Which Greenbergs guides would I need to look for with information of Lionel trains and accessories for thee years 1945-1991?
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1945-91 for 3 years. Don't know what you are saying here.
eddie g posted:1945-91 for 3 years. Don't know what you are saying here.
Read his post again. He didn't type "three", he typed "thee". I bet he meant to type "these years".
Sorry, too many Es. What I am looking for is one of Greenberg's guides that will cover Lionel trains and accessories from 1945 to the nineties. I arbitrarily picked 1991 as that is when I left "O" gauge.
I think I saw one that covered 1945-1997 on Amazon, but cannot find it again.
You can get the new price guide from Greenberg's and it will have those years in it along with the current prices for them today. The price guide from 1991 might be out of circulation and very difficult to find.
Lee Fritz
Thanks Lee. Would this guide also include operating accessories ?
I found this one, but it doesn't indicate accessories.
Dan Padova posted:Thanks Lee. Would this guide also include operating accessories ?
Dan,
It would include only the accessories for Lionel if you have the Lionel version of the guide. Or if you have the American Flyer version it will include only A.F. accessories. Special tracks and switches might be listed by part number or in post war by switch number; like 022 or 1122, could even be at the end of the chapter for post war items.
Lee Fritz
If you just want the years an item was made and an estimate of the price, a pocket price guide has everything…trains, accessories, transformers, track from 1901 to the year it was published.
There are also several Greenberg’s guides with more details and photos for 1945 to 1969. One volume for trains, one volume for accessories, etc.
Dan Padova posted:I found this one, but it doesn't indicate accessories.
Dan:
Yes, that 2016 pocket price guide does LIST accessories. But it sounds like you may be looking for more than just a list. The pocket price guides do not have photographs and have very minimal descriptions of each item. Just to clear up any possible confusion, there are two distinct types of Greenberg Guides to Lionel trains: the pocket-page sized price guides like the 2016 edition in the link you posted; and the full-page guide books. The full-page guides do have many photographs and often quite detailed descriptions of the items including variations.
The Greenberg pocket price guides contain separate sections for pre-war, post-war and the modern era. In those guides items are listed by catalog number within each era. So in the postwar section you will find all of the postwar accessories listed by catalog number regardless of what year they were made intermixed with listings of engines, cars, track and transformers. Those price guides are updated annually but they do not contain photographs of the items listed and only very minimal descriptions. But they do cover all of the years in which you said you were interested.
The full-page guides started to come out in the 1970’s but changed focus over the years. The earliest Greenberg complete guide for Lionel postwar I have came out in 1979 and also included the modern era trains made by MPC/Fundimensions from 1970 to 1979. That book includes rolling stock as well as accessories. But I believe that all later versions were strictly post-war or strictly modern era and they also became more specific by covering only a segment of the total cataloged production. For example there is a 1990 Volume I edition that covers just post-war motive power and rolling stock and another book that covers only sets. Chances are there is a corresponding accessory book for that period, but I don’t have it. I also never bought any of the modern-era only guide books and I’m not sure how many different versions of those that they produced. Possibly there is a modern-era Lionel book that covers everything made through 1991. It would be helpful to have a list of all of the different Greenberg guides that were published but I don’t know if such a list exists. But obviously the prices in any of those books represent the author’s opinion of the values in the year they were published so they are very much out-of-date.
So if you want photos and detailed descriptions of everything made by Lionel from 1945 through 1991 you would need at least one postwar book and possibly only one modern era book if one exists and you could find them. You may be able to find them at York. It’s a shame there’s no free site on the internet to view all of the pages in past Lionel catalogs like there is for American Flyer.
HTH,
Bill
