southport]

Sold since posting then. It was about £10.

 

Just pointing out that what some of us would think of as old tat does sell. Forty year old Lima coach in average condition. It's the type of stuff that many of us have lurking in the loft which we haven't touched for years.

 

You might get more on eBay but it depends on how much effort you want to put in and how much a dealer offers.

[The Johnster]

Hatton’s would have probably paid between £3 and £4 for it then, on the rule of thumb that a secondhand dealer buys at about a third of his selling price (third overheads third profit), or more likely a lot less if it was part of a clearance or estate disposal. 

 

 

[John M Upton]

From experience, mags straight in the recycling bin, nobody wants them.  Any books unless there is some ultra rare one in there are basically worthless, not even charity shops want them anymore.

 

For the locos and stock, cut your losses and get rid as a job lot to Hattons  unless you have the time and patience to sort and EBay.

[great central]

21 hours ago, The Johnster said:

Hatton’s would have probably paid between £3 and £4 for it then, on the rule of thumb that a secondhand dealer buys at about a third of his selling price (third overheads third profit), or more likely a lot less if it was part of a clearance or estate disposal. 

 

 

Very much doubt they will have given that much. The last time I had some Idea of what a dealer offered, usually sight unseen, was on the basis of £10-20 per loco only. Rolling stock was a nominal figure because of the relatively low resale value.

This based on a collection of, mostly, very recent at the time locos and rolling stock. The locos were almost all DCC fitted and less than two years old. Also included was a brand new Gaugemaster DCC controller complete with wireless remote if I recall correctly.

A well known and widely advertised dealer had offered £1000, there were nearly 50 locos alone, most of which would resell for at least £60-70 each.

Add to that rolling stock and many more odds and ends, the whole collection would have sold easily, in my opinion, for £8000+.

[great central]

On 04/03/2021 at 18:28, JimC said:

I've been asked to provide some advice to an acquaintance who's got the task of clearing the house of a rail enthusiast, but has no great interest or knowledge.
What seems to be there (judging by 30 secs of video I've been sent) is a very large collection of magazines (I'm seeing titles like RAIL, Britains Railways, Modern Railway Pictorial, Railway Magazine and the like rather than specialist interest ones,)  and a far number of models, by the looks of things standard Triang, Hornby and the like, but all unboxed, and no kind of cataloguing.

My first guess would be that in this state, and without a lot of effort there is essentially no value there. The best that could be done would be to contact a local railway society and see if they were interested in a donation. If all the models were sorted and catalogued, which would need expertise, then I'm guessing unboxed locomotives might fetch £10-30 depending on rarity.  Magazines, maybe £10 for a run, and all the problems of delivery.

Does that seem like reasonable advice?

 

Seems perfectly reasonable advice, the best route in my opinion is the local model railway club, it may help them with something they can sell on, either within the club so giving members a bargain, or to sell at a show and generate some much needed income.

Whereabouts in the country are we talking?

[TheQ]

My and other clubs, do a second hand stall at shows, often with  house clearance stock  with the club taking a percentage. The club gets a small profit and the inheritor gets a lot more than from a dealer.

 

As for magazines, we've put them out out for sale at 10p each you sell a few at a show,but they take a lot of space.

 

Be careful with dismissing old stock. I bought some old wren stock at a show for peanuts, in perfect condition . Looked those models up and found unboxed it was selling on eBay for £75 a wagon.

[JimC]

Thanks all, I don't actually know where its based, but most likely Surrey. The situation with shows doesn't help either, but the local model railway club is an interesting suggestion. I shall pass that on. I think a lot is going to depend on urgency/effort. I'm assuming the departed has no modelling friends who will take on the task and that's why my acquaintance has got the task.

 

[darrel]

In terms of books you could always contact your local reference library and see if they would take them.

[petethemole]

3 hours ago, John M Upton said:

From experience, mags straight in the recycling bin, nobody wants them.  Any books unless there is some ultra rare one in there are basically worthless, not even charity shops want them anymore.

Some charity shops take in and sell books including railway titles.  The main ones are British Heart Foundation and Oxfam bookshops.

[John M Upton]

I tried disposing of a number of books before the Great Covid Debacle only to be told by what I can only describe as a snotty cow in full Hyacinth Bucket mode, 'Oh we don't take books'.

 

All right then I responded, slightly offended but not outwardly showing it and placed them in the Depot for my fellow train crew to browse instead.

 

Have point blank refused to donate to Charity Shops ever since.

[Rivercider]

4 hours ago, John M Upton said:

From experience, mags straight in the recycling bin, nobody wants them.  Any books unless there is some ultra rare one in there are basically worthless, not even charity shops want them anymore.

 

 

 

I would be surprised if charity shops do not want books, though I agree magazines will be hard to shift.

 

We have quite a few charity shops in town and up until the most recent lockdown all were happy to take books.

Our local Hospice has a number of charity shops in the area, some of them specialise a little with one having quite a reasonable book section, so I generally take books there,

 

cheers

[Nick C]

All of our local charity shops take books, and I know of at least 3 that take nothing else.

 

However the best outlet for railway books is probably your local heritage railway, most will have some kind of secondhand bookstall - as Surrey is mentioned above, certainly both the MHR and the Bluebell do.

[great central]

Not wishing to prolong the debate over much but see this thread for some idea about the desirability or otherwise of books and magazines. Perhaps the books mentioned in it are more specialised than those available to Jim's acquaintance but the biggest issue to my mind may well be sorting the good stuff from the not so good.

I've had a rearrangement of my bookshelves recently and was surprised how many of both useful, to me, reference books I have and the not so useful, usually bought as presents 'because it's a book about trains'!

 

 

[andyman7]

6 hours ago, TheQ said:

Be careful with dismissing old stock. I bought some old wren stock at a show for peanuts, in perfect condition . Looked those models up and found unboxed it was selling on eBay for £75 a wagon.

This can be true, but over the years as I have sorted through piles of collections either on my own behalf or for the local model railway club, unless the vendor is prepared to wade through everything and pick out on an item by item basis what is there and correctly described and catalogue it, those £75 wagons represent the rare nugget of profit on what is an otherwise thankless task.
If I pick up a dusty model sold as seen and untested for £15, clean it, check and adjust it, replace the inevitable missing buffers and/or coupling hooks and eventually dispose of it for £30-£35 as a working complete model, I can tell you neither I nor anyone else is 'profiteering'.

Edited March 6, 2021 by andyman7

[Steamport Southport]

10 hours ago, John M Upton said:

From experience, mags straight in the recycling bin, nobody wants them.  Any books unless there is some ultra rare one in there are basically worthless, not even charity shops want them anymore.

 

For the locos and stock, cut your losses and get rid as a job lot to Hattons  unless you have the time and patience to sort and EBay.

 

Not true. But I've just seen your subsequent post and you probably got "one of those people".....

 

We had one telling people we don't take CDs and DVDs as they don't sell. We probably make more in our shop from them as anything else put together as we have a large local student population and a few individuals who come in a buy a few at a time. This was the same woman telling people they needed ID to buy the computer games. I had just told her not to sell the 18 rated ones to little kids.

 

 

 

 

I run a charity shop and we welcome books and magazines. Anything we don't want we sell to companies like World Of Books by weight. We don't get as much as we like for them, but it's something like a pound per kilo.

 

Where do you think all those sellers on eBay get their magazines they are selling for £5 a go? They aren't grandad's collection of magazines. They buy in bulk from charity shops.

 

Sellers like this seem to be one of them.

 

https://www.ebay.co.uk/sch/m.html?item=201841752950&hash=item2efeb4bb76%3Ag%3Ax5IAAOSwLVZVgWv5&_ssn=joncas45&_pgn=9&_skc=400&rt=nc

 

Unfortunately we hardly ever get railway magazines. I would probably have them myself and then give the ones I've got to a local heritage railway.

 

 

Jason

Edited March 6, 2021 by Steamport Southport

[stewartingram]

I started to post the following earlier, but somehow it got deleted.

 

My loft is absolutely full of magazines. Being born in 1949, the same year as Railway Modeller started, I've tended to start my collections from then onwards.

The model mags from then were the 'Big 3' - Railway Modeller, Model Railway Constructor, and Model Railway News (later morphing into Model Railways). I have almost a full set of these 3 **, plus  a complete collection of Rail, and a late 50s onwards collection of Railway World, Railway Mag, early Modern Railways, then Steam Railways and miscellaneous other mags as well.

I'm now in a lockdown project, scanning mags for disposal. I'm NOT destroying any, the info in them is valuable to someone. I've done a lot of the misc ones (and passed them on). I've scanned, then processed into pdf articles, and filed into the PC system, all of the Model Rail, Hornby, & MRN/Model Railways so far. Phew - big job, and I'm only extracting thing that interest me, not the whole mag. But the space (& weight) saving will be enormous when I get it done. Even now, I've begun to realise what a fantastic data resource I am building, much easier to access than going through many mags 'just in case it is there'. Oh, I forgot - a full collection of MRJ, I think I might keep those though.

**Today I found I had missed the last 7 issues of MR, but I've now got them coming from ebay. 

**I was also short of 9 Rly Modeller, from 1949-51; I've managed to pickup some of those and now only need 5.

In the past I always kept them because the content would come in useful sometime, but now it is digitised I'm finding it much easier to access.

The prototype mags are another later project. Many years ago my trainspotting records went on to the PC, and I created a database of 'live' items, as well as a database of preserved items. Sadly this is way out of date, but I marked the mags when I checked them for updates. So those marked ones will go first, (after checking if there is anything worth scanning). I'll keep the later ones for the time being just in case I update my lists!

 

Stewart

[Kris]

Books and charity shops seems to be a hit and miss thing. I tried to dispose of some books (not railway) at the beginning of December. No local charity shops wanted them, too much hassle and too many already (one of the workers / volunteers was rather rude about this, as such I will never donate to that charity again). I ended up recycling them. 

[melmerby]

On 06/03/2021 at 08:29, John M Upton said:

From experience, mags straight in the recycling bin, nobody wants them.  Any books unless there is some ultra rare one in there are basically worthless, not even charity shops want them anymore.

 

For the locos and stock, cut your losses and get rid as a job lot to Hattons  unless you have the time and patience to sort and EBay.

Some Oxfam shops sell nothing but books, however I found that with their general shops they are very picky and can be quite dismissive about what you are trying to donate.

That is unlike British Heart Foundation which seem to welcome almost anything.

 

Some years ago, Iong before the digital era, I had a large collection of "Motor Sport" built up over many years and decided I wanted to get rid of them due to space constraints.

First I tried selling them (Exchange & Mart - remember that?) in year groups at a fraction of the cover price - no takers, then I tried giving them away "to a good home" still no takers, so they went into the paper recycling at the tip. Shame really as they were a classy magazine.

 

[polybear]

As mentioned above, books tend to be most welcomed and sell for the best prices at Charity shops dedicated to selling books (and sometimes records) such as Oxfam Bookshops; other charity shops almost give them away by comparison.

As for the magazines, I'd guess either into recycling or you could list them as collections by title on something like Freecycle or Freegle to give away. Other options would be Ebay (collect only, 99p start) for a couple of weeks, then bin them.

As for the locos etc, another option would be an Auction House in a specialist (not general) sale.

[brianusa]

Considering how many are in the same position, there never seems to be any consensus on how to get rid of all our toys and books.  No matter how much we love them now, we shall all be past it when 'that' day arrives so considering where we live in the US, no one is interested in Hornby so into the dumper it goes along with all the mostly English train books.  All my US trains are pre remote control, so virtually valueless so they go to the dump as well.  All those lovely loggers - breaks my heart!  Books are heavy to ship these days as are a lot of locomotives.  The cost to ship the Hornby back to the UK would be prohibitive considering the rewards so forget that idea.  Sad but harsh reality and even if one had the time and inclination to try and sell them all, there would be few takers.

     Also, all that Meccano, doomed to a similar fate!

           Brian.