Jack,
you mentioned one run of Morton Salt cars being paid in full by a dealer. EBay experience shows that only one Morton Salt car is considered a collectable. One must assume that it is this car (Cimmaron). Who paid for the remaining production runs of the brandname as they were still being produced up to cessation of production in 2006? First run may have been popular, but subsequent runs did not achieve the same level of success. There are so many Campbells Soup cars on the market today that one wonders who actually purchased them in the first instance. One eBay seller several years ago was selling Campbells Soup cars that were purchased in truck load lots at a heavily discounted price. I wonder who wore the loss on that lot? Depot G is another example. They had the Wilson Bros Circus sets produced and in today’s market you basically cannot give them away. The sound-equipped loco, the Water Car and the Caterpillar flatcar are the only items eagerly sought after. The rest are just ignored. Of course Depot G would have paid up front for the production run, but in hindsight, such a waste of production. Their Coors cars are still sought after so they did some things right.
When the Europeans do their licenced production runs, typically around 250 units is considered sufficient. How come American production runs are considerably more, in the region of 1500 - upwards? The potential market is about the same size on both continents. Are some more gullible than others?
On a brighter note I did pick up some of the illfated 'lolly' licenced boxcars and cabeese and will (and have commenced) repainting the boxcars into Rio Grande cars and did strip the cabeese and retained the desireable ball-bearing wheelsets and metal wheels and onsold the basic car with plastic wheels. I was actually one of the first on Ebay to do this as I saw the value of these items in their parts value. Similarly, the American (Athearn?) produced cigar cars for Model Power. I saw the potential in them by removing the metal wheels and onselling the car with plastic wheels. It was a win/win situation as consumers got the car much cheaper and I got the metal wheels and in some instances I sold the cars minus the grab rail accessory sets as well (giving me a surplus of spares). The cars do paint up nicely in real roadnames. Licenced cars do I suppose give the consumer a chance to get a car at a heavily discounted price and for those skilled at it, the opportunity to repaint to something else. It is obvious that there is no intrinsic collector value in these cars, as the market was saturated, well in excess of its capacity, on initial release.
