The first 3444 accessory I bought was back in 2005-ish. I paid $350 for it. It was factory sealed. I eventually opened it. For context, I bought a sealed 3228 for $350, too. I had bought mostly all sealed items. I had invested around $5,000 on that collection.
Best I remember I had a sealed 3201, 3204, 3209, 3210,
3214, 3219, and 3228. I had every trailer sealed on card. I had 3901, 3902, 3903, 3904, 3909, 3910,
3911, 3912, 3913, 3935, 3939, 3951, 3952, 3953, 3954, 3955, and 3956.
And just about every accessory sealed, except the Exxon Garage. Those were really hard to come across. And all that cost $5,000 or so.
I was somewhat bummed because the Stompers, even back then, were super rare, and wanting a full sealed collection I never saw any during the 6 years I was collecting then. It felt like half-assing the whole thing if I could only get a partial full collection.
That's why this time collecting I didn't try to buy sealed items exclusively. Things like the trailers and accessories are super easy to get sealed. I can't even remember all the sealed stuff I did buy, I had 4 or 5 of the same trailers, and I think at peak I had 72 or so sealed ones. Same with accessories, I bought so many I can't remember all of them. I had every single one, and dupes of most. I opened so many to fix sets. I was kind of dismayed at the extreme lack of sealed sets. As I said before, this collection I put more than $40,000 into it.
There is that one auction with 88 items for $15,000. I think that's super overpriced, being an average of like $170 per item. The only real gem is the full set of carded Stompers.
ebay.us
