Merkur tank car

Today, I visited the local toy train swap meeting in Zutphen. A full sport hall filled up with numerous traders. I even spotted a Lionel Scout engine for 128 Euro.  Ha ha, what a joke. 28 Euro would approach the real price much better. Anyway, I proceeded to the stand of "Blik en Speelgoed" to treat myself to a new Merkur tank car. A beautiful full metal, high quality car. It is the Merkur 9608 Mobil tank car. Fits in nicely with the pre-war Lionel cars. So, it was a good day.

Lionel MPC

The one thing that is good about a collection of toy trains that is stored away in boxes, is that you can unpack and enjoy them every now and then. Yesterday, I just felt that I had to let some Lionel MPC trains run. These were the Lionel toy trains that I started to gather a decade ago and as my interests have slightly shifted in time, they have ended-up in boxes. But what a smooth runners they are indeed. No, hick-ups, no surprises, just performance. You place them on the tracks and they simply run. It just made me feel good. Three rail AC rules.

A few things struck me. First, they run perfectly over Merkur rails. Secondly, now that I have wider curves than 027, finally my Lionel 9193 Budweiser Vat car also runs smoothly over the tracks and does no longer derail on switches. And thirdly, as the photo above clearly shows, American Scale zero ain't European scale zero. But that is old news.

The Lionel 9193 Budweiser Vat car is typical for the MPC period. It is from 1983, colourful and cheerful. Not very realistic as train car to transport beer in, but who cares. And that reminds me of the reasons why I was interested in Lionel trains as a kid; the large size (compared to h0) and the bright colours. The essence of MPC is plastic fantastic toy train fun.

Toy train market swing

Why would you buy one over-priced old toy train item with age issues, if you could also buy -for the same sum of money- a complete modern tin-plate toy train that runs smoothly?

I notice at auctions and trading websites that people still demand high prices for old tin-plate toy train items and they simply don't sell it. Personally, I like the theater and enjoy reading texts like "please bid according to value, etc." And then I think by myself, "no you wouldn't want that". And for the majority of the common rusty toy-trains of the past, it is plain pathetic. And please do not throw in another box of rusted tracks. That just has scrap value, and I can assure you, prices for collected tin-plate junk are dead low. Who has any use for that beyond melting, with so much high quality new tracks on the market for reasonable prices.
If you observe how much high quality modern tin-plate toy-train articles in scale zero are flooding on the market by MTH, Ace, Merkur, Darstead, Vintage and others and you simultaneously see that many traditional toy train collectors are getting too old to hold on their collections, you would expect a price correction for the vintage stuff soon.

With that in mind and an excellent beer in reach, it is time to enjoy those trains on the track; let them run.