This goes hand in hand with the insurance topic posted a few days ago. Understandably...we value our 'treasured' collections of locomotives and rolling stock and the work we've all put into them. But as I sit and do my almost bi-weekly update of items on my simple user friendly excel program. I found that I had enough space to put an actual $ value on each piece. For a simple guy like myself, is there a (for example), guide or information as to the worth of freight cars from the past per say. Or is it just simple enough to "guess-timate". I did not retain alot of the original boxes from the 25 odd years of hobbying so the check of price tags is out of the question. Any thoughts?
I haven't saved boxes or cash register receipts from my hobby shopping. I do have 7 Walthers catalogues, too expensive to buy every year but I got every 2 or 3 years over a 25 year period. I use them whenever I am trying to place the catalog number of an old piece of rolling stock, and could be useful to determine prices, or value. For brass, there are guides to MARKET values of collectible brass, often in excess of original price. Sometimes the insurance/ replacement value of old items depends on their availability. For instance, if changing societal attitudes should force manufacturers to stop producing "naked woman" scale figures (an item mentioned in another thread elsewhere) and those modeling items remained in ever higher demand, their value might increased because of their unavailability.
