Just looking at profit margin I would say it was a find last year. A junk dealer called me and said he had a box of old trains. I went there and in the box were CS800, SK800, RSM800, ST800, TM800 and a dozen rolling stock 800 series. All of the items needed restoration at some level of low and some high.

Best find - RE800 + a couple of 314/x wagons (including the one with opening doors).
Cost me less than one USD, they were about to be thrown away, sold it to a German friend for a reasonable price in the later 90's.

Could have got much more, but I know they are in a good home and are well taken care of...

One of the seven deadly sins comes to mind here....

oh yes, ENVY - you lucky begger!!!!

Classic example

:-)

Story#1. About 6 years ago, I saw an advertisement in the newspaper that said TT 800 and a telephone number. I called and an old woman answered and said it was truly a Marklin TT 800 for $250 and mentioned that there was some Lionel also. This was from her adult son's estate. When I went over I found a new/inbox, never run TT 800. While there another buyer called in and said he would take the Marklin and Lionel for $400. I said $450 and she said "sold". She told me she bought it in 1954 in Berlin, and because it was 3-rail thought it would work with Lionel 3-rail, but it was the wrong scale. Her son never ran it. The Lionel alone, was nearly worth the money by itself!

Story#2.Those of you who live in the USA know, that even finding any Marklin is a rare day, even at a model railroad swap meet. I was cruising the aisles of a local meet, looking at the boxes of stock stacked under the folding display tables. I saw a blue transformer and asked about it. The seller had 3 banana boxes of Marklin stuff. 10 loks, 60 coaches, passenger and freight, old blue trans formers and a couple hundred pieces of M track. All in good/average condition. He wanted $500 and after some bargaining I got it for $300. All the loks ran!! He said I should have been around earlier, as he had an alligator (he meant crocodile) and many signals, but they had already sold!!

I'll add to my own story. I grew up with trains from when I was a child, I have two older brothers and the trains were already in the family when I came along. My Dad had Tri-ang and I think us boys were his excuse for his own hobby.

He could never afford Marklin and while I was certainly aware of them, they were always these mysterious heavy items that looked very different from the mainly British outline items that we had. Having said that, I enjoyed the sets my Dad built, and learned about electrics, soldering, maintenance etc at an early age. During my teenage years I brought a couple of items, a Marklin Signal to add some interest to the train set, and later on a bunch of Marklin overhead poles and wires so we could run an electric loco. I loved anything electric - Wellington has a very good Suburban electric train network, Trams were still running when I was a child and went right past our house, plus of course the Trolley buses are still running, not to mention the famous Cable-Car which while it was not electric as such, it did have pantographs for the lighting etc so it 'looked' electric.

I digress....

Story 1

Somewhere along the way my Dad purchased his one and only Marklin Loco which he loved to run on the 2-rail layout although (only in hindsight) it did look a bit strange with the other rolling stock. The loco that he brought sometime in the mid-late 70's was a HAMO 8359 "Le Capitole" and without any hint at that time how popular it would become.

When I decided to get back into trains after getting married I decided on Marklin, partly because of what I already knew of them but also heavily influenced by the images from assorted Faller catalogues which Dad already had, and I had already acquired his Faller AMS Slot Car set and wanted to incorporate that if I could. Marklin was the logical choice and it did not take much persuasion to relieve my Dad of the burden of the nice Red French Loco. My Dad passed away only 3 or 4 years after that so it's become very special. It cost me nothing, and is worth everything. I've added a shoe and decoder for AC running, otherwise it's original, and with original box. I suspect my Dad got it second-hand because there's no factory inspection tag or booklet unless they became lost - I'd love to get those to complete it.

Story 2

We were visiting a friend sometime in the late 80's for a coffee and somehow I managed to sneak Marklin into the conversation (as you do). My friend Mark said "Oh, I've got some old Marklin in a box, I'll have a look". Comes out with an apple box with what looked to be a very playworn assortment and said something like he wasn't sure if it worked any more but it was just gathering dust, their kids weren't interested and if I wanted it it was mine. Well of course who can turn that down. I might have paid a nominal sum for it, $50 or something, I don't recall. The Loco was an SET800, in a very sorry state - the chassis had been broken at both ends, so to secure the housing holes had been drilled in the sides to mount it on!! (Yes, I can hear some of you groaning from here)

There was a quantity of M-track and four 346 series passenger coaches. They were in somewhat better condition but still very playworn. I since worked out that it must have originally been a complete set, probably the starter set SET846/J from '54 - '56 which fits in nicely with my interest area.

I ended up getting a new chassis for the SET800, rebuilt and chipped it, stripped the body and filled the holes, repainted and it's almost a new loco (work in progress) and which runs absolutely superb. I very much enjoyed the restoration process.

Story 3

In the early 90's I Visited some very long-time friends of my parents to give them an update on my Mothers health. He had been the family jeweler and watch/clock repairer for as long as I could remember and a very distinguished gent. This time I didn't actually bring Marklin up as such, we were talking about the house we were building and I mentioned needing some hobby space, well he asked and when I said Marklin, he said "you better come and take a look at this" (be still thy beating heart).

Takes me into a room in their spacious 3-story house and there is a Marklin layout, clearly played with by children but with some nice items, a couple of which immediately caught my eye. His own children had no interest, their grandkids played with it but only half-heartedly and they were looking at having to move possibly in the next year or so and could not keep the layout. I expressed my interest and we finally did the deal for a few hundred $ which was the most I could afford, and I paid it off over several months before collecting it. I think in hindsight he would have sold it to me for whatever I could manage but I knew there were some nice items in there and wanted to be as fair as I could.

It took some maneuvering to get the layout out and once I got it home I really had to strip all the track off as the layout was not really able to be developed. Most of the Marklin items still had their original boxes and were largely in very good condition. One example was the long flat wagon with the 2 Mercedes Trucks (4515) which is a very nice item indeed and several other wagons of the same era.

But the icing on the cake were two Red Boxed starter sets. The first was set number 3205 from the late 50's which
has the 3005 Loco and 3 DB passenger wagons. This is a very nice set and worth a large chunk of the money paid alone.

But the one that stole my heart was the Swedish Set 3118 available only from '57 - '59. It's the 3018 Loco, 2 x 4020 passenger cars and 1 x 4121 baggage car and all in very good condition. I just LOVE this set. The loco and coaches are not very hard to find individually, although not cheap, but a complete boxed set only produced for 2 years is very hard to find.

And all the more special because of the friendship link that existed between my parents and them. I'm just surprised I had not found out earlier.

Hope this was of interest.

Cheers

Cookee

Edited by user 29 January 2011 00:24:50(UTC)  | Reason: Typo