Lets be Realistic People

DoNotInsertIntoMouth · 2014-07-17T01:49:19.000Z

I'm going to take a few moments to take a page out of my co-worker's book. He is a blunt man, and generally if something is wrong in the office, he sends out an email and copies everyone on it calling out whatever is being done (like not filling the coffee pot) and whoever is doing it. Not the best way to go about things, but results are there. He signs them "Crotchety Old Man" (hes 29) So here is my Crotchety Old man Post: A few things I want to put out there. These are facts IMO (clashes I know) that some people should know. I think people throw around silly numbers and comparisons way too much. You can say "Well we are free to think this - its not hurting anyone!". But it is. there are a lot of new members who listen to a lot of us. Its a responsibility to just be freaking realistic. So here are a few. Others feel free to add Sets aren't going to grow to 5x retail in most cases (99.9%) There certainly are sets that do. But these are insanely far and few between. Throwing out these silly numbers like "200$ next year!" on a 30$ set is silly. The ones that do that are certain cases, like the Zombies which no one knew about and was out 4 months. This stuff about sets growing in insane amounts is starting to get silly. For a lot of the reasons I am going to talk about tomorrow. But I have heard things like : 1500$ by christmas (last year) - 4x4 special edition crawler $800 - for the fire brigade and GE $1500 for the Tower Bridge 300$ by this christmas - Battle of Helms deep These prices are silly. What sets did in the past is relevant, not the telling case. Things are different and changing all the time. You have to be realistic. Will some sets surprise? Yes. But they aren't going to triple, quadruple, quintuple constantly. The market is completely different than it used to be I was certainly not around then. But its clear and obvious things are different. Some are for the better - Lego is as popular as it has ever been. However, the investor market is probably 100x or more congested than it used to be. Are sets going to stop growing? no. But the top values are going to go down. This is why sets aren't quadrupling all the time. Ask someone like Mos_Eisley. There was a time you could store any Star Wars set and chances are it would triple. Not that way now in the least. The market is certainly not dead. Things like the Fire brigade prove that. But its not growing like the old modulars. Lets be real. There is no difference between Flipping and Investing. Flipping is just a short term investment Lets just stop all the arguing over which is better and all this stuff. You know whats the best? Keeping the set for the shortest amount of time while paying attention to maximizing the value proportionally to it. You know what thats called? Being fiscally savy. Flipping/investing... who cares? Pretty much no one knows when a set is retiring More pointed at the people listening, not the people saying it. Don't listen to pretty much anyone that isn't a direct corporate higher up at Lego in terms of set retirements. My rule is this: Did the person say they know that the set is retiring now? If no: Good. If Yes: don't listen to them, they don't know. Investing and especially parting out is difficult A lot of people join this site, get excited, but sets, and then disappear. I have to believe that some of these people bit off more than they can chew, etc. But the reason is a lot of people make things sound too easy. BUY THIS - EASY MONEY! I do this some too, and I have been trying to word things better. Keeping track of all this is tough, and it will only get tougher. As the investor market fills, we wont know how things will work, but profits are going to continue to go down in most cases. You have to be smart, savy, know your history, be able to take care of taxes everything else. Collect as much as you can, invest only after you have done serious thinking about what it means, the time that goes into it, etc. Feel free to ask me. I am not an expert, but I can share my experience. While being very successful, I have had some hiccups and some that could have been serious. Its important to know these before hand. Don't jump into anything. There are 100s of things that are much more important that money, most that you can't buy with it anyway. End (calm) Rant Overall, just build Lego sets people. If you haven't, you need to shutdown your computer, turn off the TV, and enjoy one of the best gifts to our world.