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Retiring Soon - open speculation


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17 minutes ago, glucapg said:

what does TURD mean? thanks

 

17 minutes ago, glucapg said:

what does TURD mean? thanks

Here. it means UCS recent sets for investment purposes along with most of the recent LEGO line.

 

I'll PM you the common non-Brickpicker meeaning.

Edited by Anomander
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2 hours ago, mfortunek said:

I don't know that this fits into "Retiring Soon" but I'll post here anyway and the mods can move me if I've incurred an infraction. I'll be mentioning the Simpson's House and contemplating its future, so I guess that's sort of "Retiring Soon."

I'm vacationing in Bali, Indonesia at the moment with my wife. I see a Lego store in popular touristy area mall. I go in and get the distinct impression that nary a large set has been sold here in months. Two young male employees behind counter don't even bother to say hello or greet us (strange considering the people here are, by in large, friendlier than most places on earth).

GBHQ is on sale for 15% off - doing the quick math from Indonesian Rupees I calculate that, at current discount and WITHOUT adding back in govt tax of 10% it comes to a whopping $380 in USD. Disney Castle (not on sale) comes to $492 USD after taxes. 

Simpson's House came to $352 USD after tax. And the kicker is that literally 80% of the boxes are beat straight to hell. Crushed, kicked, opened, warped from water or humidity - you name it. And there were dozens upon dozens of them. Just stacked up along the wall. Horizontally like pancakes.

Don't get me wrong, I'm sure it takes a Herculean effort to get all these huge cardboard boxes down here to the middle of Southeast Asia in anything resembling mint condition. I'm not judging. But these boxes look like my six year old built a fort out of them in the backyard and just left it there for a few months while weather and the neighborhood dogs had their way with it.

Point is this - clearly (and I mean CERTAINLY) nobody is going to be buying these. I mean, this country is very poor. A cab driver will wait four or five hours for you just to secure a $15 USD return fare to get you back to where you started. I cannot fathom any local paying two weeks' pay for a Lego Simpson's House. And no tourist is going to drag one of these back across the ocean (you need an entire separate suitcase for it) at this ridiculous markup. Heck, even at 50% off these things are never going anywhere. I was speechless standing there looking at the massive quantity of these and their price tags.

So it got me thinking... where ARE they going to end up? Lego is eventually going to dump these somewhere to make room for other stuff that nobody is ever going to buy for 70% over MSRP. In some Walmart warehouse six months from now about 100 beat-to-hell Simpson's Houses are going to show up online at MSRP long after it's no longer available and the boxes will be like the December 2015 Target "Tumbler" lottery. 

As an aside, they still had a whole display full of all of 2015's vignette scenes (Valentine's, Easter, Christmas, etc) except for 40138 and 40139. They were all $17 USD. So basically like buying them on eBay back home.

 

Anyways I just found all of this interesting and thought I'd share. Haven't posted for several months but I still follow every day. Thanks for the ongoing discussion and laughs. 

No offense inteded, but just because the lego market is not big in bali means nothing. Most people in North America sell to people in North America, same with most UK people sell to UK and so on.

Indonesia is still not classes as a "first world" country, even though they have lots of rich people there, lego is mainly bought by middle-class people and frankly most people in non first world countries can't afford it.

That being said, in each country there are very rich people, you just need to go to China and see alot of luxury brands that have stores there selling lots of items for an equivalent retail price of more than in UK. Those stores are selling so the vast population may not buy lego, but there will be a small minority of very rich families that will.

There will always be a market for lego even in developing countries, lego just needs to do more advertising / lower prices etc 

In Indonesia it would probably be the family of general suharto who would buy most of the lego seeing as they are the rich ones there...

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4 minutes ago, Foxhound said:

I don't really care about this set. I only have 2 of them and this one is massively hoarded. To get an acceptable profit, one have to wait for at least 2-3 years, maybe even more. Times have changed!

So the set that won't sell out even with Snowglobe and 20% off, is massively hoarded? How do we know this?

 

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28 minutes ago, kurnitb said:

Still available at LEGO Shop at Home AU. :) I am guessing there are still plenty. Most probably LEGO Shop at Home AU follows the trend with EU. 

Do you really wonder at this fact? At nearly every other retailer you get better deals on them - currently on ToysRUs.de - 199.99 Euro.

In two days they have sold about 200 of them... Only 50 left. But despite of Galeria Kaufhof and ToysRUs there is no other retailer with them in stock. 

Edited by mauro23
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50 minutes ago, Foxhound said:

I don't really care about this set. I only have 2 of them and this one is massively hoarded. To get an acceptable profit, one have to wait for at least 2-3 years, maybe even more. Times have changed!

My guess is this is one of the few Star Wars UCS sets that has not been overly hoarded. Not saying we will see a massive price spike, as the demand may be lower. (Another reason it's not hoarded)

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40 minutes ago, Furious_george said:

So the set that won't sell out even with Snowglobe and 20% off, is massively hoarded? How do we know this?

 

Just take a quick look at all those listings on ebay. Compared to Sandcrawler or Helicarrier the amount is twice or thrice as much. I don't want to jump on conclusions, but it's a pretty reliable indicator (not at the very beginning of a set's life). Btw: where do you see a 20% discount on EV? LEGO Shop at Home.de didn't offer a discount on Black Friday/Cyber Monday.

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1 minute ago, Foxhound said:

Btw: where do you see a 20% discount on EV? LEGO Shop at Home.de didn't offer a discount on Black Friday/Cyber Monday.

As I have said, at ToysRUs.de - but only 40 left, they have sold 60 in the last 10 hours...

Only Kaufhof had similar deals on this set.

The reason why it is still available at SAH is the fact that even with the snowglobe (around 30 Euro) it does not make sense to buy it there.

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Just now, mauro23 said:

As I have said, at ToysRUs.de - but only 40 left, they have sold 60 in the last 10 hours...

Only Kaufhof had similar deals on this set.

The reason why it is still available at SAH is the fact that even with the snowglobe (around 30 Euro) it does not make sense to buy it there.

I know, but I thought he meant a discount on LEGO Shop at Home, because he mentioned it together with snowglobe in one sentence.

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