Earle Baldwin wrote:MBI's Penn Central book recently went out of print and copies already seem to have dried up. I'm fortunate to have purchased the book as it's very well done. I believe the Amtrak, Conrail and New Haven volumes in MBI's "Railroad Color History" series have been withdrawn from print as well. It certainly doesn't take long for prices to go up.
I was recently speaking with some fellow train people who were bemoaning the fact modern era production models don't hold or appreciate in value like older equipment. I told them to start buying books instead. It seems once a well done book goes out of print, there's a fan of that road, era or locomotive who will pay big bucks for it. Over the years, I've sold or traded any number of books I wished I had kept once I saw their prices in the secondary market.
I totally agree with this one. The MBI books are good and worth owning and keeping. I also agree that the value of good
books increases as does interest often and sometimes out of print books can bring in big bucks. I remember the New
Haven event last year when I had a few out of print books and sold some for a pretty good buck. In order to be valuable
a book has to be accurate (quite a few of them are not), has to be about an interesting topic and well done and finally
somebody or many somebodies have to be interested in owning them.
I have sold more out of print books than I have bought but I have bought a few over the years and a couple of them I paid
pretty big bucks for too.
I have no interest in model or toy trains but it would seem to me that paper (books, timetables etc) would increase in
value over the years far more than models would.
Whether you liked the Penn Central or not, it was an interesting period and an interesting history and more may get
printed and published on this topic in the coming period. A lot of interesting things happened in those eight years.
Noel Weaver
