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There has been an update to Sergio Herencias Ghostbusters HQ MOC which was originally inspired by Brent Waller

I built the mystery box this weekend. The mystery box could be anything, it could even be a boat. Turns out that it actually was a boat 10210 is an impressive build, has great details and it displays well (I am missing two brown technic barrels for a sail, but those are easy to replace). The organ was a nice addition and I really appreciate that the galley and cannon areas were designed to be detachable in the same manner that the floors of a modular building are. This is a build that really comes together nicely and at 30" by 24", it takes up a lot of space. A great buy, especially at $160 under the BP price

Why are you even inside a TRU?

LEGO is successful because it is a dynamic product. The best toy ever created IMO. Now if you go back when LEGO wasn't so dynamic financially, you will find that many of their products were not so "dynamic." Stale might be a better word. There are many reasons why LEGO has found its groove recently, but building highly collectible and interesting sets that get retired is a major one. Many other members have stated it better than I... Widgets have a shelf life...Out with the old and in the new are two that I like. But how about this idea... eBay is the reason why LEGO has exploded in growth over the past 8 or 9 years...Face it, 20 years ago, there was no eBay, thus no LEGO secondary market. With the advent of the internet and auction sites like eBay, people began to learn of the value of old LEGO sets and realized they could make money off of reselling old, used sets. This morphed into saving and selling MISBs. People related LEGO sets to other collectibles that were limited in production, such as stamps, coins...Barbie Dolls and eBay was the perfect conduit to sell these secondary LEGO sets to the public. LEGO might like to act like it hates resellers, but I don't think that it really does. We all know that LEGO benefits greatly from our purchases and the interest and buzz we create about their products. What company wouldn't? They really just want to keep the reselling in check and manageable. Don't underestimate the power of social media to spread information about making money schemes and ideas. Jeff and I find links about our site in the wackiest places, so people are learning more and more about the value of the brick. Would LEGO still be profitable without eBay and the secondary market? Probably, but by a whole lot less that is certain. Sorry for taking this SSD thread way off topic...

Grand Emporium - modulars rule.

Just bought a Grand Emporium. My first one. It was time. Since there was only an hour left until the Balloon Cart promo was over, and I really wanted another one, it was time.

I think of a price I'll be satisfied with sometime in the future. I'll go ahead and list the item at that price and then leave it until it sells. Sometimes it's 2 minutes, 2 weeks, and sometimes it's 2 years.

My Triple-E just shipped from LEGO Shop at Home . It was my first order on LEGO Shop at Home back in April.

I just finish my R2D2 a few days ago Sent from my iPhone using Brickpicker

Actually had some clearance sale luck today. I bought two MBA Adventure Sets for 50% off. Plus the 20% off coupon on one of them. The only negative was that I completely forgot about the TRU GCs I had in my wallet. I bought those from GiftCardMall on eBay a couple weeks back at 20% off. Oops! I also picked up a 5002113 Friends Beach Hammock. They had one on the shelf, with no shelf tag. I figured I'd check it out, and if it were more than a few dollars, I'd just throw it back. Rang up for 1 cent! I passed on the two MBA Inventor sets they had, although I'm kicking myself for passing up Lego at 50%. I need to get back there and pick them up. I also passed on the one Space Center set they had; the seals looked very suspect.

Picked up a complete loose Emerald Night for $175. Took long enough to finally buy the set.

Wait, if it's the Grand Emporium then why am I seeing a Star Wars set on the instruction manual?

The SSD is probably one of the most impressive display LEGO sets ever created. It is elegant and nasty looking at the same time. The 10188 is really not a display set...it is a play set. It's my opinion that AFOLs with the discretionary income to buy either set will choose the SSD more often than not. As a serious LEGO and STAR WARS fan, I like serious sets. SSD is as serious as they come. Sent from my iPad using Brickpicker

(Not sure if this is the right place for this. Apologies if it's not.) The Investor Phase: If you have savings, a decent job and a credit card that you don't need to pay off for a year, it's VERY VERY EASY to do this part. You just check various places every day for deals and buy buy buy!!! The lack of space in my house caused by stored Lego and my large credit card bill (0% interest until this October) are testament to this! Like most BrickPickers I'm aware of, my approach was generally to buy on 30% discount or more and get at least one of each set for my personal collection and then multiples of sets I thought would do well at EOL. Despite not really being a very organised person, I spent a fair amount of time logging all my sets and where they are stored, in anticipation for the day I start to sell them. I have about 1000 sets, ranging from the small ones up to SSD (one of). which isn't including minifigures and polybags. The Turning Point: I left my well-paid day job a couple of weeks ago (not by choice) and am going to try to be self-employed instead. With no steady income and possibly needing to downsize our house, and the credit card to pay off in October, I NEED to start selling the Lego for cash and space. If only I'd just left all the money in a savings account! Ah well! The Seller Phase: About 3 weeks ago, I sold my first set (on eBay). Since then, I've sold another 11 on eBay (10 posted and 1 sold this morning). Total money back in my pocket is about

Even though I hate TRU the one here in NYC is pretty amazing.....I've been there 5 times since Fri, still can't bring myself to spend a dime there. MP grimlocks were buy one get one half off no limit.

Better hope others don't decide to do that, I shudder to think what would happen to the economy if people based their purchasing decisions on actual logic.

If anyone contacted me and asked me to open one of my high dollar retired sets I would tell them to pound sand.....just sayin.

I grabbed one when it still indicated a shipping date of June 26. Interesting that it quickly moved to 30 days. As much as I'd like this to make it to a triple VIP event, part of me would rather have it retire sooner than later. Can always work on adding to my 'next modular in the series that will probably retire (are we all agreed on PS?)' if this goes before October. Actually as I'm typing this it inspired me to order a PS to get another balloon cart. Never too early to build up inventory

I hate it when I fell asleep 15 minutes before the eBay auction I bid on ended. I hate the fact that I still complain about these minute things. I mean some people are concerned about having roofs on top of their heads on day to day basis :(

Here is the preliminary count I have so far, though some are dependent on the discount we can get: 2 - 46andTWO 2 - Alpinemaps 1 - @rtisan 2 - chillmodious 1 - darksam007 1 - Dredgen 1 - dutchmaster305 1 - exciter1 2 - gorbasho 2 - Huskers1236 4 - jaisonline 2 - Jimking23 2 - jjsrt8 2 - johnwray 1 - legodad 1 - naf 1 - NJHitmen 1 - rubysue74 2 - sabojj 1 - stephen_rockefeller 4 - supergtp1 1 - tipup420 2 - varmintt 39 sets total Going to send another email over to NACM as I still haven't heard back. I'll ask them about tiered pricing

Whilst we can't agree on whether it's investing or not, it seems like we do agree that all Lego "investing" requires reselling. And it's the reselling part that's a whole lot of hassle and maybe makes the investing side not worth it. Update from me: I posted another 2 sets today (Royal Mail), and also bought a printer so I can start using MyHermes instead of RoyalMail for bigger items.

We can't assume any of these sets are great sellers, true, but your point of LEGO extending set lives to 6 years was based off of one set, the 10188. There have been over 10,000 LEGO sets produced, and even if 10 or 20 had a 6 year shelf life, that is an outlier. The 10188 is an exception...for now. In no way am I knocking the 10188. I have pointed out many times that bang for your buck, it is one of the best sets LEGO ever developed and sold. Maybe LEGO is changing their philosophy on retiring sets. Time will tell. My original point was that by retiring LEGO sets, it makes them more valuable than if they were never or rarely retired. Sure, it helps the investors of the world as well, but most of all, this value after EOL helps LEGO itself. If an item is perceived as valuable after it is retired, more often than not, the same would be true when the item is being sold by primary retailers. It is much easier to sell a $400 LEGO set to an AFOL if they believe that the LEGO set will be worth more money one day than they paid for it. How many $400 boxes of plastic would LEGO sell if the pieces became almost worthless after opening the box like many toys? Not many. The primary and secondary markets compliment one another and the retiring of sets is a key component to it all.

I think reselling in general sense does not imply the component of "wait for manufacturer to stop producing what you have". Plain reselling is "buy something at a biggest discount possible, sell it alongside the manufacturer, even better if manufacturer gets sold out(but will produce more) and item is in demand" . in our terms, general reselling is "flipping". Once "wait for retirement" component is involved, it becomes more specialized reselling.

Folks, fundamental business management is that all "widgets" have a life cycle. No exceptions. That life cycle can evolve, but is usually defined. I believe the LEGO group is testing the tolerances of longer life spans as well as more products on the shelf at the same time, coupled with price controls. Trends are not determined over night. This is why I believe that last year and this year may be recalled as the golden age of LEGO investing. If their hypothesis is proven true, ie. longer life cycles and more products at the same time, the secondary market will be shaken. Very small group of people have piled up large exclusives since the price control was implemented. If that changes next year you will have mass buying of exclusives in the future with a large saturation of sets from LEGO. This will lead to price declines from that point forward. The sets retired over the current and previous 18 months will be pure GOLD to those that can wait to sell for years to come.

:-) Wrong thread...

bricklink's site from my experience is complicated until you get used to where everything is. fee are cheaper but you get less exposure. sometimes paying eBay fees tend to balance out. go to the blogs and look at the bl vs ebay.

Lol this came from someone whose motto (used to be?) "Go MISB or go home" :D :D

that was the malevolence that was cleared on big zoo cancellation monday. geonosian cannon was also put on sale. this was soldout at shop at home since mid jan-early feb when target slowly began to raise its price. its weird how they have not budged on lowering the price on this EVER except for that brief period. i think this has been excluded from BOGOs also.

That's not Leia its juno from rogue squadron set she is star killers pilot.....

at today's price for google shares vs. me getting to pick the sets i want, i'll take the legos. for a 3-5 year investment. but really, i'm doing both.. i own lego sets and a variety of stocks, including google. you don't just diversify the sets you own, you diversify your entire investment portfolio.

I do not believe this is an upcoming set. The room was designed and built by Brightbricks - a UK based company that does worldwide builds, and have Lego Certified Professionals (checkout their website). They do some amazing stuff overall including some massive builds, including the 350,000 piece Durham Cathedral currently being built as a fundraising project for the Cathedral (I'm one of the volunteer builders). I think this is just something they made up themselves to fit in with the bedroom theme.

I looked through most of the Leia minifigures and it doesn't look like any of them. Edit: You are correct. It's not Leia. It is a combo of minifigure part. The torse comes from Juno Eclipse which is in the Rogue Shadow set.

I didn't buy or sell any because it doesn't fit my strategy, but wasn't it available at a great price from somewhere in March? I'm guessing it was a bunch of quick flips. Edit...ninja'd by DNIIM

I can confirm - tower bridge is 28 bags.

You speak of the stock market as though it can't drop. I really hope you are careful. Speculative stocks are not safe. Sure, the past year has been great and hindsight tells us all that shares in Apple would have been much smarter than investing in Lego since last July (it went from $400 to $650ish before the stock split) but you never know where the next crash is lurking. This whole market has been talked up way beyond where it should be and it will come crashing down, but only when the big boys are already out. I got into Lego because, to me, it felt safer than stocks. I could not take the anxiety of being in the stock market, with the investment value so far out of my control. I would watch the news every day, read MarketWatch.com, and my emotions would be aligned with whatever the market was doing that day. It was hell. Sure, it was great when I was winning, but surprises can come at any time. And, like Lego, you only realise the gains when you are out. You have to get out to confirm the win. I got out with

There is a good takeaway from this. It does take time and effort to sell. I think a fair amount of people are in for a somewhat rude awakening when they go to sell and they have never done it before. Much harder than hitting the sell button on a stock.

Finally finished Ferrari Enzo 8653. Bought it second hand dirt cheap, but pieces missing. Had to bricklink more pieces than expected. Difficult build with instruction manual on ipad. Still missing 1 piece. Final model is beautifull. Ready for my next build! Verzonden vanaf mijn iPhone met behulp van Brickpicker

To EU folks complaining TLG pricing policy making you less competitive in the secondary market: does it occur to you maybe the goal of their company is to get more profit from all the markets instead of making a pricing policy to make your days better as resellers?

I can't wait for the Retiring Soon - Closed Speculation thread.

Is this similar to the Mick Rib, where it's available for a limited time only?? sorry I had to (:

With the new movies coming out, remakes will become less of an issue for a lot of these sets, with the Falcon as the obvious exception. We won't really know if the new movies have a Death Star or SSD/Star Destroyer. They probably won't, but you can't count them out. JJ Abrams does a nice job of blending the old with the new, so I'm sure we will see some classic vehicles and characters. I just really believe that big time STAR WARS collectors look for accurate models and are extremely anal like myself, so a set like the 10188 is not a must have set. Sent from my iPad using Brickpicker

Grab some popcorn and head over here: http://community.brickpicker.com/topic/2593-news-on-10221-super-star-destroyer/ . There is no romance there, but a lot of action, suspense, twists and turns

That would definitely make the most sense. It`s an awesome looking set for sure!

I have some time to wait before my new son will be able to help me build. Many who have read my responses now know I am a proud pappa. I have wanted a child more specifically a son for mor ethan a decade. We were blessed with a son to adopt just 10 weeks ago. I left this house this morning with a warm heart....When I said goodbye to him this morning he gave me a heart melting smile. Teary eyed just typing it. Go ahead poke fun...I am cream puff and wear my emotions proudly.

Gimmie a break, nobody in their right mind would be offended by a Red Skull LEGO... This on the other hand... Plus this article: http://godbricks.blogspot.com/2012/01/holocaust-lego.html

When I'm working on Part "1" I'll open all the "1" bags and lay them on the table, leaving all the pieces inside (I have a very nosy cat who likes to swat small objects around, so I can't just dump all the pieces out). Then when I need a piece I'll go fishing through all the bags for it. It's annoyingly inefficient, the bags start to tear after a while, and that crackling sound the cellophane makes is obscenely loud at 2:00 in the morning, which is when I can build in peace. I should probably invest in some kind of sorting containers...any suggestions?

You know, now I am confused. Cause there are three different shades of gray now, isn't there? Dark bluish gary, medium (regular?) gray, then light bluish gray. Or is it four shades of gray now? Ugh, I can't remember. I think it is 4 shades. Light and dark of old grey and light and dark of the newer shade. As long as there aren't 50!! Sorry, could not resist.