Job Lots: Buried Treasure or Piles of Junk?

I like buying what are referred to as either 'job lots' or simply 'lots' on fleaBay. There are definitely pros and cons to doing this but keeping the 'cons' down to a minimum helps ease the purchase. 

The first rule I follow is to look at the photos of the sale and see if there's at least one thing in the lot I can actually use and that hasn't come up for sale on its own. In this way the lots can sometimes be diamonds in the rough. Remember all those MPC Western buildings posted here on the blog this year? Most of those completed buildings were the result of several job lot purchases which had the individual parts (and a couple of those buildings were a real bear to find out in the wild). By buying lots I was able to acquire a complete MPC Western Town. Remember that MPC didn't put all those buildings together in one big playset. They were sold a building or two at a time either in playsets or header bag sets and they made changes to their line-up over the years resulting in some major variations.

Secondly: be prepared for a lot of sorting. Often times the lot is big and there's a ton of stuff to sort through. Not only that, but if you really want to know who made the unidentified/unmarked toys in the lot, be prepared to follow-up with research.

Third: Now that everything's sorted and you're comfortable with what you have, be prepared to get rid of the junk you don't want. Me personally, I don't care if I give things to the thrift shop, the neighborhood kids, sell (for cheap) on facebook, or just put it on fleaBay. Getting rid of excess has to happen, although I have to admit, this last part takes the longest for me to do LOL

Here's  a couple of examples that have cropped up this year. Enjoy! Opa Fritz

This lot of MPC ringhands provided me with all eight Pirate poses and all four Jungle poses in a variety of colors. 

There were a couple of poses in particular I was wanting from this group, plus I needed those accessories shown at the bottom of the photo

Notice those four brown walls to a cabin on the far left? This lot had the Payton cabin walls, while another lot had a roof! I won't post pics of all the MPC lots I've gotten this past year but this gives you a hint of how I hunt down parts

Here are several lots purchased over the past couple of years, waiting for me to get off my keester and sort through

I'll be following up on this post with some cool photos I took utilizing some of the stuff I found in these lots