Came across this Rare MTL N Special Run NSC 04-72 'U.S. Virgin Islands - eBay (item 140334363802 end time Jul-26-09 13:48:39 PDT) I have the semi common one that is silver, is this for real? In gold? Did someone paint this? Or was this some "test" from mr nscale? V
There is a discussion going on over at the Atlas board about the same car. Being that the seller is from Medford OR, guesses are that it is an employee or ex-employee that ended up with a test shot of the car. He has been selling quite a few unique cars.
I wouldn't have paid that much for it, the lid was taken off the box for the photo and let the factory air out.:tb-wink:
The description below says the "caboose" is in mint condition. For a caboose, it doesn't look mint to me.
I'm not sure about this car. The VIRGIN ISLANDS car I have has silver sides. It came from the NSC and was obtained with my membership renewal. My guess is that this seller has an inside connection at Micro-Trains Line in Medford. One-of-a-kind cars do get out and it drives the hard-line collectors NUTS when one is found. I used to be one of the N-Scale Collector SPECIAL-RUN NUTS, but after the convention here (Louisville 2008), I'm not into collecting anymore, I'm into modeling. I like to operate my railroad, not just put my rolling stock on a shelf and look at them!
I am pretty sure that the author cars have different road numbers than the regular NSC special run car - even if it is the same paint scheme.
Like was mentioned in the AtlasForum, chemical alteration of colors is a possibility. More likely that it came smuggled out of the back door of the factory, though.
possibly just a test shot ... which are done to make sure everything lines up on the tampo printing machines ... the gold might just have been used to differentiate it from the actual models slated for release. in some model factories, they use gold for their samples as gold is a darker color than silver ... so it helps makes printing errors more visible whether this is the case for MTL ... I do not know ... but it will probably come down to something like that
I will follow up tomorrow and see what is up...but as far as I know, none of those cars were painted gold. Stuff happens and I am not always up on what is provided to the NSC...but if this is a back door job, I'd like to know what's going on. Joe MTL
I emailed the NSC Board asking what the deal was with this car. That was Monday, I'm still waiting for a reply back...... Rich
I can tell you that it's not an Author Car, as I have all of them... (ducking) I have asked questions as well, please stay tuned. As far as I know this was not a Special Run released to the public. My guess is had the seller done the NSC Auction route, the price realized would have been four digits to the left of the decimal, not three. I wonder if the purchaser of the car on eBay has the same idea. We shall see.
I don't get the hard-core wing of the collector crowd, but I guess to each his/her own. For that same price, I could put together a really nice train of cars for just about any purpose or era, but then that is the modeler thinking, not collector thinking. Interesting to see this anyway. Thanks for posting it.
