EdmanZA

42100 Liebherr is currently on sale on Amazon for £250: https://smile.amazon.co.uk/dp/B07NDBGW4G/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_uyOuFb0KTACF7

These two comments line up quite well with my feelings on the set. When I first saw the set I thought it looked great, but I was also quite surprised by the specific subject matter. It did seem to quite blatantly cross the line of Lego's own guidelines. What for me distinguishes it from other sets that have been mentioned is: It is a model of a very specific vehicle: a Bell/Boeing V22 Osprey. Other sets may look like real vehicles, but are not explicitly linked: 42066: Air Race Jet looks like an F35, but isn't called one. Sky Police helicopter is not called an AH-1Z. The V22 is a vehicle that is currently only used by the military. Possible paper tenders aside, there is no single instance in civilian use today. Land Rover, Unimog etc. all have have multiple, daily-visible civilian uses and the sets represent those uses. The V22 is in active military service. The Sopwith Camel, pirate ships, Indiana Jones vehicles are all historic vehicles, used outside of living memory for most people. The V22 is a real-world vehicle. Vehicles from Star Wars, Avengers etc. are used in fantasy worlds in fantasy contexts. If you were to remove any individual one of the above points, I think the set would pass muster. I don't think DFG-VK's criticism of licence money going to a company involved in the arms industry will be what sways Lego here, but rather the highlighting of the four points above may have tipped the balance in internal discussions at Lego.

Asda currently have the Technic Porsche 911 GT3 RS on sale for £159.99 (36% off). http://direct.asda.com/george/kids/lego-toys/lego-technic-porsche-911-gt3-rs-42056/000723966,default,pd.html

I recently completed my own journey of Bricklinking a UCS Millenium Falcon and while building, I set up a camera on a tripod to take a photo at the end of each step. Here is the result. The Bricklinking process was pretty standard and I used most of the standard part substitutions. The whole thing kicked off when I came across an Ebay lot with a large number of parts, at a good price. From there I purchased a number of parts from Lego Bricks-n-Pieces and Pick-a-brick. To simplify things, rather than looking for the absolute cheapest cost, I purchased any Bnp or PaB part that was cheaper, or within 20% or so of the average Bricklink price. I gathered the prices using BrickStock, Malou's Bricks & Pieces Helper website and a manual trawl through PaB. I then performed the comparison using Excel. I spread the purchases over a few months, spending around £50 at a time (the Lego free shipping limit). I ran out of cheap Lego parts around the same time as Bricklink's search functions were updated, so I finished off the part search using the new features, buying from UK and EU stores to save shipping. A lot has been written by others on what parts can be substituted, so a won't go into detail on that. Rather I'll highlight a couple of my observations. 1.) If you're looking to buy the minifigures, it can be cheaper to get them parted out, rather than fully assembled. I saved around £20 this way. 2.) I choose to replace the 6x14 Dark red plate with a 2x6 and 6x12 dark red plate, rather than a 6x14 DBG. 3.) The Dark Bluish Gray Hinge Brick 1 x 2 Locking with 1 Finger Vertical End is quite rare and expensive. But, all 36 of them are used in combination a Light Bluish Greay Hinge Brick 1 x 2 Locking with 2 Fingers Vertical End. If you replace all 36 pairs with a 2 finger DBG, 1 finger LBG combo, you can save around £50. Most of the combos are hidden, but even where they're not, it's hard to see the difference. 4.) I replaced the 30516c02 LBG turntable with the current turntable and plates. The result saves £8 or so, has the same height and colour as the original and cannot really be seen on the finished model. 5.) Most people replace the printed radar dish with a plain one with a vinyl sticker. I instead used a waterslide transfer as this gave a much smoother final appearance. Finally, a couple of pictures of the finished build.

Tesco Direct have the Technic Claas Xerion on offer for £90, along with a voucher for an extra £10 off if you spend more than £75. Link here

Amazon currently has the 42043 Technic Arocs for £110 (35% discount). https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00SDTS2CS/

Since it's already opened, killing most of its value for collectors, I would say let him put it together. I recently Bricklinked one and the build is great fun, while the size of the finished model can only really be appreciated in person. Complete used sets with box and instructions still go for quite hefty sums on Ebay, so you can still make some money if you decide to sell it.

I also do this. I very rarely buy sets as soon as they're released, but rather wait until there's a discount. Amazon tends to discount Technic flagships by up to 25% two or three times per year. By saving up the money beforehand, I can take advantage of these sales as soon as they occur.

I don't specifically budget for Lego, but rather it comes out as part of my overall budget for everything else. As money comes it, I'll allocate it to various categories e.g. bills, food, insurance, pension, emergency savings, spending money etc. The important ones get filled first and then anything left over is spread over the non-essential ones. If I'm saving for something specific, like Lego, that'll be first in the non-essential list, otherwise I'll just assign it to the general spending money category. I can then either stick to spending the amount of money in the category, or if I need to spend more and take it from somewhere else, the categories allow me to visualise the trade-off. For example, I have £100 in the Lego category and want to buy a set for £170. I can either wait until I've saved enough or decide that I'll get the extra £70 by taking £35 from the dining out category and £35 from my vacation category. As a result, I'll have my Lego, but I'll eat out less that month and perhaps do one or two fewer activities on my holiday. I use the You Need a Budget software to track all this, but really you could do it in Excel or on Post-It notes. The important thing is to have a good understanding of your spending and income and stay within your limits.

Thanks, Jim, for the great review and outstanding pictures. I'm really looking forward to getting this set!

Wow, that's really impressive and I love the white and red colour scheme.

Toys R Us has quite a few sets on sale, including 75105 - Millenium Falcon for £95 and 75094 - Shuttle Tyderium for £64.

I also encountered this problem and I don't think there's an easy solution. If you look at the .bsx or exported .xml file in a text editor, you'll see the values are always stored in USD. When I was doing this in old Bricklink, I ended up multiplying all my Brickstock prices by the currency conversion rate and then importing them into Bricklink in my local currency. It was a pretty inconvenient process and I ended up just using USD for most things. These days it's a little bit easier since with new BL, you can bulk increase or decrease wanted prices by a percentage. So now I'd keep everything in Brickstock as-is, import my wanted list and then multiply all the imported prices by a percentage to get the right values.

Wow, that's very good price - I've just finished Bricklinking parts and they came to around $900, with colour substitutions. I must say, if I were offered a MISB one for that price, my immediate thought would be 'stolen goods' or 'scam', but hopefully that's not the case.

And eligible for Clubcard Boost if you happen to have some vouchers lying around.