IN ANSWER TO THE “6464 THOUSAND THOUSAND DOLLAR DOLLAR QUESTION QUESTION”
By Bob Mintz

Boxcar Chart updated Winter 2012. See the updated 6464 Boxcar Chart .

Exactly how many 6464 Lionel boxcars are there?

This is not answered as easily as one would think. There were several versions of the 6464 series. Obviously, the most well known is the Postwar era which we will acknowledge as the period 1945-1969, a scant 25 years.

If you think about it, we seem to drool over the Postwar period, but the Modern Era is now into its' 33rd year!

There were 29 major different numbered items to this original series and 2 major color variations for a grand total of 31, excluding any variations of year made or built dates, prototypes, factory samples, body and door types, door coloring, slight body color differences, half or full serifs, additional or deleted text, placement and color of decals and words, decal types, and original body color.

What makes this whole series so confusing, is that sometimes the Lionel catalog number is specifically shown on the boxcar such as 6464-100 (both major color versions) 6464-125; 6464-150; 6464-225; 6464-250; 6464-275; 6464-300; 6464-325; 6464-350; 6464-375; 6464-400; 6464-425; 6464-450; 6464-475; 6464-500; 6464-510; 6464-515; 6464-525; 6464-650; 6464-700; 6464-725 (both major color versions); 6464-825 & 6464-900.

Other times, just the 6464 designation was shown and the car was "known" by an alias because the box specifically mentioned it. Examples are: 6464-1; 6464-25; 6464-50; 6464-175; 6464-75; & 6464-200.

The question I have is the definition of a 6464 car. Besides the Archive Series, there have been a series of 10 tri-pack remakes of the Postwar version 6464 cars. In addition to this, there were pieces "forgot about" within these 30 boxcars, #39296 representing 6464-250.

The "Archive Series" used both the well known 6464 designations if the car was a different color scheme than the original (6464-900), but other times if it was a non-issued prototype, then the designation was multiples of 4 (2 versions) or 7 (2 versions) zeros ("0000" & "0000000") or just "6464" (2 versions). There were several "new" 6464 designations such as "6464-550"; "6464-575"; "6464-600"; "6464-625"; & "6464-775".

The original Postwar 6464 series in the mid 1950s to 1969, obviously way before the advent of small computers for businesses, had, as was previously discussed, had 29 different model numbers.
This is not to be confused with the current SKU numbers scanned by barcode readers used today. SKU stands for Stock Keeping Unit and is a number associated with a product for inventory purposes. This number is used to identify an individual product. Because of this, each product must have a SKU, and each SKU must be unique.

The eras become a little fuzzy between the 1995 Lionel Trains Inc. (LTI) and the 1996 Limited Liability Corporation (LLC), as some production pieces may have been contracted for during the Kughn reign but were actually manufactured by Wellspring Associates.

One important addition is necessary to explain in the Modern Era though.

The 1996 Lionel Railroader Club (LRRC) boxcar (#29200) was supposed to be a 6464 boxcar modeled after the 1996 Toy Fair Boxcar (#19947), but the “9700” number of this item was never changed to “6464”, as was advertised in the LRRC Spring 1996 publication “Inside Track”. When notified by disgruntled collectors galore, Lionel LLC offered to either exchange it for the correct car (#19953), or make arrangements for the additional purchase of the originally promoted version.

I have also included the LCCA self named “19-2002” on site convention car version, custom decorated by Weaver Products, because the LCCA (L=12th letter in the alphabet + C=3rd + C=3rd + A=1st for those real rivet counter types) is a major train club; according to former LCCA President Al Otten (who courteously offered to loan his to me for this article), they did not want Richard Maddox finding out about the honor that they were to be bestowing upon him by having Lionel LLC do this piece; most collectors who did not attend this convention would be totally unaware of this item; the artwork was done by our favorite resident toy train artist Angela Trotta Thomas; it will be cataloged as such in the next Tom McComas guide; and most importantly, a plug for Dennis Clad who steered me to a fellow editor, LCCA “The Lion Roars” ironman Bill Schmeelk who was gracious enough to sell this piece to me.

Just to add a wee bit more intrigue into this article, several of us who belonged to the Lionel Century Club #1 discovered, for better or worse, that the outer shipping container of both the #29204 Century Club 1 Boxcar "1900-2000" and #29248 Century Club 1 F3 NYC Boxcar "2333" mentioned “6464” in the description. For arguments sake, I have not included either of these in the chart as I do not believe that either were ever intended to be 6464 cars in the strict sense and it was the shipper’s embellishment.

Because of the sheer volume of images and how it would adversely affect loading of this web page, we have decided not to have the smaller thumbnail images on this page. Just double-click on the model/SKU number for a full size photograph of each item.

A future article on the special 1967 12th TCA National Convention 6464 “brass door” cars will be published sometime down the pike.

Click Here for the complete 6464 Boxcar Chart with links to the Boxcar Photos, updated as necessary.