Friends - general discussion

[legoman12323123]

I sure has hell hope not. I have 100 friends sets deep stored away for investment!

[chipbee]

Any theme that can form proper town is a big winner, long term. Thus far, I think lego friends is second only to lego city in terms of variety of sets to build a township.

[forestgirl27]

Friends beauty shop sky-rocketed--if you bought them at retail you can make a nice little pile of money

[Achilles]

Friends, IMO are fantastic investment. I am also very bullish on the future of the Disney Princess line.

[segreto]

Luckily I have a 10 year old daughter, so investing in Friends does not make me feel goofy when buying them.  I wish I had a few more of the cruise ships, but the cafe is a great investment and building project.  The only things I am on the fence about is the figures.  I am not sure they are all that great.  

[Guest TabbyBoy]

Avoid pink/purple boxes at your peril.  I'm loading up big time before next Xmas, esp. on Dolphin Cruisers.

[lowillsw]

You know you are a Lego investor when...a grown man investing in Friends set?  Had teenager girls giggling at me at the checkout counter.

 

Most of us missed the boat on the 4 digit Friends set in recent weeks.  The tree house, camper, and vet sets already double and triple already.  They were hanging Friends polybags in the Lego section at multiple Targets near me because they ran out of EVERYTHING.  Who care if it's pink or purple when you are holding an appreciating commodity.  

[Guest TabbyBoy]

You know you are a Lego investor when...a grown man investing in Friends set?  Had teenager girls giggling at me at the checkout counter.

 

Most of us missed the boat on the 4 digit Friends set in recent weeks.  The tree house, camper, and vet sets already double and triple already.  They were hanging Friends polybags in the Lego section at multiple Targets near me because they ran out of EVERYTHING.  Who care if it's pink or purple when you are holding an appreciating commodity.  

 

Yep, I loaded up on them too!

[nolanfan34]

If you waited to invest until you noticed empty shelves, I have a hard time believing you found 50-75 sets including the Vet, Stables, Beauty shop, etc....lol

[nolanfan34]

Also, seriously, there are a ton of threads on this topic. it's not like you're some n00b here OP... :-)

[lowillsw]

If you waited to invest until you noticed empty shelves, I have a hard time believing you found 50-75 sets including the Vet, Stables, Beauty shop, etc....lol

 

"Picture or it never happened" is in order?

[jaredseiders]

I think that this is very close to a sure thing. The supply is much much lower than the demand. I can tell you that most sets are in the hands of consumers and not the hands of investors for this theme. That's a good thing, because the secondary market for these is going to SOAR! People complain about the generic minifigures (not being themed minifigures like SW and SH and LOTR series) but the value is in the buildings and the theme. Someone at some point is going to want the whole series. All of the sets. And if they can't get the retired ones from retail they will buy them from secondary.

 

These sets are currently selling at double to triple the retail price right now because the supply was so low. The same thing happened last year. This isn't the first time this happened with Friends. I wasn't investing last year, but when I worked at Kmart, the Friends section was decimated. You couldn't find ANY sets, period. Lego expanded the product line, meaning even more types of sets to buy, and the same thing happened. Next year I bet there will be an even larger variety of sets and it will happen again, I'm sure.

 

Because of this, I will be buying a large amount of Lego Friends sets throughout the year whenever I see a good sale price for them. There aren't many sets right now that aren't selling 2x to 3x the price on Amazon.

[Achilles]

Discounts as low as 25-30% make these worth buying for the most part, I think.

[wholovesboo]

HELL YEAH.

 

I've been singing the praises of Lego Friends since the first day I started posting on this site! 

 

Edited to add:

And thank you to whomever added more awards to my profile! That Brick Chick was getting lonely over there in the left hand column.

Edited December 15, 2013 by wholovesboo

[matrosov]

IMHO awesome playset.  great level of detail.  My daughter loves it my fiance loves it, Looks right at home with my modulars.  Personally I would not buy it for long haul buy and hold investment right now because it looks like a fad and that drives price up.  The fad goes away next year and prices bottom out.  I feel pretty safe buying Fire brigade at full retail and holding it for 2-4 years and feeling good about my odds of at least getting my money back,  but with fun play sets like friends and city it is really roll of the dice.  I buy those for pure fun and enjoyment they don't belong on the shelf .  Again this is if we are talking long term investment, if we are talking day trading my opinion might change .  

[kit]

I did not know if this was strange. I was thinking it was but I was not sure. my walmart store had a box of the ice cream stand and summer picnic and it was a lego type box. they were 4.99. i was thinking the ice cream stand was a TRU item and I was thinking the summer picnic was not around any more. I could be all wrong about this would not be a first time. 

[Noodlenut]

Polybags don't really retire unless LEGO Shop at Home lists them at a certain price and then retires them.  This happened with the Christmas Train, which was available last year and is now available at Target again.  It seems that right now, random Walmarts are getting random polybags.  I guess you could call that strange, but it seems to happening a lot right now.

[hepcatpunk]

Ice cream stand was around earlier this year at Wal-Mart and was available as a freebie from Shop at Home, in September I believe. I've seen the Picnic at WM and TRU both.  So, not strange at all.

[wholovesboo]

Ice Cream Cart seems to be popping up everywhere even tho just this summer it was a LEGO Shop at Home exclusive. They've been at Target in the stocking stuffers section this year

My TRU seems to have an unending supply of Mia's picnic.

[krayzie]

Ice Cream Cart seems to be popping up everywhere even tho just this summer it was a LEGO Shop at Home exclusive. They've been at Target in the stocking stuffers section this year

My TRU seems to have an unending supply of Mia's picnic.

The ice cream cart was also at target before it became a lego shop at home exclusive.

[TheOrcKing]

my walmart store had a box of the ice cream stand and summer picnic and it was a lego type box. they were 4.99.

This sounds like what I found earlier in the year at my Walmart. Not really strange as polybags make their odd rounds across retail chains and/or different areas. To note, I haven't seen Summer Picnic since then but Ice Cream Stand has been everywhere at this point appearing at Target three times now I think and once for Shop-at-Home & Walmart.

[cernak]

I've seen them at the local TRU in NorCal.

[seapotato]

I have seen summer picnic at one of the TRU down here, and the ice cream stand a the new target that opened up in my city. i didnt buy either as they don't seem to be too popular!

[ppsagehen]

I have wondered about this with the polybags too. At my Lego store, random polybags from the past year have been showing up, many of them giveaways from earlier in the year. like the VW bus and the hot dog stand. Is really nice to see them again (of course), makes me think they had them in the back this whole time and are just clearing inventory.

[M4x18]

Is there a forum code to deal with avatar hijackers? XD