Lego Dino Defense HQ 5887 - A Hunt for Profit

For my next visual review/investment article, I am doing one of my favorite sets (I finally got one to open!) 5887 Dino Defense HQ. Now I am going to warn you before hand, I am a mega dinosaur fan and one of my favorite movies of all time is Jurassic Park. So this article has no less than 257 references to the movie. So I would suggest you watch it, maybe several times, before reading this article.

Hold on to yo' butts!

So, first of all, the box is incredible. I only saw this on the shelves for a short period of time before it was gone, but I can't imagine many kids walked past it without wanting it. The T-Rex is very intimidating on the front with the helicopter flying overhead. I wanted it the moment I saw it! Make sure if you ever sell this on Ebay, you get a couple of good closeups of the box. I swore I heard the Jurassic park theme in the background the first time I looked at it. I mean what have they got in there, King King?

Opening the box, it is only 793 pieces, but it feels huge. Like at least over 1000. There are several reasons for this as you will see later on: he dinosaurs, the fencing, and some of the bigger plane pieces. I think its really worth the retail price of $99 (Luckily I got this one on clearance!). This is one of the reasons I think it has done so well in retirement so far. It could have been $120 retail and people would have bought it.

Looking at it, I immediately wanted to open the T-Rex, but unfortunately the instructions told me I had to wait a while. As much as I wanted to just pop it open anyway, I decided to wait. Bag 1 did at least have two minifigures and a dinosaur, so it is not like I wasn't getting my money's worth. Minifigure 1 is the pilot. He is pretty cool looking with the goggles and his painted on hunting gear.

The next minifigure is “Josh Thunder”. Supposedly, he is the main protagonist of the Dino theme and is exclusive to this set. He has a really cool painted on outfit with the straps and bags on his legs and the walkie-talkie. Of course, he also has a nice green sash because we can assume he is into style, no matter whether he is out on a date or hunting dinosaurs. I thought it was cool that he had a gruff look about him with the beard and mustache and his facial expression:

Now, finally a dinosaur! This was a raptor and it was so well done. It's about two and half times as big as a minifigure itself and looks just like the ones in Jurassic Park. It's got the beady smile when you open it's mouth and the claws are definitely really intimidating. It really stands up well, too which is a big problem with these types of minifigures:

Clever girl...

So you get the full size of the minifigure Raptor, here is a picture of the Raptor and Josh Thunder who has clearly tamed the large beast. I really like the green scope on the gun as well – although the shade of green is a little weird and the scope itself looks like a syringe. Still though, it's a nice touch for people using their imagination when playing with the set:

The rest of bag 1 is a Dino jeep which is pretty cool looking – I really like the stickers they use in this set. It all stays within the Dino color scheme. Anything with flick missiles is pretty cool, and I think it is awesome to have one on the jeep itself, making it a great vehicle to hunt dinosaurs with. The front bumpers are pretty cool as well and give it a very rugged look. I wanted to put a minifigure in it and say “Must go faster! Must go faster!”.

As usual Lego adds that touch of detail that others would miss with the box of supplies on the back of the truck as well as the holders for walkie-talkies. It even comes with a couple of tools to sit in the supply box:

Here is all of bag 1 together. This would be pretty good as just a set itself. The way the booklets are, it makes it seem as if this was a side set. Book 1 is just for this and is much smaller. Book 2 and 3 are for the actual Dino Defense HQ:

Bag 2 gives us a few more minifigures. The driver is up first. He is pretty cool and I love that he has the Dino theme patch on his shirt. Another thing I loved was the dual faces, with one of them being a scared face. Scared faces are always what I leave on my minifigures:

Sue Montana is the last minifigure, She is well done and really fits into the theme well to get a female presence. As they said in Jurassic Park “Dinosaur eats man...Women inherits the Earth!”. I love her scared face as it has a little more hesitance than fear on it. Maybe a touch of nervousness as well:

The rest of bag two includes the helicopter and a supply chest that holds the two guns and two helmets. The helicopter is pretty nice and is sturdy – again this could be its own little set as well. The blades spin really well and it has two flick missiles which is always a great added touch for playability. It feels like it's the right size as well. The supply chest is a nice added touch for playability as well if the play-ee wants to put away the guns and have the figures fly the helicopter or ride in the jeep. I did think it was weird you don't open the pilot up with the Helicopter, but maybe both the pilot and the driver can do both:

And Finally! We have a T-Rex! So, if you read the first article I did in this manner on the Rancor Pit, then you know that I was a little excited about the Rancor itself. This pretty much matched it. Until I actually got it out, I didn't really understand the size of this thing. It is absolutely massive. The arms and legs all move around and lock in place. The figure stands up great and can be put in many different positions without having a problem:

Obviously, this minifigure is going to be sought after because of the popularity of the T-Rex itself and because of how impressive the minifigure is. But, what really helps is even though there is another set in the theme with a T-Rex, it is a different color. I think this is really going to help the value because everyone that gets one will want the other one so that they have a set of them.

Before we move on, I think it's important for us to run this T-Rex through the Legendary Minifigure test:

• Be huge –5 times a normal minifigures

Check! He is absolutely massive and to good scale if you compare with Jurassic park.

• Have 10 or more pieces

He only has 7, but I think we can give him a pass because I had to actually put the claws on the Rancor and the T-Rex's claws are already on. I am giving him a check on this point.

• Be able to eat a normal minifigure

Hmmm... let's see:

Um... yeah, check.

• Be a Rancor

So I think I need to adjust this one to “Be a Rancor or a Tyrannosaurus Rex”. It's a legendary minifigures and I think it is right up there with the Rancor as one of the best minifigures of all time!

Now on to the rest of the set. Bag 3 is the front gate of the defense headquarters. The sides are pretty sturdy and I really like the round feel of the corner areas. It makes this set sit up really well. The fence in the middle is really well done. I love the spikes on the top and there are signs in the middle that have a voltage sign on them. The detail is really amazing:

I thought the build was pretty fun in bag 3, but evidently my dog didn't feel the same way:

Bag 4 takes the fence and adds even more detail to it. The bag includes an attachment for the top of both sides of the fence. On the right side, it has a lookout area along with a crane arm and a net to catch dinosaurs with. Along with that, you get another smaller dinosaur to catch in the net. This adds playability to the set, although I don't think the net could hold the other two dinosaurs. I don't know how Lego does this stuff:

The left hand side is a giant turret type system with a place for a minifigure to control it. It actually swings around and can aim and everything. Tons of playability. There are two flick missiles along with it. I don't have the full data for sets Lego has done with flick missiles, but I would have to say that this set has the most I think I have ever seen. 5 of them! Can't imagine anyone can find something wrong with that (except parents cleaning up after their children).

Bag 5 is pretty boring compared to what we have done so far. It is just the sides of the fencing for the headquarters extending to the back. I am really surprised as I am building this how well all of these pieces are engineered to stay together, even being fairly thin. When I was building Jabba's palace, I had a couple of issues with the parts properly staying together. Surprisingly this set has been very easy to build and keep together.

Bag 6 brings us the back of the headquarters and includes some of the bigger pieces. There are a lot of stickers in this set and as you can see from the picture below, there is a yellow door with the Dino logo on it. The Dino logo is also on the back of it. I think these really add something to the set. I like that the back also creates a little bit of a lookout, with railings to keep away the dinosaurs, so that children can play with the characters on the back of the fence area. As you can see, the set is almost done:

Bag 7 is the rest of the head quarter's back section, including a giant door (I was wondering how they got these huge dinosaurs in there. Again, the sides were very thin but stayed together very well and was very easy to build. As you can see, the sides have an indention for a pulley system for the door I am about to put in:

The last bag adds on to the top of the tower and finishes the doorway. The top of the tower is really detailed; it provides a glassed in lookout for the characters to use to watch the dinosaurs below. It also has a satellite on the side of it. We are assuming wherever this is, the characters don't have cell service.

In this step, the door gets put in as well being a large gate (again with the voltage sign on it). The pulley system to allow the door to go up and down is a hook and string. I really like this system better than some of the systems I have seen Lego use where you have to prop up doors that open vertically. The only negative I can see here is that the string was a little hard to properly tie and get put together. A child would definitely need a parent for this. Once it is put together, it is very easy to open and close by just twisting the pulley system.

Now its time to see it altogether. It is amazing! It is so all-around detailed and impressive, it really stands out when you walk into the room. The T-Rex is incredible and the fencing and tower make this stand out even more as he looks like he could take the whole thing down anytime he wanted. The Raptor fits in really well too. I think I am going to try and eventually hang the helicopter from the ceiling so I can get a better effect on the whole thing. Either way, Josh Thunder is going to seriously have his hands full with these beasts.

Investing wise, what do we think this set is going to eventually do? Ah, Ah, Ah! You didn't say the magic word!

Well, first of all, looking at this set as an investment is cheating a bit since it has been retired for about 6 months or so and has had some pretty incredible gains at a CAGR of 49.95%! So my analysis is going to look at whether or not it is a good investment from here on out.

Currently, it's new price is $149.95. So where can it go from here? Let's find a few sets to compare. We can use the following criteria:

• Dinosaur set including a T-Rex
• One of or the largest set in the series

I came up with the following sets, the first form the Dinosaurs theme and the second two from the popular Dino Attack theme.

6720 Tyrannosaurus Rex

10.95% CAGR with a current price of $34.76

Originally $9.99 – 250% return over retail

7471 Typhoon vs T-Rex

6.69% CAGR with a current Price of $117.47 (was around $150 in December)

Originally $69.99 – 68% return over retail

7476 Iron Predator vs. T-Rex

10.50% CAGR with a current price of 88.87

Originally $39.99 – 122% return over retail

So looking at these three sets, it is a bit surprising that this set has had around a 50% CAGR. On the other hand, these sets have all been around a while and we all know that Lego sets see their growth curve generally plateau within the first few years.

What I see in this data is the ceiling for return over retail. The T-Rex's all did really well. Before it's decline over the last 6 months, (which could be due to the popularity of the new Dino line hitting retirement) 7471 was above 2 times retail. 7476 is well above 2 times retail and 6720 is about 3.5 times retail. So this gives us a good idea for the ceiling of this set being at least 2 times retail and most likely greater. Right now it is at 1.5 times retail, so it still has some growing to go.

Also, this set really shot up quickly after retirement. Because of this, I think the stop in growth is going to be very slow. It would be very wild to see the growth line stop all of a sudden and go down to 10%. The above sets only show 10% because they have been around for 8 years or so.

There are some X-factors here though that really help us explain why this set shot up so quickly and why it will be a good investment over the next several years:

• There aren't a lot of these out there: This theme was popular, but nothing like some of the other themes like Star Wars and City. If you look at the data on Brickpicker, there have not been 30 of these sold in a month since February. Actually, there have barely been any months when 20 have been sold. But does this mean no one is buying them? No actually. I have been actively looking for this set on Ebay and there have barely been 20 listings a month (cutting out the unreasonable listings it at $300 or more). To compare, there are almost 50 10212 Imperial Shuttles sold on Ebay per month – a much more expensive set. This bodes well for the sets growth because there is limited quantity.
• The Dino theme characters: First, several of the characters have names like Josh Thunder and Sue Montana which makes theme more collectible. Secondly, every minifigure to this set is exclusive as Lego used different designs for pretty much every set. This really helps if someone picks up one of the sets and is enamored with it. They will want all of them (This is how I came to get Dino Defense – I bought one of the others and got hooked).
• The T-Rex is exclusive and looks incredibly more real than the T-Rex' in the last two Dinosaur themes. I think this will be sought after for quite awhile driving this set up in price. If you look at sold listings on Ebay, the T-Rex has gone for around $70 for a few months now. At a current price of $149.95, that means it's worth almost half the set!
• This set is by far the biggest in the series, and the biggest of any of the other series: If a person loves Dinosaurs and looks at all Lego has to offer, this set is for sure at the top!
• Relatively short run: This set was only around for a year. It came out in the beginning of 2012 and was gone by 2013. Just as we saw from the Ebay data, this set is not in great supply. As more and more are opened and set up, the price will go up more and more.
• The new Jurassic Park movie: There will be a new movie in the next couple of years, and if you ever never noticed, Jurassic Park is one of the best grossing movie series of all time. This movie will be viewed by young and old and especially will turn a new generation into dinosaur lovers.

So what does this mean for the set? Well, these two sets were above 10% CAGR at their peak a few years ago. Taking that as a scale, with all of the things we have talked about before, I think a safe bet would be that this set will see about 22.5% CAGR over 5 years (Honestly than would be over a half decline in CAGR over 4 years which is hard to believe. This is very conservative). So that means in 2017, we are looking at $275.85. This would go along with what we saw with the older sets being worth over 2 times their value.

So if you can get it this year for $150, is it worth it? Money wise, this means you would hold it for four years and sell it for $275.85 in 2017 achieving a ROI of 83% over 4 years, or a little over 20% per year. That's not too bad right? Adding to that, there are no more sets coming into the market to slow it down, there are no more Dinosaur themes on the horizon, and it's a known entity: it's already been a great gainer!

To me, this makes this set worth it if you can score a MISB one for $150. You don't want to spend your whole budget on them, but for those of us who like to wait and see what a set will do in retirement, this definitely seems to already look like a winner. I have found several of these in stores still on clearance as well which is just free money! I have this set in one of my searches on Ebay and whenever I see one for under $150, I grab it.

If anything, I think you could just grab the T-Rex as well. The first of our three comparison set's was just a T-Rex minifigure. It has been out for 12 years, but is still worth 3 times what it was sold for. It may as well be worth over $100 in a few years!

If you don't see this set as still worth the investment, believe me, you still need it. If you like dinosaurs at all, this is the pinnacle of Lego Dinosaur sets. And I would get it now while you still can for a decent price because I feel this set is only going up, up, up! What do you all think?

Oh, and remind me to thank John for the wonderful weekend.

Note: All of the information here are my own opinions and are pulled from my experiences. You may or may not have success with these methods.