Ideas #011: 21304 - Doctor Who

[Alpinemaps]

1 hour ago, Val-E said:

Don´t remember BTTF being discounted just before EOL, though, was it?

This is another of those sets that is taking ages to go away and shops seem to have overstocked. it could well be another Exo and in that case your 90 day return will have elapsed!

I just check CCC, and in the US, 21103 was on sale a lot between roughly May and November 2014.  It retired in the US at the end of Dec 2014 (per Brickset).

Probably just foggy memory, but I seem to remember it being on sale a lot at Walmart during the final 6 months of 2014 as well.  Nothing drastic, but somewhere around the 20%-25% mark.

[Guest TabbyBoy]

10 minutes ago, Alpinemaps said:

I just check CCC, and in the US, 21103 was on sale a lot between roughly May and November 2014.  It retired in the US at the end of Dec 2014 (per Brickset).

Probably just foggy memory, but I seem to remember it being on sale a lot at Walmart during the final 6 months of 2014 as well.  Nothing drastic, but somewhere around the 20%-25% mark.

Argos 3-for-2 being a prime example in the UK when I bought all mine. This was before the current era of stickers and drop-kicked boxes. 4x buy-in within months!

[Alpinemaps]

34 minutes ago, Alpinemaps said:

I just check CCC, and in the US, 21103 was on sale a lot between roughly May and November 2014.  It retired in the US at the end of Dec 2014 (per Brickset).

Probably just foggy memory, but I seem to remember it being on sale a lot at Walmart during the final 6 months of 2014 as well.  Nothing drastic, but somewhere around the 20%-25% mark.

 

22 minutes ago, TabbyBoy said:

Argos 3-for-2 being a prime example in the UK when I bought all mine. This was before the current era of stickers and drop-kicked boxes. 4x buy-in within months!

Just poking around the 21103 thread, and it was doing the dance a bunch in September-November.  It was definitely selling for 20% off at Amazon during that time as well.

[Furious_george]

Doesn't seem to be a lot of demand here for the Who. Places that sell them have them on sale a lot and never seem to run out. 

Had one myself for a bit but didn't do much for me so moved it on.

[landphieran]

1 hour ago, Alpinemaps said:

 

Just poking around the 21103 thread, and it was doing the dance a bunch in September-November.  It was definitely selling for 20% off at Amazon during that time as well.

I find comparing Doctor Who to 21103 to synonymous with comparing super hero sets to the wolverine/dead pool set after it had sky rocketed. The fact that these gems happened ruins the potential of similar sets because it brings a lot more eyes to its attention. 

[Guest TabbyBoy]

Happy Birthday 21304! 1yr old today! Now retire!

[thebrickdad]

Happy Birthday 21304! 1yr old today! Now retire!

And to celebrate, Amazon are still (one month on) selling it at 30% off list. They must have even more than you do Tabby....

[Guest TabbyBoy]

1 hour ago, thebrickdad said:

 

And to celebrate, Amazon are still (one month on) selling it at 30% off list. They must have even more than you do Tabby....

 

Not a problem, I can wait.

[wotguvnotmeguv]

As soon as it actually retires, HotUKDeals will hopefully ensure it gets cleaned out everywhere that has it below RRP. The Beeb will ramp up Doctor Who fever in the run-up to the Christmas special, so many will be given as gifts anyway.

I don't see this being a drawn-out saga like we saw with The Tumbler.

[Guest TabbyBoy]

6 minutes ago, wotguvnotmeguv said:

As soon as it actually retires, HotUKDeals will hopefully ensure it gets cleaned out everywhere that has it below RRP. The Beeb will ramp up Doctor Who fever in the run-up to the Christmas special, so many will be given as gifts anyway.

I don't see this being a drawn-out saga like we saw with The Tumbler.

At last, somebody else has faith!

[BearCrash]

22 minutes ago, TabbyBoy said:

At last, somebody else has faith!

I though it was pretty obvious that I'm a believer too
 

[Guest TabbyBoy]

19 minutes ago, BearCrash said:

I though it was pretty obvious that I'm a believer too
 

LOL - I'm looking forward to when we both make really smug comments on here in a years time. I can make £6 profit on eBay now when it's very widely available for less so, how can it possible fail when it's gone forever? If indications are that bad at the end of January (NOT selling at >£26), I'll just return 300 of them back to George. I'll still have plenty left.

[Fenix_2k1]

Yeah I have faith in this one too. 

It was one of those sets that i wasn't 100% sure on until i built it. 

I'm still wondering if there's any value in picking up cybermen fun packs cheap to package a cyberman and extra dalek when selling. 

[Voltron]

11 minutes ago, TabbyBoy said:

LOL - I'm looking forward to when we both make really smug comments on here in a years time. I can make £6 profit on eBay now when it's very widely available for less so, how can it possible fail when it's gone forever? If indications are that bad at the end of January (NOT selling at >£26), I'll just return 300 of them back to George. I'll still have plenty left.

Irregardless of this set, I thought you  hated selling for such a small profit margin. Not criticising anybody on here for selling for so little as everyones circumstance is differneece but seems like an absolute ballache to find deal / buy / await delivery / store / sell / pack etc for less than £10

I personally think things like this are more common nowadays and is what is slowly eroding everyone's faith in "collecting" or "investing" in lego as there are always people who will buy mad volume and sell for pennies.

Selling for £6 profit isn't difficult when you can do that with any set in 3 for 2 offeres to be honest. 

[Fenix_2k1]

4 minutes ago, Mhd747 said:

Irregardless of this set, I thought you  hated selling for such a small profit margin. Not criticising anybody on here for selling for so little as everyones circumstance is differneece but seems like an absolute ballache to find deal / buy / await delivery / store / sell / pack etc for less than £10

I personally think things like this are more common nowadays and is what is slowly eroding everyone's faith in "collecting" or "investing" in lego as there are always people who will buy mad volume and sell for pennies.

Selling for £6 profit isn't difficult when you can do that with any set in 3 for 2 offeres to be honest. 

I don't think he's saying he would sell for that.  Simply that he could.  I.E. signs are looking good that this is a very low risk investment. 

[BearCrash]

20 minutes ago, Fenix_2k1 said:

I'm still wondering if there's any value in picking up cybermen fun packs cheap to package a cyberman and extra dalek when selling. 

I have a bunch of those (only a fraction of my total DW stock though) I was able to get at 66% off so that's something I was counting on as well.

[Guest TabbyBoy]

2 minutes ago, Mhd747 said:

Irregardless of this set, I thought you  hated selling for such a small profit margin. Not criticising anybody on here for selling for so little as everyones circumstance is differneece but seems like an absolute ballache to find deal / buy / await delivery / store / sell / pack etc for less than £10

I personally think things like this are more common nowadays and is what is slowly eroding everyone's faith in "collecting" or "investing" in lego as there are always people who will buy mad volume and sell for pennies.

Selling for £6 profit isn't difficult when you can do that with any set in 3 for 2 offeres to be honest. 

I doubt it'll come to that. If there's no positive outcome a year from now after buying Doctor Who, Ecto1, WALL-E, White Houses, Trevi Fountains, & Spaceports via Tesco's 3-for-2 sale, I'm just going to just shift the lot (over 1200 sets!) at cost +10% and NEVER invest in LEGO again. If we can't make decent money from the recent crazy bargains, there's no longer much point is there? Also finding sleeper sets is so much more difficult than it was and modulars and Star Wars are no longer a sure thing.

From what I've bought, I have a lot of confidence but, a chance to bail out in a year if I need to.

[Fenix_2k1]

I don't think I've seen many sets in the past year that have retired and can't hit RRP

[wotguvnotmeguv]

One thing that makes me slightly worried about the current range is the Force Awakens model, where almost every set has been so heavily discounted since launch.

RRPs are starting to feel like such arbitrary figures, and the same can be said with this for Doctor Who and Ecto-1, which means much the same for discounts. If a set almost never sells at RRP in stores and online, it's almost irrelevant that the discount exists. It doesn't help that some retailers are listing discounts from an already discounted price rather than RRP - not all aspirant buyers have Brickset bookmarked.

[HandyHand]

2 minutes ago, wotguvnotmeguv said:

One thing that makes me slightly worried about the current range is the Force Awakens model, where almost every set has been so heavily discounted since launch.

RRPs are starting to feel like such arbitrary figures, and the same can be said with this for Doctor Who and Ecto-1, which means much the same for discounts. If a set almost never sells at RRP in stores and online, it's almost irrelevant that the discount exists. It doesn't help that some retailers are listing discounts from an already discounted price rather than RRP - not all aspirant buyers have Brickset bookmarked.

That depends entirely on the country. These Ideas sets like Wall-E, Ecto-1, Maze, Doctor Who and Yellow Submarine are not sold in regular toy stores here in The Netherlands. And specialised 3rd-party Lego stores here, if they even sell them at all, don't sell them at big discounts simply because they don't get them at big discounts from LEGO themselves. So in The Netherlands (and this is mostly also valid for Belgium and Germany) we resellers here are in a huge advantage when buying them cheaper through Amazon UK if they're being price-matched with some crazy 3-for-2 Argos sale, and then waiting out their retirement.  

[Guest TabbyBoy]

1 minute ago, wotguvnotmeguv said:

One thing that makes me slightly worried about the current range is the Force Awakens model, where almost every set has been so heavily discounted since launch.

RRPs are starting to feel like such arbitrary figures, and the same can be said with this for Doctor Who and Ecto-1, which means much the same for discounts. If a set almost never sells at RRP in stores and online, it's almost irrelevant that the discount exists. It doesn't help that some retailers are listing discounts from an already discounted price rather than RRP - not all aspirant buyers have Brickset bookmarked.

It's just that we'll have to wait a little longer, that's all. I believe that fans of Doctor Who, original Ghostbusters, WALL-E & Architecture, far outnumber the vast amount of sets that were produced. I think Doctor Who will create a new "breed" of LEGO fan which can only be a good thing and I can still sell at a small profit if I need to. Regarding small margins, it's not a problem if you shift 100 sets in one go for a cash sale (no fees) without spending time with P&P.

Regarding SW TFA, I've avoided all sets apart from the MF at £60 (and some instore at £30) - there's NO WAY that I will pay more than -50% now for a run-of-the-mill set. However, I will look at Exclusives at -20% and Ideas at -30%.

Once the fears of Brexit are proven to be unfounded and retailers have more confidence, I think we'll then see prices stabilise again. Buyers will also not be as tight-arsed as they are now.

[Guest TabbyBoy]

I've just noticed that Amazon UK no longer has these at £32.97 so that only leaves Asda/George at £32.97 to run out and then we should then see some growth. I'm only keeping hold of some of my Architecture and IDEAS sets as they take up little space, should do well and are very easy to pack and post. In fact, I get the perfectly sized boxes free from an ex-colleague!

Hopefully we won't have to wait much longer for 21304 to transit to the next dimension ;-)

[Val-E]

On 13/10/2016 at 4:51 PM, Val-E said:

I would have agreed with you if it hadn´t been for the retiring soon tag. That thing is an anchor/lousdpeaker as now every man and his dog is stocking up on it. If there is Delorean type demand then you might be right with your prediction but I think what might happen is people will be shifting volume at very low margins for a long time.

My prediction was that if it didn´t retire during LB and 10 euros off, it would be a stinker and I stand by that. It will be interesting to see what seal codes the next batch have to see if TLG are having a laugh.

Still standing by that prediction, guess this set has pretty good odds of making it through to the January clearance sale.

[Val-E]

On 28/9/2016 at 8:09 PM, Val-E said:

Hold on, cowboy. They have only threatened to retire it. Extermination date is T-90 days still.

[BearCrash]

2 minutes ago, Val-E said:

Still standing by that prediction, guess this set has pretty good odds of making it through to the January clearance sale.

Sold out on the non-Whovian side of the planet.

Of course, that could also mean TLG only produced one batch for the US and a gazillion batches for Europe/UK.