Historic Themes PAB Thread

[Sir Dano]

1 hour ago, iragm said:

I don't see these.  Part number?

It's never been in stock in green.  It was just posted as a part.

That's weird, they aren't on there anymore.

They're back on there, number for the torso is 6402701/76382

Luckily I took a screenshot of the shield, at least.

I ordered 5 of them, wonder if I'll actually get them? lol.

Edited October 17, 2022 by Sir Dano

[iragm]

Nice, thanks.  They appear to be there now, just out of stock: https://www.lego.com/en-us/pick-and-build/pick-a-brick?query=69360+6402701+6395137&page=1&includeOutOfStock=true&sku=

[jodawill]

Did anyone else notice that they raised the price of flat silver conical helmets to over 50 cents a few weeks ago? I should have bought more in my last order. I only bought 20, and I expect I'll want about 50 more when all is said and done after the Lion Knights minifigures become available. The red plumes are also 24 cents instead of 17 cents, and the forestmen shields are $1.28... everything is getting stupid expensive, and the interesting parts are only available for a couple hours each week. Maybe increasing the prices is meant to have the effect of increasing availability. I wish they'd just give everyone a limit on in demand items, say 50 of each per order. Then everyone could have a chance to get them at reasonable prices.

I've been frustrated with the gray knights at the BAM stations too. They don't have any limits, so the very moment they bring them out, scalpers come in and buy literally every single one they have. I've never found them in stock at my local store. I found them once at the Legoland Discovery Center in Columbus, and someone was already there literally buying the entire stock when I got there. It's incredibly disheartening because I have to travel an hour to get to the store, and they never have them. I could buy them online, but I don't want to reward the scalpers.

Edited October 18, 2022 by jodawill

[azog]

48 minutes ago, jodawill said:

I've been frustrated with the gray knights at the BAM stations too. They don't have any limits, so the very moment they bring them out, scalpers come in and buy literally every single one they have. I've never found them in stock at my local store. I found them once at the Legoland Discovery Center in Columbus, and someone was already there literally buying the entire stock when I got there. It's incredibly disheartening because I have to travel an hour to get to the store, and they never have them. I could buy them online, but I don't want to reward the scalpers.

I got mine back in June at my local Lego store. Very fortunate too! An older lady apparently drove from a different state just to get those, and she walked out with 20+! Luckily I got there 5 minutes before she did and got the 6 that I wanted haha. I haven't seen them in stock ever since, which is a real shame for people like yourself. 

[natesroom]

5 hours ago, jodawill said:

I've been frustrated with the gray knights at the BAM stations too. They don't have any limits, so the very moment they bring them out, scalpers come in and buy literally every single one they have. I've never found them in stock at my local store. I found them once at the Legoland Discovery Center in Columbus, and someone was already there literally buying the entire stock when I got there. It's incredibly disheartening because I have to travel an hour to get to the store, and they never have them. I could buy them online, but I don't want to reward the scalpers.

How do they buy the whole stock? they made me put 15 in each BAM container when i got 105 torsos so 7 containers

Edited October 19, 2022 by natesroom

[Black Feather]

Ok.  I see all the forestman stuff sold out.  Was this all available and sold out or they just put it up as sold out. Seems like I everything I see after it’s already sold out.  I always check at midnight EST when in the past they put the new parts up.  Are they putting up at different random times now or something?

[Black Feather]

6 hours ago, jodawill said:

Did anyone else notice that they raised the price of flat silver conical helmets to over 50 cents a few weeks ago? I should have bought more in my last order. I only bought 20, and I expect I'll want about 50 more when all is said and done after the Lion Knights minifigures become available.

I noticed this.  At first I thought it was the other silver color which was over 50 cents before, but then I realized they jacked up the price.  Very glad I bought so many before.  The prices are annoying.  I will say this though. Don’t see the plain green legs yet.  If those come out at some obscene price instead of 0.58 like every other plain legs 73200 after being a cheap buy on PAB for so long and then taken down, that would be the ultimate BS.

Edited October 19, 2022 by Black Feather

[jodawill]

22 minutes ago, Black Feather said:

Ok.  I see all the forestman stuff sold out.  Was this all available and sold out or they just put it up as sold out. Seems like I everything I see after it’s already sold out.  I always check at midnight EST when in the past they put the new parts up.  Are they putting up at different random times now or something?

It's completely random. The Vikings were added in the afternoon. The forestmen parts were added sometime between midnight and 9am.

 

I have a bookmark on my phone for a search of all the parts I'm looking for. I keep checking every few minutes every day so I won't miss the new castle parts.

27 minutes ago, natesroom said:

How do they buy the whole stock? they made me put 15 in each BAM container when i got 105 torsos so 7 containers

They were buying them in the plastic containers. They had a huge stack of them. It was a family digging through the bins to find all of them for the dad. I don't know whether he was planning to sell them or build his own army, but that's just a real jerk move. They had HUNDREDS of them. I think the daughter was embarrassed. She left a few sitting on top for me. So I was able to get some, but I'd like to get some more.

Lego shouldn't allow this. This is why regular people can't buy them. They need to put limits on BAM. It's a really bad customer service. The same goes for PAB. Just make the things available at a reasonable price and place limits on the orders. A limit of 50 of each part would allow people to get a decent sized army while also keeping them available for people who don't have time to look at PAB incessantly like I have for the past few months.

Even better, they could release these parts in small sets so we could actually go to the store and buy them. 😕

I have a love/hate relationship with Lego.

[Sir Dano]

1 hour ago, Black Feather said:

Ok.  I see all the forestman stuff sold out.  Was this all available and sold out or they just put it up as sold out. Seems like I everything I see after it’s already sold out.  I always check at midnight EST when in the past they put the new parts up.  Are they putting up at different random times now or something?

Torsos and shields were available, I ordered 5 shields around 5am EST. Your screen name reminds me they also had black feathers available, ordered 10 of those.

[natesroom]

I have a love hate for the online PAB... I have 72 OG forestman... No PAB to get those, just buying real sets, and picking up other peoples sets.

[MAB]

12 hours ago, jodawill said:

I only bought 20, and I expect I'll want about 50 more when all is said and done after the Lion Knights minifigures become available. ...  I wish they'd just give everyone a limit on in demand items, say 50 of each per order. Then everyone could have a chance to get them at reasonable prices.

I've been frustrated with the gray knights at the BAM stations too. They don't have any limits, so the very moment they bring them out, scalpers come in and buy literally every single one they have.

 

6 hours ago, jodawill said:

They were buying them in the plastic containers. They had a huge stack of them. It was a family digging through the bins to find all of them for the dad. I don't know whether he was planning to sell them or build his own army, but that's just a real jerk move. They had HUNDREDS of them.

Lego shouldn't allow this. This is why regular people can't buy them. They need to put limits on BAM. It's a really bad customer service. The same goes for PAB. Just make the things available at a reasonable price and place limits on the orders. A limit of 50 of each part would allow people to get a decent sized army while also keeping them available for people who don't have time to look at PAB incessantly like I have for the past few months.

You call other people a jerk and call others scalpers, yet you do not know what they are doing with these items. If someone is building a 500 minifigure army, they need 500. Are they any more of a jerk than someone building an army of 50? If you took 50 and someone else wanted just a few, they'd probably think you were the jerk taking them all. 50 is a lot. Is someone buying 50 really a "regular person"? Someone buying 50 is just as likely to be selling them on as someone buying 500. Why not set it at a much more reasonable 10 or even 3, the size of the blister pack. And limits don't really work in store, as people just go around twice, or get family and friends to join in. And it would mean someone in store has to check every piece to see what it is. And online, you can just return to place multiple orders. Having to set limits on individual pieces on online PAB is also unlikely, as they would need to ensure there was another variable per part that restricts the number of items you can buy instead of the global 200. And that would need to be set, and then checked in repeat orders. They don't even seem to have the functionality to check if you have gone over limits on sets based on past purchases at the time of placing an order, let alone individual parts in a PAB cart.

 

Edited October 19, 2022 by MAB

[jodawill]

4 hours ago, MAB said:

 

You call other people a jerk and call others scalpers, yet you do not know what they are doing with these items. If someone is building a 500 minifigure army, they need 500. Are they any more of a jerk than someone building an army of 50? If you took 50 and someone else wanted just a few, they'd probably think you were the jerk taking them all. 50 is a lot. Is someone buying 50 really a "regular person"? Someone buying 50 is just as likely to be selling them on as someone buying 500. Why not set it at a much more reasonable 10 or even 3, the size of the blister pack. And limits don't really work in store, as people just go around twice, or get family and friends to join in. And it would mean someone in store has to check every piece to see what it is. And online, you can just return to place multiple orders. Having to set limits on individual pieces on online PAB is also unlikely, as they would need to ensure there was another variable per part that restricts the number of items you can buy instead of the global 200. And that would need to be set, and then checked in repeat orders. They don't even seem to have the functionality to check if you have gone over limits on sets based on past purchases at the time of placing an order, let alone individual parts in a PAB cart.

 

It's all relative to us. To some people, buying 5 instead of 1 might seem like too much. But Lego had the data. They know how many they're capable of sending to each store and they can take an educated guess at how many people will want to buy them at each store per week. Divide and you have your limit.

 

I called the person in the store a jerk because it's a minifigure that's very difficult to find and they were buying everything the store had. This is why we can never find them in stock. It's not an isolated incident. I've heard from employees at my own store that every time they put them out, someone will come in and buy the entire stock.

If Lego wad sending thousands to the stores every week, I have no problem with someone buying 500 for their own army. The problem is that it's incredibly difficult to find them, and these people know that.

Limits could be applied to VIP accounts- not forever, but they could have a limit per day to slow the buying down enough so that everyone gets a chance to get some.

[natesroom]

14 minutes ago, jodawill said:

It's all relative to us. To some people, buying 5 instead of 1 might seem like too much. But Lego had the data. They know how many they're capable of sending to each store and they can take an educated guess at how many people will want to buy them at each store per week. Divide and you have your limit.

 

I called the person in the store a jerk because it's a minifigure that's very difficult to find and they were buying everything the store had. This is why we can never find them in stock. It's not an isolated incident. I've heard from employees at my own store that every time they put them out, someone will come in and buy the entire stock.

If Lego wad sending thousands to the stores every week, I have no problem with someone buying 500 for their own army. The problem is that it's incredibly difficult to find them, and these people know that.

Limits could be applied to VIP accounts- not forever, but they could have a limit per day to slow the buying down enough so that everyone gets a chance to get some.

The best way then would be for the Store to "pre-assemble them" and put them in blisters with two other figures. Then a person would have to buy the full assembled mini and 2 others lol.

[kchan98]

11 hours ago, jodawill said:

It's completely random. The Vikings were added in the afternoon. The forestmen parts were added sometime between midnight and 9am.

 

Nuts, sold out so quickly too. Been eying those viking torsos, they look fabulous.

[MAB]

1 hour ago, jodawill said:

It's all relative to us. To some people, buying 5 instead of 1 might seem like too much. But Lego had the data. They know how many they're capable of sending to each store and they can take an educated guess at how many people will want to buy them at each store per week. Divide and you have your limit.

So they'd need to take a guess at how many different people would buy each item then sets limits per item? That would make BAM very complicated if you could buy 100 police torsos but only 10 soldier and so on. And if they have limits, someone needs to check them at checkout. That is a lot of time consuming work compared to the alternative which is to sell what they have to whoever takes it to the cashier. They don't want to be busy identifying and counting individual parts when they should be busy serving people with $200 sets i the queue behind you. And it only takes one message from one person to a local group to say such and such is in stock and the estimates of how many people will buy will be totally wrong.

If they can make such accurate predictions abut how many people will visit and how many each would want, then it might be better to predict that if one part is likely to be highly sought after than others, then they should make more of that part.

2 hours ago, jodawill said:

I called the person in the store a jerk because it's a minifigure that's very difficult to find and they were buying everything the store had. This is why we can never find them in stock. It's not an isolated incident. I've heard from employees at my own store that every time they put them out, someone will come in and buy the entire stock.

If they had 60 left and you wanted 50, would you take them all, that is almost all their stock so nobody else could build an army? What if they had 50 (or less) and you want 50? Is it OK then to buy all they have, especially if you have to travel to get to a store so can only go once per month.

If an individual store wants to keep stock back, they can easily impose limits by simply not putting them all out at once. If the employees really care that someone keeps buying them all and keep telling other customers this, they could easily do this. Or even put some by for a customer that keeps going in and asking and leaving empty handed.

I buy for personal use but I also buy to sell on, so I have a foot in both camps. It is quite funny to see complaints that if someone else buys loads of one product and especially if it is all they have in store, they are bad because they must be scalping. Whereas buying loads (or everything) is justifiable if it is for amassing an army, even though the end result is the same. No stock for others. Eurobricks members were doing it, showing how many Black Falcons torsos and legs they were buying huge armies even though they were going out of stock. They are no better than people buying to sell on.

2 hours ago, jodawill said:

Limits could be applied to VIP accounts- not forever, but they could have a limit per day to slow the buying down enough so that everyone gets a chance to get some.

Not on in-store BAM stock they cannot, as each individual part is not recorded when the sale is made. And even if it was (which would take forever to checkout), they would then have to restrict sales to VIP account holders. This then leads to problems with denying people purchases in store if they do not join.

1 hour ago, natesroom said:

The best way then would be for the Store to "pre-assemble them" and put them in blisters with two other figures. Then a person would have to buy the full assembled mini and 2 others lol.

Even then, they would have to take time to assemble and/or package them and keep them behind the desk to ensure that nobody tampers with them. And if they are not behind the desk, someone has to check them at checkout to ensure that nobody has opened the packs and put three of the same in one packet. Plus people that want the other figures and don't want the soldier are just as annoyed.

If stores return complaints to a head office that adults keep buying all the stock of some BAM parts and other adults are complaining about it another way of solving the problem is to not make the parts. Leave BAM for the more generic random parts that kids love and put the ones they predict adults will be interested in into expensive sets.

 

[jodawill]

24 minutes ago, MAB said:

So they'd need to take a guess at how many different people would buy each item then sets limits per item? That would make BAM very complicated if you could buy 100 police torsos but only 10 soldier and so on. And if they have limits, someone needs to check them at checkout. That is a lot of time consuming work compared to the alternative which is to sell what they have to whoever takes it to the cashier. They don't want to be busy identifying and counting individual parts when they should be busy serving people with $200 sets i the queue behind you. And it only takes one message from one person to a local group to say such and such is in stock and the estimates of how many people will buy will be totally wrong. 

They don't need to check the individual parts. They could simply have a limit on BAM packages. They could limit each customer to 3 or 5 per day, or whatever the data says is reasonable.

24 minutes ago, MAB said:

If they can make such accurate predictions abut how many people will visit and how many each would want, then it might be better to predict that if one part is likely to be highly sought after than others, then they should make more of that part.

I'd definitely prefer if they just made more of those parts. That would be a win for everyone. Unfortunately, they're also limited by their production capacity, so that's not always an option.

24 minutes ago, MAB said:

If they had 60 left and you wanted 50, would you take them all, that is almost all their stock so nobody else could build an army? What if they had 50 (or less) and you want 50? Is it OK then to buy all they have, especially if you have to travel to get to a store so can only go once per month.

Well, this is where it becomes completely subjective to us. We don't know how many they'll get in stock or when they'll get more. Only Lego can decide what limits would be reasonable. If they only have 5 left, is it fair for me to buy all 5? If they "only" have 5,000 left, is it fair for me to buy all of them? Where we draw the line is completely arbitrary, but at some point between those two extremes, buying all of the stock before anyone else gets a chance is a real jerk move.

24 minutes ago, MAB said:

If an individual store wants to keep stock back, they can easily impose limits by simply not putting them all out at once. If the employees really care that someone keeps buying them all and keep telling other customers this, they could easily do this. Or even put some by for a customer that keeps going in and asking and leaving empty handed.

That's also a completely reasonable way to go about it. If they got a case of a thousand, and they only put 50 out at a time, then no one could come in and wipe them out completely. They could restock throughout the day. I'd be ok with this.

24 minutes ago, MAB said:

I buy for personal use but I also buy to sell on, so I have a foot in both camps. It is quite funny to see complaints that if someone else buys loads of one product and especially if it is all they have in store, they are bad because they must be scalping. Whereas buying loads (or everything) is justifiable if it is for amassing an army, even though the end result is the same. No stock for others. Eurobricks members were doing it, showing how many Black Falcons torsos and legs they were buying huge armies even though they were going out of stock. They are no better than people buying to sell on.

You're right in saying that not everyone who buys a lot is a scalper. I know a lot of people want to buy them in masses for their own armies. I'm not against anyone buying them for either purpose. It just comes down to the question of whether buying those quantities deprives other people of the ability to buy some also. If you go into the store and clear out their entire inventory (500+) to build your own personal army, you're still being a jerk. You can clearly see that the next person who comes in won't be able to get any knights.

With the online PAB, it's impossible to know whether an order is depriving someone else. If I buy 50 forestmen torsos, am I buying their entire stock, or am I buying 0.5% of what's available? No idea. Only Lego can make that determination. So they should implement limits based on the available data and forecasts. It's really not that difficult. Even McDonald's does this. They know how many of each piece of meat to cook at a time based on sales projections.

24 minutes ago, MAB said:

Not on in-store BAM stock they cannot, as each individual part is not recorded when the sale is made. And even if it was (which would take forever to checkout), they would then have to restrict sales to VIP account holders. This then leads to problems with denying people purchases in store if they do not join.

Yeah, there are workarounds. I'm pretty sure some resellers hire people to go in and obtain items that are limited. But it does help. It doesn't need to be tied to VIP accounts. It could be 5 packs per visit and store employees can monitor it. Sure, someone could go in in the morning and come back in the afternoon and they might get away with two purchases. But they'd only be getting 10 packs, not 100. If they came in 10 times a day, the employees would notice.

[natesroom]

2 hours ago, MAB said:

Even then, they would have to take time to assemble and/or package them and keep them behind the desk to ensure that nobody tampers with them. And if they are not behind the desk, someone has to check them at checkout to ensure that nobody has opened the packs and put three of the same in one packet. Plus people that want the other figures and don't want the soldier are just as annoyed.

At Disney springs Orlando they had the Halloween BAM pre assembled and in blisters... There were none in the BAM - it looked like 200+ blisters in front of each counter so like 400? A bag of torsos comes with about 300 Torsos.

Edited October 19, 2022 by natesroom

[karrit]

2 hours ago, natesroom said:

At Disney springs Orlando they had the Halloween BAM pre assembled and in blisters... There were none in the BAM - it looked like 200+ blisters in front of each counter so like 400? A bag of torsos comes with about 300 Torsos.

They had them when I was there a few weeks ago.  Went back after hurricane Ian passed through and they were all gone already.  They did have some random parts in the BAM towers then but not everything to make a complete figure.  I even saw several of the bat boy torso minus the bat wings in the tower.  

[MAB]

21 hours ago, natesroom said:

At Disney springs Orlando they had the Halloween BAM pre assembled and in blisters... There were none in the BAM - it looked like 200+ blisters in front of each counter so like 400? A bag of torsos comes with about 300 Torsos.

Yeah, and it sort of makes sense for event / holiday type figures. Three figures with a limited time frame in which they are likely to be popular, they want to sell through as many as they can quickly and make them easy for people to look at, see a Halloween "set", and buy quickly. Same with Santa and elf type figures before Christmas - prepared packs at a specific time of year would make sense. But if they put a monster in the BAM at Easter, I doubt they are worth packing into the clam shells as there would not be a high demand. No doubt they see the soldier/viking torso in a similar light, just like a police officer of a baker, dump them in as randoms rather than assembling prepared packs.

 

[Sheps]

I had a look at PAB yesterday as I am keen to get some of the minifigs, accessories, animals, etc… from 10305. The Cow, one of the pieces I am interested in, was up (but out of stock) priced at a whopping $17 (AUD)!

A mould that the Cow is probably similar to in size and plastic quantity is the horse, priced at $7.90. If the Cow was fairly priced I think it should cost something similar to the horse (even $10 feels reasonable).

$17 is straight up price gouging, and when it does actually become available to purchase I will only be able to justify buying one.

[iragm]

5 hours ago, Sheps said:

$17 is straight up price gouging, and when it does actually become available to purchase I will only be able to justify buying one. 

This has been the case for many parts.  One of two scenarios is likely:

1. TLG may be trying to prevent scalpers, by pricing new parts around the bricklink average sale price, it makes it difficult for people to buy all available parts en masse and flip them immediately for a profit.

2. Plain old greed

Of course, these are not mutually exclusive.  Time will tell if TLG drops prices on parts suggesting scenario 1, or if they keep prices high indefinitely.  Hoping for the former, but to date, all prices for parts I'm tracking have just gone up.

[MAB]

2 hours ago, iragm said:

This has been the case for many parts.  One of two scenarios is likely:

1. TLG may be trying to prevent scalpers, by pricing new parts around the bricklink average sale price, it makes it difficult for people to buy all available parts en masse and flip them immediately for a profit.

2. Plain old greed

Of course, these are not mutually exclusive.  Time will tell if TLG drops prices on parts suggesting scenario 1, or if they keep prices high indefinitely.  Hoping for the former, but to date, all prices for parts I'm tracking have just gone up.

There is also

3. Discouraging people from buying in-demand items from replacement parts and instead buying full sets at retail stores.

 

1. Also discourages collectors buying up large armies just because they can, whether they intend to flip them immediately or not.

[jodawill]

Honestly, I bet the prices are highest on parts they produce fewer of. The Duplo light up brick is a great example. It's something like $20 on PAB. They don't have the production capacity to just do an extra run of those because someone wants to buy 300 of them for some reason. They need to have enough for the sets they sell, but that part isn't worth their time to do extra runs. So they want to discourage people from buying them in bulk. When I look at the parts with ridiculous prices, it seems like the highest priced ones are things like this, especially parts that are particularly hard to produce. It's one thing to do an extra run of some random ABS mold. If it requires non-standard assembly (they have plenty of equipment for assembling minifigures, but not random animals and light up bricks), then it's going to be a much greater effort to produce more if they run low. If it requires 3rd party materials like light and sound parts, it's going to be even more difficult.

Cows are somewhere in the middle, I'm guessing. They make fewer of them than horses. They only appear in two sets. They can't hold up production of other parts because someone wants to buy 500 cows. I mean, they can, and they do for LUGBulk, but it comes at a cost and requires special planning. (This is why LUGBulk is practically a year long process.)

[Sheps]

Iragm & MAB have nailed it, and I'm sure everyone is hoping for that eventual 'drop' in price.

I think there is also some element of a predatory business practice - capitalising on the die-hard Castle fan base who eat the Castle minifigs and accessories up!

I guess that ties in with 2. being Greed.

What I take issue with is this: Lego knows which Elements are going to be in demand (I'm thinking of things like the cow & forestmen's hat). To address part availability they choose to crank the prices up, instead of cranking production up to meet demand which they can clearly foresee.

[RichardGoring]

Although, perhaps interestingly, the forestmen hat in grey was 88c a year or so ago - well before there was any talk of the return of the castle (actually, maybe around the time of the original Ideas votes). But that was a colour that very few people would want and it was still high. And never went down before it was out of production.