The Perfect Storm? More like the Mediocre Storm!

If you remember The Perfect Storm, it didn’t end very well for the heroes. George Clooney and Mark Wahlberg went on to create classics such as The Descendants and The Departed while their on-screen alter egos – Captain Billy Thyne and Bobby Shatford - were swallowed in a monstrous tidal wave never to be seen again. So how did I fare with my Lego selling experience in September? Was the “perfect storm” of Lego giveaways successful, or was it a disaster?

My Original Proposal

On Sunday, September 1st I will walk into the Lego Store in Downtown Disney with $102. With this $102 I will get 1 x Funhouse Escape (6857), 5 x Star Wars Battlepack (probably 75000...but might change my mind depending on qty available), 1 x VW polybag and 1 x Clone Lieutenant polybag.

I get a 10% discount at the Lego Store in DD due to my Disney annual pass. So 64.99 + 39.99 x 10% off x 8% tax rate comes out to $102.

I will sell the minifigs and Funhouse separately on Ebay, with short listings at first, maybe 1 day to take advantage of Labor Day. I will reconfigure my battlepacks to cater to the army builders (ie 10 Droidekas in a lot) and sell them all off as well. I will be one of the first VW polybags listed on Ebay as I will have both of those listed on Sunday morning, ending on Monday and shipped (hopefully) on Tuesday.

When I sell enough to earn another $102 in Paypal I will repeat the process as many times as I can during the month of September. Hopefully earning enough to where I have multiple Funhouses for sale at the same time.

Uh-Oh

So as many of you know, this is not how it went down. The Lego Store did NOT give both polybags to customers who qualified for them (while S@H did). This threw a large wrench into my plan, as I now I would have to choose: 10% discount or second poly bag?
There was a second problem I “ran” into. The Disney Marathon was taking place on Sunday, September 1st – delaying my purchase by one day. At the time this seemed like a monumental set back, but really had no effect either way on my overall outcome. So I was forced to actually make my starting purchase on Monday. I was staying at the Hotel there with my girlfriend for a nice weekend getaway, so no extra trips were required. I was also able to pick up a couple of crawlers while I was there, flipping one for a nice $150 profit in my pocket!!!
The Battlepacks also were not in stock, so I had to make a last second adjustment and went with 2 Corporate Alliance Tank Droids and 1 Mandalorian Speeder instead.

The Experience

Sales were okay. There were a few things that sold quickly (VW Polybags) and a few that just languished (thank you Robot Darth Maul).
I was able to turn my inventory about 3 times. After selling through my initial purchase I ended up with $130.46 (profit of about $28). The second wave of sales was actually done through S@H, and I bought 3 of the CATD’s and didn’t get another Mandalorian Speeder. The second round was more successful, because I also added a Golden Dragon from the Ninjago line. I bought this through TRU, surprisingly, and was able to get the free Sea Plane polybag. After this round I had $172.70 in my pocket (profit of about $70). Round three was the same as round two…but seemed like things took longer to sell. I was able to buy a second Golden Dragon and ended up with $203.35. I also had about $14 leftover that was unspent, and a Harley Quinn minifigure, and two of the CATD’s that are still unsold. My total time spent was about 6-8 hours of work. For $100. That’s about $12-$15 per hour of work. Plus a few dollars for gasoline (once to Downtown Disney, then twice to TRU, but it’s on my way home from work).

Conclusions

It was a lot of work. I spent time packaging and shipping, listing and re-listing. Also had to deal with people that wanted their items sooner (sorry buddy…but regular shipping won’t get that BatCycle to you in 48 hours for your kid’s birthday). Was it worth the trouble? Hard to say. I took what I thought was the most opportune time to part out sets and still only made about $100. The irony of this was that I made one and a half times that in about 12 minutes of work selling the 41999 Crawler. I guess the lesson here is that I probably won’t be parting out much more, as for me, it was too time intensive for the return that I got. If you are doing this, I wish you well and hope that you have better luck then I do!
So what set am I going to buy with my $203? Well, I am going to use my 10% discount, and I earned 292 VIP points…so that’s worth $14. I am just shy of being able to get an Ewok Village…probably get an R2-D2 and another Funhouse and call it a day.
Now…that Christmas Set doubled up with the Star Wars Polybag….maybe THAT’s the real PERFECT STORM!!!!