Lionel O gauge Trains were expensive in the middle 1950s

It took me so long to accumulate $29.95 (the cost of a Santa Fe AB 027 set) by saving Christmas and Birthday money that by the time I saved that amount, and arrived at Madison Hardware, after a LIRR trip from Greenport, to make the big purchase, the price had gone up to $34.95.  Say what you will about Lou and Carl, and their reputation for cold business practices, that day the brothers relented and charged me $29.95.  I guess the two old softies saw the tears about to well up, and decided that it would be bad for business for a 9-year old to start bawling in their store.

33 years later, when I was their occasional telephone repairman and steady customer, I reminded them of that day. They didn't remember, but it actually brought tears to THEIR eyes when I told them the story. Then Lou snarled "You owe me five bucks, kid."

BTW, at the time of the Santa Fe purchase, my Mom's weekly salary was $40.

This gets discussed now and then. Lionel trains have always been expensive, and were out of reach for most middle-class families in the 50s, and the 60s, too. It may have been a well-known name, but there were far more kids who dreamed of them than ever had them.

My train (671 freight set) were bought on after Christmas sale of 50% and also a 15% employee discount.  Still they were very expensive.  The 1948 ZW box was marked 29.95.  Luckily the cheaper items were already gone, so we got nice stuff.   My dad never had much growing up in the depression and wanted to make sure his two boys had a train ( my older brother was 2 months old and wasn't thought of yet).  I think they were really for my dad, with us as a justification. 

I think a coke was a nickel or less, so the ZW was equivalent to 419 bottles of coke?

I received Lionel freight set 2507 in 1958 with a ZW........New Haven F3 with 5 freight cars. Years later I discovered the Macy’s tags.......$39.95 for the set (List $65) and $21.95 for the transformer (List $39.95).........huge amounts of money in those days! I still have it all, except for the set box which disintegrated long ago.

I know it was a stretch for my parents and am eternally grateful for their sacrifice.

Peter

I received a Scout set for Christmas when I was about 5. When I received the flat car with airplane some years later, I noticed the coupler difference. Ah, but the Lionel catalog listed conversion couplers at $.50 each! My spendable allowance then was $.30 a week. Needing 7 couplers, I had to save for 12 weeks. Taught me discipline and how to check impulse buying.

Terry

The box from my #60 Tolley is stamped $5.99. The box from my Plasticville Suburban Station is marked $.99.

Just for the sake of some hard numbers re: inflation -- inflation multiplier from date to March 2021:

1950 11.2

1955 9.9

1960 9.0

Arguably inflation is only one means of comparing - and not a perfect one at that, since for things like Lionel trains, technologies etc. have changed so what you get now for, say, $400 is different than what you got for $40 in the mid-fifties.  I think simple inflation measures are probably better for things like a loaf of bread or quart of milk... (though for some things like milk, there is the issue of non-market pricing).

Even during the Pre War era. A Std Gauge State Set coat $100.00 after the 1929 crash and if you look at the old catalogs a set that sold for $5.50 was over a week pay for some people if you were fortunate to have a job.

Not many working class folks could afford a Lionel standard gauge state or Blue Comet set in those days. :-(

Model trains were expensive in the 1950s. That is one reason my brother and I got a Marx 999 freight set rather than a Lionel set.  It is the same reason my kids got post war used trains for our Christmas train layout.

But how much is your expensive 1950s TV, refrigerator,etc. worth now?  If you kept your 1950s trains in good shape they will probably bring back a higher percentage of their cost now that other 1950s stuff.

Charlie

My Dad got me the 1467 freight set from 1951.   I think he paid $52.00.  He didn’t tell Mom.   She would have killed him!   (Figuratively speaking)

I agree with artyoung about the discounts. I was born in 1946 and my dad was the town's  police dept "master mechanic"-the person in charge of police vehicles maintance, street signs, yellow curb painting,etc. So I have to believe that he did lots of "favors" for lots of folks. The local gun store-( Toblers-in Union City NJ) was the store which sold the police their service revolvers-and they sold Lionel trains during the holidays. Besides likely giving my dad a break on Christmas items, my dad would take me to Toblers gun shop a few days after Christmas to pick out a few trains for my upcoming birthday, etc. Otherwise I doubt that my family could have afforded them, even with my dad's two jobs. 

Back then FAIR TRADE LAWS were agreements between manufacturers and their retailers agreeing not to discount the items.  In the early 1960's, some merchants began to test the enforceability of these laws and for the most part they were invalidated.  For some reason they still apply to Levis jeans and Maytag appliances - if you see an appliance store having a sale, the fine print always excludes Maytag.  A ZW transformer was $40 and when I was a kid in the mid-60's my parents gave me a choice for my birthday of either a party or a generous $15 gift from them.  Under that rationale, I could have had 3/8ths of a ZW with nothing left over for track or trains.  Yes, Lionel trains were expensive relative to other toys and would not be affordable for many.  I was lucky in that my grandparents were visiting a relative in New York who had two daughters and a Lionel setup including a 736 Berkshire and a ZW.  He created the Phil Silvers "Bilko" show and had probably written a joke with a play on the word "Lionel" and was given the trains by Lionel's P.R. firm.  My mom once joked that when he needed a vacuum cleaner, he made a President Hoover joke in a script and promptly received a new appliance.  His girls couldn't care less about the trains and the relative took note when my grandmother mentioned that I would love to play with them.  The day they were leaving, he presented the trains to them saying that if they were willing to lug them back to Los Angeles, then he was happily giving them to someone who would appreciate them.  I did, I do and still have them.

Model trains have ALWAYS been expensive... prices can be up/down in the secondary market over time, but since the "pandemic" hit, market prices seem to be generally UP.  Over the decades, model railroading has taken good chunks of money to seriously indulge in it.

Plus, with the current run on lumber, building/revising a layout is getting very expensive. Good quality (A/C) plywood that I purchased back in '19 for $40 a sheet has more than doubled, some places charging over $100 for the same sheet.

Housing starts are beginning to suffer. I know of one person that had to cancel their plans to build a new home because of the doubling+ of lumber prices.

SO... YES... model trains (and now the building supplies needed) WERE and ARE expensive.

Just the facts, M'am, just the facts.

Andre

My parents bought me a really great Lionel Super-O starter set in the early 1960s.   I think they said they paid nearly $100 for it.   This included a big locomotive, whistle tender, and the Star-Trek like Transformer.

But, I could never afford to expand it, not even one bit.  The cost of a single electric turn-out was, I think, around $20, back when minimum wage was $1.50 an hour.  I think the manual switches were around $12.00.     

Impossible for me as a small child to add onto the layout.   And, what kid would want to wait a whole year until Christmas, and try to ask for a pair of switches at around $40?    Back then, this would have been all you got for Christmas.

So, it remained a once a year, circle around the Christmas tree,  item, and never became an interesting growing hobby for me.

I have read that there was a serious recession in the mid-1950s, so I can't imagine lots of middle class folks spending serious money on train sets back then.

Mannyrock

Growing up we (my brothers and I) couldn't even think about getting Lionel trains.  There simply was not a lot of money in my house in the 1960's

I was the youngest and thus followed the lead of 3 older brothers who got into HO gauge and together we built an expansive 8 ft. x 12 ft. HO layout, a lot of track, not many trains, no remote switches, not much scenery or buildings. cheap cheap cheap.

But somehow I knew the real treasure was in a crate packed away in the basement, which were my dad's trains from when he was a boy in the 1930's.  We were never allowed to play with them.  I now have those trains, an Ives passenger set and a Lionel Flying Yankee Set.  I am also fortunate  enough to have the disposable income to put into hobbies so my children (all grown now) could see the fun of Lionel when they were growing up. 

Yes they are expensive, by the standards of any decade, but the joy they bring is worth it!

I had Gilbert Flyer as a lad in the early 1950's and when I "just had to have" the beautiful new A-B-A five-passenger car North Coast Limited which retailed for then $80 USD, our neighbor who worked as the switchboard operator at the Gilbert Hall of Science in NYC generously got the set for us with her 40% employee discount! $48 dollars was a more manageable amount for my family, albeit still expensive. As an adult, I very much appreciate all the sacrifices my family made for my sister and myself to give us a happy childhood! My wife and I both tried to pay this forward with our own three children.

Yes, Lionel trains weren't cheap, and many of our parents had to sacrifice to buy them for us, but think of the return they got on their investment:

1. Many of us still have our childhood trains running like new 60 or 70 years later. Name another toy that was that durable.

2. Those trains kept us busy for hours on end. I can't think of any other toy that I played with for as many hours as my trains. The only thing remotely close was my Erector set.

3. Those trains taught us a lot. We learned basic electricity and wiring, the patience to figure things out when something went wrong, the small-motor skills and imagination needed to build scenery and do the other things needed to convert a 4x8 piece of plywood into a model-railroad empire.

4. We learned to save and make a budget to acquire more trains or supplies.  Some of us got paper routes so we could earn the money to expand our layouts.

My parents started getting the message when I was 12 or 13 and started fixing things around the house with the skills I had learned from playing with my trains. They realized that the trains more than something to keep me busy and out of trouble.

Joe: Well stated! :-)

Great post. A lot of valuable information here. Great memories too.