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Reply to "Atlas Billboard Reefers, Who has all of them?"

Originally Posted by Southwest Hiawatha:

To have all, or anywhere near all, the Atlas reefers would require an enormous investment and a very large display space. A friend of mine used to have them all, but he stopped buying several years ago and sold most of the ones he had. It was just too overwhelming to keep up. 

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And therein is the biggest hiccup regarding Atlas-O's reefer madness strategy and the subsequent demise of the "collecting them all" goal.  Don't get me wrong, they're still the nicest detailed reefers out there for those who demand scale fidelity.  But we all have our limits these days... and it quickly became too harsh a reality that "collecting them all" wasn't gonna happen. 

 

When the original set of 40' reefers was first announced and delivered, many of us thought these cars were gonna be the modern-day 6464's in terms of collectibles.  But then Atlas-O did some key things that pretty much gave lots of reefer enthusiasts second thoughts... and essentially sealed the fate of "reefer madness" as we once knew it:

 

  • After the first series of reefers had well-defined, limited edition runs... Atlas-O over-produced several subsequent series of reefers.  Heck even today, some dealers still have those cars from over 5-7 years ago and can't give them away.
  • Some reefers were only available through lesser-well-known clubs who didn't promote their special-run productions to the masses.  This was particularly true with a few of the Canadian special-runs that didn't have the greatest visibility in the US during the relatively small window for pre-ordering cars that had extremely small production runs.  In other words, it was too easy to miss out on these gems.
  • Atlas-O eventually "re-issued" the initial set of 40' reefers -- essentially undermining the collectible value of owning those early reefers.  Very poor move, IMHO.
  • Even to this day, Atlas-O continues to offer yet more reefers... So there is essentially no FINITE collection of these to be had.  Whereas the post-war 6464 boxcars had a reasonable number of 30 (or so) cars to "collect", the exact opposite is true for the Atlas-0 reefers. 

 

Simply stated, there are just TOO MANY to collect.  And reefer enthusiasts like myself decide a long time ago, "The heck with it".  Now when a new reefer announcement happens, I barely even give it a second glance.  And as if having too many 40' reefers wasn't bad enough, Atlas-O added an entire line of 36' reefers alongside the 40' models.  Too much of a good thing, I guess...

 

I recently sold many of the 36' reefers I purchased, and probably will list a few more when I do another round of "collection thinning" very shortly.  I have decided to keep the 40' reefers on my roster, simply because you just can't beat them when you need a wonderfully long and colorful consist behind articulated steamers or double-headed steam locomotive configurations.  They're absolutely tops for those situations!!! 

 

But trying to collect them ALL in this day and age when an operators-culture tends to dominate our hobby???  Forgettabouddit!!!

 

David

Last edited by Rocky Mountaineer

OGR Publishing, Inc., 1310 Eastside Centre Ct, Suite 6, Mountain Home, AR 72653
800-980-OGRR (6477)
www.ogaugerr.com

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