Ebay Dreaming Marx Playsets
Bill Nevins sent us two listings from Ebay that we are classifying as Ebay dreaming. What we mean by that is the person selling the item feels he or she will get that price. To other people it is a pipe dream. We will let you decide.
The first one we have is Marx Fort Apache toys and collectibles. The Buy it Now price is $5,000.00.
Ebay seller list what the lot contained.
This is my husbands Marx toys with some cowboys and Indians
and Zorro toys. Dated from 1955 into the 60’s.
Grandsons played with them the last few years .
I tried to separate and count them all and there has to be close to 725 pieces.
Not shown but do have complete Zorro hacienda and soldiers and all Zorro figures. Also have fort Apache characters Rusty, dog and the Lt.
I will try and answer all question regarding collection .
Have more pictures will try and show them .
120 Calvary plus 120 Calvary horses
27. Riding Cowboys with 27 various type horses
35 Riding Indians. With 35 various type horses
13 yellow Indians
120 brown Indians
25 different yellow Indians
6 sorrow Mexican Calvary with horses
25 Zorro soldiers
6 cannon 6 caissons
8 different cannons
2 larger type cannons
1 flag
I Roy Rogers bunkhouse
1 Zorro hacienda with compound walls
1 Gatling gun, 4 watch turrets, corral fences, t pees ,
35/40 fort Apache walls and front gate ,mostly dark brown some butterscotch
10 various type wagons with drivers where needed
Horses for wagons that need them
Extra horses and figures not shown like Bucking horses
Figures from original 1955 screen gem fort Apache set and Zorro set
which this entire collection started from originally.
The seller was asked if they had the box. They replied they did not.
The second one is Marx Lone Ranger Ranch Fort Apache and much more! Massive Lot. This lot is priced at $1199.00 also a buy it now price. The seller’s description is a little less detailed that the previous one. Marx Lone Ranger Ranch Fort Apache and much more! Massive Lot of Marx and other types of Cowboys and Indians!!!!! Some of the pieces figures have been broken or damaged over the years. This lot is straight from the attic after many years! Please ask any questions and I will do my best to answer. I am not very familiar with these toys but can answer the best I can. I will be listing another huge lot like this but of Army, Space and Pirates from the same estate here shortly!!! Check back.
We wish the sellers good luck in their quest
I suppose that both auctions might be prefaced with the phrase “serious collectors only”. $5000 is kind of steep, but what really puts it into perspective for me is “$241 for 24 months”. To be fair, there is a lot more here than a single Fort Apache playset, although the description is somewhat confusing, as it lists items, then takes some back. Is it really overpriced? Probably. Still it wouldn’t be the first time someone paid an over-inflated price for something they really wanted or needed to complete a playset. I am guilty of this myself in a smaller way. I have paid inflated prices for a couple of things, because I needed them to fill out a playset.
I’m following these 2 items out of interest and I will not be all that surprised too find that someone wanted these things enough to pay that price.
Having said all that, I have to admit that if I dropped $5000 on toys in one go, no matter how tasty, my wife would break my legs,
I saw this seller ,no long ago sold for a high price something very common.
Either is lucky or find right buyers.
There some w money out there that no even write or read our furums.
They live in other world,x them buy this is a drink in a bar.
Both listings seem to have some interesting, desirable figures and pieces in them, but there are so many pieces to look at that it would seem to be a major operation to go through and do even a preliminary estimate of total value to determine whether the “buy it now” price has any relation to reality.
I suspect, especially for the $5,000.00 offering, that the price is wildly inflated. The second offering, with the boxes and that pile of character figures, appears to be more reasonable. But I don’t think even the lower-priced set would be any kind of great bargain.
Nevertheless, it would be fun going through such big piles of figures, if you had them right in front of you.
But if I had five thousand “fun dollars” available for an immediate toy soldier purchase, I think my preference would be to go to a show, and pick out exactly what I wanted from what I could actually pick up and look at.
I noticed this at the bottom, suspicious to me ! It states : Please note: offering at this time only Mexican soldiers calv/infr and horses and main character figures.
No longer offering Zorro hacienda and fort at this time with collection.
170 foot soldiers/defenders added as depicted in pictures. Mark commented again , Did they sell the hacienda separately after listing
?
And she need a better camera too!!:-)
Unless she find a rich blind buyer and not collector that most have all this already;with out a box and packs plus adding that been played by kid resently I doubt she will get any where near that.
But again.there some with MONEY out there
Now that the seller has taken out the Zorro hacienda and fort, she states that leaves “over 850 pieces”. At the “buy it now” price of $5000.00, that would equate to just over $6.00 per figure.
Of course, the Zorro and Ft. Apache character figures are all included, but the remaining 842 figures all appear to be quite common, and not really even all Marx.
It would be interesting to inquire of this seller the same question the Pawn Stars sometimes ask their customers: “How did you come up with this price?”
I suspect she has used the old Flea Market Dealer strategy of pricing things they really don’t know the value of: Ask for the moon and then see if there’s somebody out there uninformed enough to actually pay it.
The more I look at that $5000.00 collection, the thought occurs to me that I already have multiples of every figure in there (except for the Zorro character figures), and I wouldn’t even offer $1,000.00 for the lot.
Further (again, except for the character figures), I recognize that prices do vary, but almost every one of the figures which are shown can be found at shows, with a little bit of looking, for $1.00 each, especially when you are buying them in bags or groups.
When I see this kind of thing on eBay, I stay FAR, FAR AWAY from it!!
Guys; it is my imagination or she is reading our comments !!?
Look at the buy now price now!?
Yeah when she drops those zeros to $38 I might think about bidding!!
You can always make an offer
Maybe she has received some personal communication from a buyer in the know. I know I have contact sellers before about errors in either their item description or pricing. Some have heeded my advice – others ignored it, which led me to believe they were being deliberately misleading.
My “favorite” – mentioned here before is “Marx Toy Soldiers” – not. Or “Toy Soldiers – MARX?” usually not, just putting the “Marx” brand to get attention or snag a sucker.
Judging from this hopeful seller’s added comments, she’s now shooting for a “make an offer “price of $3800, which by my rough calculations is still about 4X more than what a realistic offer would be.
Things like this remind me of a seller on ebay a year or so ago who listed a Marx Captain Gallant Legionnaire blue standing rifle-salute figure as “original, vintage, hard to find” for $29.95.
I still think this current seller is the prototypical flea market dealer who asks an exhorbitantly unrealistic price on some item which they themselves know nothing about, hoping they’ll get lucky and find someone who will just amble up to their table and pay them pretty close to their asking price — or, in the alternative, some unsuspecting fool who doesn’t especially mind being parted from his money.
Along with “Marx”, “like Marx”, “Marx compatible” in the listings, other personal “favorites” are “VERY RARE”, “SCARCE” and “HARD TO FIND”!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Does anybody notice a LOT of damaged items for sale lately, such as the Rin Tin Tin Corporal Rusty w/o his rifle? (I KNOW they can be converted, but still….)
And my personal favorite: “Other than the missing, broken-off sword, the figure is in excellent condition.”
Incidently, on that big $5000.00 lot marked “Marx Fort Apache Figures and Collectibles”, I notice quite a few MPC/Processed Plastic items.
And unfortunately, since this poor woman now has such an unrealistic price embedded in her mind, she’ll probably never be induced to part with her late husband’s toy soldiers for anything approaching a realistic wholesale price, to someone in her NYC neighborhood, like the Stengels, who would then break up the collection and dispose of it in smaller increments for a modest profit at shows.
Interesting she have another unrealistic not toy related listing too.Aperantly some “ancient” coins.Well not quite.Did she ever did a bit of research before listing!? 🙂
Truly I wish her the best.
Good luck!
For the current $3800 “Buy It Now” price, one should be able to get a MIB Marx Gunsmoke Playset with money left over. Or, you can buy this pile of junk.
Inflated prices aside, at least this lady is selling mostly genuine Marx figures. My eBay favorites are the endless lots of 1990s & 2000s dollar store Airfix knockoffs advertised as “Vintage Marx!” I remember the first time I saw one of those, I sent the seller a message telling them what the figures actually were. He or she sent me an angry, indignant reply about how these figures were their father’s collection from the 1950s and they had had them appraised by a “professional toy soldier collector” and he ought to know more about them than me! They were asking $50 for a 5-10 year old opened bag of China made Airfix western clones. Of course, nobody bid.
Gotta laugh!! Bill Hamilton (RIP) used to say “the bottom feeders call ANYTHING made of plastic “Marx” and think it’s worth a fortune!!!!”
Some times I copy another eBay seller link and send to these sellers so they realize their price mistake. Now there are some that are very persistent.
I still follow one that has an item listed x over two years same price and is a dam Chinese 90′ product. I bet it is waiting to get to the vintage year in 20 plus more year listed.
If she gets her prices for her figures I think I’m going to offer up “VINTAGE PLASTIC SPRUES – MARX, Airfix, HaT, MARX, MpC, MARX, figures and accessories used to be on. RARE, HARD TO FIND…
Do you think I could get $100 for them?
Contact her and ask for her buyer!!!if she got the one, ever!!
…and she took another advise and went down gain in price!!!
Unfortunately, I still don’t even see $2500.00, even if she sold everything one piece at a time.
And when most people buy a big quantity (like this would be) from a seller, all at one time, they expect a “quantity discount”, rather than having to pay the individual per figure retail price.
Here’s another “interesting” auction. What am I missing??
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Timpo-New-Zealand-Cowboy-Legs-Orange-Red-Brown-Gunbelts-Wild-West-/331720219600?hash=item4d3c10dbd0:g:0vwAAOSwv-NWWw4M
Andy
What you are missing is that the Timpo collectors are fanatic for color variations. There are colors that were not in wide distribution. Timpo had some of their figures made in New Zealand which did some unusual colors that were not done in Europe. Various collectors/dealers are aware of this unique interest. The dealer of this Ebay offer is from Australia and he is aware of this interest.
Holly!!!!!!!,
Ok you know; I think we should create a separate forum for eBay insanity.
This one is very ,very interesting. Apparently the seller had take his precious time to describe the colors of the half death cowboy part in case no body can decipher the colors from the picture. May be orange/red pants are hard to find in Australia!?
Andy you won the record of eBay finding jokes!!
and he has more half body precious pricy parts too !!
I’m wonder how come are buyers x these price as I see he had sale some nuts parts from $30 to 70 so far in his rating feedbacks.
Ok like I said before ,there are some buyers out there that these are drink bar prices.
WOW!!!Crazy world and Hobby
Used to be, Erwin, stuff like this – broken, chewed, etc. – got thrown out. Now people list them on eBay for 200% of MINT prices. I doubt anyone would buy most of this stuff, by why pay money to list it? We wonder what’s wrong with the hobby….
Erwin,
By your comments I take it that you are not familiar with the German Timpo collectors obsession with colour variations, it was their interest that created the high prices PAID, not just offered, for unusual coloured parts. At one point a mounted Roman Standard bearer could easily go for £ 600.00 UKP !! and he only had a different torso and plug in standard.
In its’ history Timpo had many undocumented colour choices, which I think were made totally due to business practices to finish off an order, where a low run of a plastic colour could be substituted for a colour which was still available on the machines, example : a light blue cowboy torso that normally has a black waistcoat gets a white one therefore creating a rarity.
There are unbelievable numbers of variations in actual colours and perceived colour differences.
The legs offered here would normally have black gun belt.
Think of Timpo collectors in Germany as the equivalent of Marx collectors in the USA.
The Medieval Knights and Vikings I think have the greatest number of variations.
So YES! a crazy hobby but if they can afford it what’s the problem. Ebay doesn’t care what an item is listed at as long as they get their cut 🙂
Les
Erwin and many Americans are not aware of the crazy prices Timpo can gathered. I have seen it over the years and have sold some Timpo figures for silly prices. I have seen some other country’s figures go for crazy prices.
Les.I sold two Roman standard x $480.00
No long ago to a german.I mayself got a collection of 182 romand timpo that I bough in 2003 from Steve Weston at chicago show.In fact were more and I sold about 45 plus two chariot at wich point I recover all spend plus.
I’m aware of prices x long.
I sold one rebel cavalry to an Aussie back in 2013 x insane price.Because white globes are crazy x then.
That is why I said.there still some w deep pocket still out there in following comment
I do not doubt how pricy could go a figure.
Still insanity is insanity.
The seller had sold few half part x $30/70 ,no more.This is listed way more.Let see.
I think human should respect their money.
These are not dinosaur.
That was my point.that all! 🙂
I was never really crazy about the Timpo Swoppets back in the day – before I started painting my figures – but I bought some for my brothers when I was stationed in Germany. They didn’t have Timpo figures around where they lived. Looking at the prices I see them go for today, I wish I’d invested at least half my pay in the little guys. I think I’d make a killing, even at rational prices.
And ebay this morning sent me a new notice that the $5,000 “buy it now” price (on this thread’s original topic) has once again been lowered —- this time from $2500 to $2200.
In my humble opinion, this represents at least a partial victory over those ebay sellers who start out asking wildly ridiculous prices.
But it won’t be a total victory until this seller comes face to face with the ugly truth, which is this: The more I look at the photos of what’s being offered, the less I am able to see anything which would total more than $500.00 max for the whole collection. The collection looks massive at first blush, but when you start breaking down individual prices of common tin litho, butterscotch Indians, and Marx galloping horses, the massive value is just not there.
So I predict this poor woman (a surviving spouse of a toy soldier collector) will never get anywhere near her asking price, unless she accidently encounters a wealthy toy soldier collector who shops exclusively on ebay and who has never in his life been to an actual toy soldier show, to see what this stuff can really sell for these days.
As I look back at the photos of the collection, I think I may have undervalued the retail value of the collection at just $500.00. But remember that when you’re asking somebody to buy an entire collection all at one time, which will always include figures and things you aren’t really interested in, it’s expected that there will be a discount from the normal retail price per piece.
So I think if someone like MarxMan Stengel was purchasing this collection to break down and sell it retail in smaller groups, he would probably be willing to pay a $500.00 wholesale price for the entire collection. The woman selling this would than have a lumpsum cash payment in hand, and Marxman would then have the problem of reselling all of it after paying all the transportation costs and hotel fees of getting it to Chicago and to other shows. Don’t forget, a few nights at the Schaumburg Hyatt-Regency gets to be pretty expensive, and tends to take a big bite out of any profits you might make at the show.
Of course, a person might make more money by dividing up the collection into smaller, more manageable lots which could be sold individually on ebay. This would probably be more profitable than going the show route. But the amount of time doing that, and shipping all those individual packages, and paying ebay and paypal their shares, isn’t beanbag either.