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While I agree there's no guarantee, how is this speculation? http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/04/01/did-lego-really-cave-to-muslim-demands-amid-anti-islamic-toy-controversy-the-company-responds/ Here's an excerpt from the article (italics by me):

You have to be smart, but I am definitely here. I needed capital to start my Ebay store up (about 5-6K). Rather than take it out of savings, I opened a CC with a 0% offer for 12 months. BAM - initial investment. I have paid it off within 3 months.

It's not ill advised at all. It is in fact quite common to get investment loans from banks to invest in stocks. As long as the interest rate you pay is lower than your return it is a great strategy, to be applied prudently. In that vein, consider lego. Unlike stocks, lego sets generally do not fall in value. At worst, you should always be able to sell a set at retail price after EOL. So your potential loss is quite limited while your upside is fairly safe compared to stocks since most sets do not have volatile price swings. Here's an example of something I could do today. My credit card just sent me a balance transfer offer with a 1% interest rate for a year. If I buy a boatload of lego sets at any of the semi regular 50% off deals I see, one could look at it as I really got 49% off to account for the interest. In my experience, you can usually sell any 50% off set for regular retail price after EOL. That's a 100% return, at a cost of 1%. When you consider that your average stock return is 6-8% in a year, I'll take the lego appreciation any day of the week.

If I were you all I would ell them FBA on Amazon right now - 39.99. Just can't picture this one going up. Crap I would just open them all and have a landspeeder battle! I would call it ATTACK OF THE CLONEs!!! You know because there are a bunch of Lukes and Obi Wans and ... C3POs... and R2-D2. And because thats also a Star Wars movie... It was funny to me.

No one said they did that for death stars.

Does this advice come from that same S@H employee that told you WVC wasn't retiring, or is this strictly speculation?

or just pay your bills/get a better interest rate and dont charge what you cannot afford

Picked up another City Passenger Train at TRU today. Talked to the girl as I walked in, and told her I was price matching from the website since it said they had no stock but I knew they did, she says that's fine. I mill around and bring it up, also picking up my Train Stations that I ordered. She rings it up at normal retail like the website says, but then wants to refuse the $25 off $100 promotion saying I'm already getting it on sale.(they let you do it online) I tell her I'll buy it online from my phone in front of her and have her go back and pick it up off the shelf at the online price if it's that much hassle. She takes off the $25. In short, Passenger Train for $112 tax included.

I agree...but....Parents need to pay attention and shop for hard to find items a month before Christmas, not a week.

Or if we didn't buy up all the stock, online and off....they could have got then at retail.

I'll list out the steps. 1. Log in, click on the 'wanted tab' 2. In the lower tab section 3rd one in it's labeled 'part set'. click that 3. type in the set number of what you want parted out 4. type in a new wanted list name for it (you can uncheck the notify by email if you don't want to get spammed by a million different vendors) 5. click the box that says 'set minimum desired qty' 6. click submit for edit 7. Now you have the entire set parted out with the minimum required parts needed. You can delete and change quantities as desired/need.

Welcome to the club. I forget if you were in the Ghost Train buying club...

Gotta trust the guy with the Wolverine Avatar. lol

Dude, you really don't know what you're talking about. There is every indication that JP is done. First, it's sold out at LEGO Shop at Home. Second, it was heavily clearanced over the past month. Third, this is its second holiday season and most SW sets don't last past the second holiday season. Fourth, it is a white box, four digit SW set and those are all on their way out. Fifth, TLG basically said that it would be retired around now back in the spring when that controversy arose. So, while it may lack a "Retiring Soon" label on LEGO Shop at Home, every other indicator I can think of indicates that it's done, but if you don't think that it is, you should absolutely wait to stock up on them until sometime next year.

I sold one of my four for $45. I just keep numbing the price $5 when I sell one.

At this stage there isn't even a sniff of a rumour that we will see another Wolverine right now (though I do expect it). Hold for now, your initial outlay wasn't much.

BIG TROLL

From that "less talked about" list I'm focusing on getting a few of the Technic sets, LR trains, and might have to get a few Train Stations as well. Winter Village stuff doesn't sell too well in the Southern Hemisphere - we have sunny summer Xmas's Monster Fighters has also been a bit of a bust locally here with most sets sitting on the shelves for ages (Halloween isn't that big here either).

No, this is leverage.

Rubbish. Businesses use debt all the time to fund their operation. It's called leverage. Not many businesses have a 0% debt to equity ratio, and if they do their owners are often not using their position to leverage for expansion properly. I run my Lego operation like a business. Some of it is funded through debt. As long as returns outstrip the cost of that debt then there is no problem doing so.

How about a package delivered by Fedex then stolen by UPS?

My father-in-law knows I love Lego and was cruising the Target at Westmount Mall in London, ON. He came across 50% off Attack of the Wargs and Shelob Attacks, which is basically what TRU.ca had as their Black Friday sale (although they backordered me and never delivered the actual sets). Anyway, I was at the Windsor location yesterday and they didn't have these on the shelves at all, and my father-in-law bought the three Wargs in London, but for those of you not in these cities, might be worth a stop at Target on the way home from work. I also think one of the bigger Creator Sets was 50% off, but he couldn't recall the name of it. Happy hunting!

I just ordered 50.

Lego has finally revealed official box art for their next CUUSOO set coming out January 1st, 2014. It contains 295 pieces and will retail for $29.99. The Brick Fan The original designer, Stephen Pakbaz, reviewed the set himself.

Troll...

Doritos and Cheerios! They are everywhere and my 1-year old is like a little sweeper that picks up all the crumbs.

Like Solomon once said, cut the baby in half - sell seven now and sit on the other 8.

I do concur he would be good. As long as it isn't Shia LeBouf or something.

Here's what my innovative wife and son made with that huge box:

Occasionally. For the most part, I use eBay's GSP program. But, when we do send our own packages, if they're over $100 or for some reason my spidey senses are tingling, $50, I use the 3rd party insurance.

The better the deal, the more sense it makes to charge now and pay later. The Cyber Monday sales were an example of buying now and figuring out how to pay later.

I haven't been getting much sleep either. After working a grinding 8.5 hours at my day job, I have been hitting every Target, Wal-mart and Toys R Us in my county. I've been buying up all of the Marvel Titan Figures (except Iron Man, he just isn't selling) and TMNT basic figures that I can find. Get WM and TRU to price match Target's ad for the TMNT @ $7 each and get Target and WM to price match TRU's Titan's price of $7.99. Been able to clear out about 4 Targets, 2 WM's and 2 TRU's of everything listed. Go home, log em in for Merchant fulfilled Amazon, and start shipping that night. The sales would roll in for the actual Turtles and popular characters like Shredder and Splinter and sell out in a few hours! I really wish I had been paying more attention to these earlier in the year and built a huge stockpile of them. Finish shopping at 10 PM, and finish packing at 3 AM! Get to work at my bread and butter job at 7:30 AM. I almost can't wait for Xmas buying season to be over I'm so tired!

I finally did - for about 5 hours. Good to go. lol

I also think this set has good intrinsic value. It also doesn't hurt that I bought a bunch at $6 each during a crazy Walmart clearance last year.

buying something for investment on borrowed money/credit card is ill advised. Would you take a loan from the bank to invest in stocks? No you use what money you are willing to/able to lose when you invest in toys/stocks/anything

That's precisely why I showed the opportunity cost of not using the funds elsewhere as an alternative for those of us who do. Whether your investment dollar is funded via CC, savings account, or cash under your mattress, it's probably costing you a good 5-20% not to be using it elsewhere

Yes, when the difference in price is greater than 5%, they will take off another 10%. I had actually called TRU customer service the day before when I first noticed LSH sale price. I wanted them to price match for me over the phone for an online order. The customer service rep said they don't price match with the manufacturer. I insisted that the Lego Store is a store, but she said their policy doesn't include price matching with LSH. I didn't believe her so thought I'd try my luck in person, and the results worked rather nicely. (Though it didn't come with VIP points... )

Winter Vill Cottages. Need more! LR Trains. Worth the risk because it comes with ample track. Straight track alone sells for $2.50-4 each. It's prob too late for Monster Fighters deals. Jabba's Palace. Everyone should try to buy at least 10. Then pair 1/2 of them up with the Skiff and Rancor Pit sets. Might be hard to do now since Rancors and Jabba's aren't on-sale anymore.

Agreed, speculation is just that. But there are clear signs this one will be done soon - for one, it's not listed on S@H Australia any more, a typical precursor to US and Canada retirement. Two, there are none left in Lego Stores anywhere in North America. I wouldn't wait on this much longer, but that's just me speculating :)

The Vampyre castle is done. How many are you seeing at your local Lego stores? How long has it been since Walmart, Target, etc has had them in store, or online? Lego sent TRU the remaining inventory. LEGO Shop at Home's sale price is placed to clear out any remaining inventory that could be in a few stores around the Nation. If this set was going to be around for a while you would see Vampyre Castles still at major retailers. Also the sale price wouldn't be in place.

For anyone still thinking this is a sleeper set, I have a hundred Fire Brigades to sell you.

How about a bookstore?

How much official Lotr merch has there been over the years? For one, I think up until now it has been pretty scarce? Infact, I would say old merch selling for thousands should be an indicator of what possible hot Lotr items being produced now might be worth in the future. Consider this, is there any POTC merch selling in the thousands? I honestly don't know but I would wager POTC barely scratches the surface of popularity when compared with LOTR. Another factor going for LOTR over POTC is that LOTR is a huge part of nerd culture. While we may not like that word, nerds or whatever you call them are essentially who are going to be buying an EOL lego set years from now. They are the ones doing so with Star Wars sets right? I don't think POTC is that big among nerds. I as a nerd myself definitely don't care that much about POTC. To me, it was just a disney movie that was ok. I know a girl who loves POTC because she thinks Depp is hot, but other than her, I don't know anyone who cares about them beyond the movies. But I do know that nerds love fantasy( magic the gathering, dungeons and dragons, world of warcraft), and they love Lotr, they love Star Wars, they love Superheroes and they are the ones who will be the big collectors with high paying jobs who can afford a $400 Lego Set. And if there are nerds willing to pay thousands for old Lotr merch right now, there will probably be many more in future willing to thanks to the movies giving it just a little bit more nudge from huge cult following to actual popular culture (that which doesn't consist of just nerds alone). I say that because I honestly didn't know it existed till the movie came out. Of course I never played D&D either, which likely would have led me to read the books. That or larping which would also probably had also led to discovering Lotr. Basically I see it this way. Was there a huge amount of people dressing up as Jack Sparrow for the premiere of Pirates movies? not that I know of. Some people probably did but was it alot? Was there a huge amount of people dressing up as Gandalf for the Lotr movies? Yes. Just like for Star Wars and Superhero movies, people love to cosplay to these, because it is nerds having fun with other nerds. Thus Lotr crosses the scope of what makes Star Wars and Superhero sets have great gains. I mean, we already know Star Wars sets can have huge gains. We already know Batman and Spiderman sets can have huge gains. What do they have in common? Nerds It should also be mentioned about Lego Castle themes. Why do people like them? Is it because Castles are just really cool? I argue the reason is because the fact that Castles are a part of Fantasy. People who love D&D and Legos will want to make a Castle because they are related. This then has a hint of things to come for Lotr.

Reseller mission statement: "We aim to provide a valuable solution to the time conscious individual that still desires to make a great impression during the Christmas season by allowing access to highly desirable toys at reasonable prices and speedy delivery schedules" Might need to divide that into a couple of sentences lol

I bought the crap out of these after last Christmas for $12 each and only have a couple left. 5 figs and a ship. Can't go wrong with that.

"You just saved Christmas" - buyer of DC

yeah, resellers can never ever ever ever be a good thing ever

What else is there?

IMHO LOTR is nowhere close to being as influential on pop culture as Star Wars.