I recently sold my Lionel el capitan add-on cars for double or triple what I paid for them when they were new in 6 years ago. But I can't get nearly what I paid for my Lionel PS2 hoppers new from the same time period.
Depends on the item, but some stuff is basically worthless. (If you can only get $10 for a piece of rolling stock, I'd say toss it rather than going through the bother of selling on the internet).