I have alot of of 50's & 60's Blue Box kits in my room. All unbuilt and most parts still left in the plastic. Anyone know how much money those kits would fetch today??? Ship it on the Frisco!!! Murphy Jenkins
This is Sad indeed. I never heard of Athearn till I joined a train club. Now the first thing I look for is Athearn when I am in the market to buy. I guess they will still surface every now and then on Ebay. Who knows. I sure will be keeping my eyes open for them as I am able to.
A month or 2 ago I saw a huge lot of BB kits. More than 10 locos and I would say 50+ cars. I searched Athearn BB on ebay and came up with only a bay window caboose, but searched athearn blue box and came up with 41 results. http://shop.ebay.com/i.html?_nkw=Athearn+blue+box+&_cqr=true&_nkwusc=Athearn+blur+box&_rdc=1
Another dumb question from me. What is the difference in a blue box and a yellow box? They have the same picture on the top? (head on shot of steamer)
A yellow box indicates that the kit was made in the 1950's up until the '60's when the box color was changed to blue. As far as I can tell, this didn't correspond to any changes in the kits themselves, although they have used different trucks and couplers at times. I have a yellow box kit that has a Santa Fe streamliner in the Warbonnet scheme on the box. I also have a yellow box kit that has the same head on image of a steam engine that is common to the blue boxes. Even earlier boxes have a monochromatic drawing on them, though I've forgotten what the subject was. Rich
Thanks, Rich, the few that I have are all yellow. Must have had some blue box as well. Must have sold or traded for "O" scale stuff in the 70's.(keeping the stuff that I had painted towards Frisco) Amazing how well the boxes have held up. That means they are about 50 years old.
Yeah. Some of those models I mentioned are HO scale YELLOW BOX. HO scale was very alive in the 50's. I have some HO suff dating back to the 40's so it been around a long while. Ship it on the Frisco!!! Murphy Millican
I think Horizon Hobby is making a BIG mistake by scrapping the Athearn kits. They (Horizon) are so darn focused on the RC crowd and the ready to sell to, I mean "Ready to Run" railroad modeler that they are forgetting about the "little guy" and the thrill of building kits for yourself that made model railroad a popular hobby to start with. Sad... Very sad. Shame on Horizon.
I wouldn't worry about the "blue boxes" disappearing for a while yet. There are bushels of 'em at every train show. Some of those same vendors are still bringing the same blue boxes (Along with the same Tyco diesel shells and rusty Lionel track) to every show. Tom
