Your comments address a prior misconception of supply and I don't disagree. However, we also need to consider the current level of demand.
Without meaning to be indelicate, I think an equally big if not bigger reason for the drop in price is that there are a lot fewer of our forefathers around (i.e., demand has fallen and will continue to fall).
Steven J. Serenska
i'm pretty sure people like you are vastly underestimating the impact the internet has had on collecting.
in college, the local Burger King was giving out Warner Bros cartoon glasses with the purchase of a Pepsi (1972). without too much trouble i managed to collect 8-10 different characters, but over the next few years of use/ breakage, i remember the day when i was just down to Bugs Bunny.
for about the next 10 - 12 years i occasionally dropped into some local antique shops and for a few $$ apiece, i managed to regain my complete set.
then came the internet/ eBay... i still have my character glass collection it took me more than a decade to piece together, but just for laughs, i recently visited eBay and did a search, what originally took me a dozen years of collecting can now be done online in a weekend.
before 1980 i had no idea Marx made tin lithographed trains or that Hafner even existed. i never played with these trains when i was a kid, but as an adult they fascinate me. and i'm almost sure i'm not unique in coming out of left field as a collector/ operator who has used the internet to obtain 99.9% of my collection.
maybe the internet has made more collections and attic finds available, but i believe there are even more people who have joined the ranks of collectors who likely wouldn't have if not for the internet.
cheers...gary
