My favorite pieces of Lionel scale rolling stock are PS-1 boxcars, diecast offset hoppers, and diecast 3-bay hoppers. The current releases of them have really gone up in price and down in content (namely, the truck quality is way down as beaten to death on here, admittedly, by me and others). As I accumulated them gently used or NOS, I justified paying prices near what they sold for new in some (but not all) cases because the previous releases are cut from the exact same tooling and are much nicer since they were made before the trucks were cheapened.
I’m not trying to derail the thread, but instead provide a specific example of what might be driving prices of older items up: some of it is better than the new stuff and, as a result, can be justified at high prices that approach new stuff.
Just my $0.02 and maybe not worth $0.02.
