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Bought and built this Bonsai Tree set with my son today. Nice-looking, and if you don't already know, the pink flower pieces are previously designed as a frog.

Wave one of bulk buy finished. Not a piece was missing, extras are even there. I am missing a zombie & sea monster. Thinking they will turn up in another bag.

The spring lantern festival looks great. And I’ve seen pictures of it incorporated with other modulars as a corner unit.

Was surprised how cool this Architecture White House 21054 was to build. Also nice how the set fits into the box when storing. I did one minor change. The included transparent antenna looked dumb as a water fountain so I used a trans blue element from some Marvel set.

cant' really look at it like that. You were paying 10% (non discounted rate before). So 2.35 for the processing isn't bad. Sure its about the same , maybe a bit cheaper for a little while. That's hardly the issue with MP and never was. FVF were always based off sale plus shipping anyways and the tax just recently became mainstream last year or 1.5 years so would of eventually gone to it anyways or done a tax facilitator fee or some bs. I'm just happy they do it all as that would be a royal pita to have to do it yourself.

I think the issue is not so much with the processing fee but rather the FVF itself. While we have always been paying a processing fee on tax (whether with PayPal then or Ebay now), the final value fee, what used to be the 10% portion, was not applied to sales tax previously and it is now under Managed Payments. But as raven said above I for one like having Ebay deal with the whole thing and not have to deal with multiple setups or processors.

Welcome to the Hidden Side . Went from having one set in the theme to all of them over the last two weeks, just because they look cool . Built my first one , nice little set and the interactive is a cool touch though probably won’t lose too much sleep if I don’t play it.

I found a discounted Winter Village Fire Station in the wild today by random chance. A welcome find.

The average rate was carefully calculated to come in just lower than what they would have been previously. But the holds on funds for every real/unreal event, is just terrible. I always appreciated that paypal would allow access to those funds. It gave me that "We know your history, we trust you, and we got your back". This new ebay holding of funds gives me a "We don't care about you, and we will screw you, just because we can" kinda vibe. Hopefully ebay will start considering the goodwill aspect of things. In the long run, showing trust/support for their sellers would be a net plus for them.

The site was its typical hot mess. I placed orders around 1AM with items still in stock, those are on back order. I also had items cancelled for going over limits, even though I was under the limits.

Since some time yesterday (Jan 2). But they started restricting it on Friday (Jan 1) in the late afternoon.

I think they made an error by giving both GWPs with a HP purchase. I took advantage of that for three online orders and one instore order. I'm sure there's many HP fans that don't give two hoots about the car. Personally, I'm not complaining....but the cars would have lasted muuuuuch longer if they weren't double-stacking with The Monster Book of Monsters.

I believe The Haunted House was a LEGO.come exclusive until this weekend. Now it's at Best Buy and Target. Altering all that we may see discounts on it, and that it has a more general availability than before.

Heads up for anyone waiting on orders from Best Buy. I placed an order for pick up (because I don't trust Best Buy shipping) for couple LEGO sets about a week ago. I got a text message saying 1 of 2 were ready for pickup, but the other set was delayed. When I got to the store, I went straight to the LEGO area because in the past they claimed they didn't have product even though it was sitting on their shelf. Today it was the same thing - sitting on the shelf. I brought it to pick-up and they cancelled my "delayed" set and sold the set from the shelf to me at the online sale price. My point - I don't know if this is just my local store's issue, but everyone should always check Best Buy's shelves before cancelling an in-store pickup.

Haunted House at Best buy @ MRSP https://www.bestbuy.com/site/lego-creator-expert-haunted-house-10273/6442090.p?skuId=6442090

Well they are gone now. Bought some - Might not be a short term flip (but possible), but sometime down the road, I will appreciate having purchased them.

What do you mean by tax forms?

Not including Comicon sets or some GWP sets, LEGO doesn't typically make short run parts. However, you can buy custom minifigs with facemasks here: https://citizenbrick.com/collections/heads/face-mask

Maybe it’s the corporate ways movies are made these days? So many fingers in the pot. Movies have to appeal to international box offices, including some that don’t share the same culture as the US market. Movie makers of tent pole type movies seem to be making things to appeal to the most people, which then makes things pretty bland. In an attempt to appeal to all, they appeal to very few on a deep level. I’d say our COVID reality had led to this as well. My wife didn’t understand why I was so interested in watching WW84 last week. She had no idea that it was never in theaters. We can’t go to theaters, so event films just don’t have the same gravity. Something like WW84 isn’t as special watching on my TV the same way I watch a 20 year old film.

100% Agree. It could be a combination of my interests and focuses are evolving (possibly maturing?), or just the available entertainment is going in a different direction. Less than 5 years ago I would get quite excited for new movies, or video games, sporting events, etc. I think I have just continually been disappointed for a long time by some of these things (Endgame anyone?), and I would much rather spend my free time playing golf or tennis. Also, Soul ironically felt like it was missing it's soul. A movie that could have been good, but seemed to be missing something.

there is no tax form for you because amazon reported nothing to the government tax forms are just a copy of what amazon reported to the irs of course you have to report and pay tax but you cannot expect a form from amazon that doesn't exist

reports > payments .. you can get everything you need from there as far as sales, taxes, refund, fees, etc...

Looks like John lewis

I see what you're talking about now. I have a spreadsheet pre-MP and post-MP. I ran my recent sales through the old spreadsheet and there is definitely a difference. In one case I lost $.04 on a $669 + shipping sale. On another case I made $.10 for a $175 + shipping sale. However, if the buyer is from a state with no taxes then we're making money, which my spreadsheet confirmed. On the recent sales with no taxes received I profited over a $1 more than I would have received if still going through Paypal. After posting all my recent sales in both spreadsheets I gained a whole $.37 over pre-MP. I had two sales to non-online sales tax states in the USA. If I take out those two sales, I would have ended up with greater than a $2 loss as compared to pre-MP. This is lame of eBay. Thank you for pointing this out.

So now we are officially into 2021 and our 2020 sales sheets are complete, sort of. For those of us that unfortunately used the brickfolio for tracking, can we get some sort of clarification, pretty please? I ask this fully understanding it's probably not issue #1 for the brickpicker team, but some of us are really stuck in a tough spot since this disappeared. I know, hindsight is 20/20, I don't need any "you should have had a separate sheet" crap from the peanut gallery. I do now, but that doesn't help for older purchases. Thanks for all the work on the site, please help those of us unfortunate souls that relied on this function.

ah ok, that explains it. Thanks.

MBoM now adding to the Hogwarts Crests set ... they must have fixed it.

Let’s also remember that LEGO is a privately-held company. As such, they have more discretion in their decisions without having to justify their logic with shareholders. That can work for or against AFOL. I saw the original submission and thought that looked Bad-a$$ and I have to have one of those. Would have been awesome to have an entire layout in that style. I saw the final version and now I’ll pass. I’m playing A/C Valhalla and I’m spoiled by the visual eye candy. If LEGO wants to compete for my dollars, they’ll have to keep up. They’ve come a long ways from the 80’s, but I want more Fishing Stores — and will pay a premium for those quality sets. The FS may have been a logistical mistake as well. Now we know what can be produced, we expect too much from them But then again, that’s what they should be able to get by with the ideas line — it’s the miscellaneous category. I don’t expect city, friends, etc... to adjust their visual style anytime soon. But I’m not buying those sets for personal builds either.

Built the 75050 B-Wing version I bought used recently (no missing pieces for once and with the instructions!). Since I think this set looks better upright, I built a display stand for it. This set has been on my wish list for a while and was glad to find it locally for $50.

Can you combine LEGO Mario and Mario Kart Live Together?

The new tractor 60287 is on backorder already. That's a good sign. May also indicate that the buyers want a new farm theme! Seperately, and not City theme, but the new Creator Tuk Tuk 40469 went backorder also, I found that interesting. It's fun informally monitoring what goes backorder right after a big drop of new product like this for clues as to what is popular.

Finished building The Razor Crest today

Original designer on LEGO designer: 1b471619-05d9-4d62-b019-f498176c8d35.mp4

Well, in and of itself - It would be (and is) a nice looking set. But in the reality of reasonable expectations - it sucks.

Still not crazy about the squinty look but overall a better model than the 2014 version.

other than no and no?

This beauty

can we add a donate button under our names?

To be fair to people saying goodbye - the forum is nice and all, but it was the Brickfolio that made Brickpicker the go-to site for LEGO investing. Lots of tangible data rather than just another forum where people share opinions. I'm still holding out hope, but even as an ardent supporter of this website - you've got to agree that it's missing a vital piece for much longer than anyone ever thought possible. I'm not going anywhere, but I see why people are frustrated and looking to other sites to support their investing habit.

Picked up a complete no instructions or box 10262 Aston Martin DB5 for $105 shipped from EBay the other day. Was still looking for one to build and they were out of stock everywhere, I guess I happened to come across the listing just at the right time. Officially it would have been $120 shipped but I used my $15 coupon from switching to Managed Payments to bring the price down further. $5 for a manual from Bricklink, and just missing 1 LBG plate 1x1 (I've got plenty of those). While inventorying the set, I tried this for the first time. Probably also the last time

I check the prices a couple times a year. If a set is flat, I dump it after a year. Maybe it'll go up, but maybe it will be the next Birds, Exosuit, Women of NASA, etc... just taking up shelf space. If it climbed, but has since leveled off, also a good time to sell. Super Star Destroyer, Grand Emporium, etc... would be a good examples (ignoring what they did this past year). If it took off like a rocket with irrational exuberance, might want to pull the trigger quick -- I'm looking at you, Seacow. Everything else, is up to your cash flow needs. In my spreadsheet where I track all my sets, I have the sale price column and the date sold right next together. Most of my sales are on ebay and I list one set at a time, and I'll price the next set based on the trend that I'm seeing. It's depressing when I see sets selling for $350 two weeks before Christmas that were selling for $250 two weeks earlier. Ya, you'd wish you had held onto those sets and sold them later, but that's how the dice rolls sometimes. My solution is to "simply" stock enough sets that I can get some quick returns early, but also have the reserves to participate in the long game. For me, that means where I might have considered 10 of a set to be a good reserve with large diversification, now I'm looking at 30 to 50 in a smaller variety. Similarly, if it is going up, consider why. Is it FOMO driven -- if so, sell quick. Is it part of a long-term collectible series (winter holiday sets, architecture cityscapes) where new incoming participants want to catch up -- then it'll probably only continue to increase and you might want to hold longer. If it is part of a series that has been cancelled -- such as sets based on a particular movie -- then the demand might wane and you'll wish you had sold earlier. And then there are the classics -- look at the price history of 10223 or any of the 7040X castle sets. When you think of LEGO, how can you not think about Space and Castles? As long as LEGO doesn't introduce a new castle series, nostalgia will continue to drive these up and you should probably hold onto a couple of them. And then there is the exit plan. How much can a set go up after all? If it's already 5x its original MSRP like some of the castle sets, then do you cash out or keep betting? I don't know of many people who will say, "Oh, why did I sell for 400% profit when I could have made 900% profit?" You're more likely to hear, "Why didn't I take my 400% profit before LEGO decided to reissue the same set this year and now I only doubled my money?" It's a lot safer to take that 400% gain and reinvest it in the next set that might go up only 50%, but is not very likely to drop 50% after retirement. Also, at some point, folks will Bricklink a set if they are willing to spend 5x MSRP. I picked 5x just because that's a fairly extreme gain that not many sets will hit. Personally, if I have a set that has hit 3x MSRP on ebay, I'm more than happy to sell and never look back.

Yes, it seems that the problem here is not BrickSet providing erroneous info but rather people using it not knowing how to properly read and interpret what the site says. It's like a carpenter not knowing how a screwdriver works and then complaining that the screwdriver makes a lousy tool for scraping paint.

This is what I was referring to in the Target is on to us thread. Seconding the mass return is not cool.

Evidence once again why resellers are so hated by retailers.

You should have a local copy of everything you do for tax purposes. I wouldn't rely completely on something I didn't have control of, no matter what the tool.

Built the corner garage on Monday/Tuesday and the Bookshop on Wednesday/Thursday. I like both builds and really notice the improved techniques in the modular line, especially for similar areas to other modulars, or when comparing to city mini builds. As blasphemous as this is: Green Grocer needs an update. The Garage feature is excellent (at least it's my son's favourite besides the fire truck) and is well designed. The rolling door is not for little hands though and the greebling was VERY annoying. I hope Lego figures out a way to take a similar set and make it a reverse corner in the future. I have 5 corner buildings which is enough. The Bookshop was a very strong build and I love the colours, but would like to see a little more work on the walls of the shop itself. The trees suck (and always have) and the corner garage tree looks stupid. The Bookshop is the nicer finished product but suffers like Pet Shop and Detective's Office with a half building each. A full floor bookstore would have been really cool. I am very thankful that they are full size buildings unlike the DO and BB. The best feature of both is that they don't have the stupid Diner staircase. Parisian Restaurant and Green Grocer still rank 1 and 1A for me. Bonus photo of the buildings around the tree this year with both Holiday trains (wall isn't done, but whatever). I hope to light them back up next year if my kid stops touches them .

One more build by me. A few months ago I stumbled upon some digital renderings made by Reddit user u/brxstr of a Back-to-the-Future DMC DeLorean, which looked fantastic. He/she had (has?) the Stud.io file available on Rebrickable.com, so I downloaded it and planned to build it. In doing my due diligence I found out that the model was originally designed by user Troelskf on Brickshelf, so I want to make sure (s)he gets credit as well. I ended up redoing large parts of the design for several reasons: Part availability and cost. Several parts were very expensive (the F40 windscreen for example) so I came up with alternative solutions for those. Stability and Buildability. As the design has never been built IRL, certain parts of the design looked great in Stud.io, but did not work in the brick. For example, the click hinges for the shaping on the back were originally positioned right in between two clicks, which meant there was an ugly gap. The doors were so flimsy in their original design, they would fall apart when touched lightly. Operability. The doors were not opening in the original design, as there was no tolerance for the swing movement (they looked great opened and closed, but would have to be removed and reassembled to change them from opened to closed. The lid for Mr Fusion could not be opened for similar reasons. Improved looks. I completely redesigned the dashboard, adding more and more detailed instrumentation. I changed the gear lever and created a different flux capacitor design. I modified the hose work around the engine, and redesigned the back section to make it look more like the BttF version, including custom license plate. Generating instructions. The original file was a purely digital design, with no consideration for building the set with real bricks. I spent many hours redesigning the build sequence and creating detailed, step by step instructions. They are almost complete (Isn't it wonderful that if you move a part from one step to another in Stud.io, it decides to undo all the call-outs in the instructions which in turn leads to page layouts resetting?). I still have one change to make but then the 300+ page instructions are ready. Here is the final product. Hope you like it. More pictures in my Flickr album (https://www.flickr.com/photos/129210197@N05/with/50605610828/). Total cost was ~$200 (US), but I had most of the common parts on hand. Would likely be closer to $300 if all 1600+ parts had to be purchased.

The Spring Lantern Festival offers different layouts: And Koi carps in the pond!