Brix

I'm inclined to disagree. I bought the system scale A Wing recently, and had to go and rewatch RoTJ on May 4 just to spot where it appears. Despite being a casual SW fan (OT, PT and CW), I had no idea where that ship appeared. On the other hand the Snowspeeder is instantly recognisable to me - it's pretty much THE memorable rebel ship from Ep V. I'm the same with the B-wing - I have no idea where it appears in the OT movies, which is why I'm not interested in it (even if I could have picked it up for $100). I agree about the Venator. I have the 8039 set from 2009 and think it's great. I'd rather have a UCS sized Venator before a re-released ISD. I know the OT gets a lot more love than the PT so I'm not sure that's universal, but it's a great looking ship and very recognisable given its appearance in the PT movies and the CW cartoons.

I'd be very very reluctant to sell the UCS Falcon. It's impressive (and valuable) not just for it's rarity and looks, but its sheer size impresses even non-Lego-fans. David Jones has the exclusive rights to sell the modulars in Australia. They had the town hall for sale on their website last month for AUD$215 delivered. This thread is exclusively for Australian based retailers. The mods might jump in here if we discuss Amazon too much. I'll just say that I (and others I know) have bought a bunch of them from the various Amazon sites. I had the Fire Brigade delivered last week from Amazon.fr. This is a good tool to refer to http://brickset.com/...on/#Exclusives.

I can recommend it. I picked it up before ebay prices were silly. It's a very nice set. I have all of the recent (studless) Technic bikes.

Ooh. This would be great. I'd love to be able to build a full 'hall of armour' beneath the mansion.

This looks slick! I thought it was a render at first. Well done.

I've been holding out for the Umbaran MHC set to be released in Australia - even outside of the SW connection it's a neat looking mech/vehicle. I hope they still produce them in decent quantities.

I wonder whether TLC used the 2012 X-wing #9493 to gauge current popularity of the X-wing before deciding to go ahead and release an update of the UCS X-wing. Whether it was planned that way or not, I'm sure it informed them just how popular the X-wing still is among Lego buyers.

I went in there asking that very question. The catalogue actually says 20% off certain 'brands' not 'products'. They claimed that the Spider-man Lego set was 'Lego' branded, not 'Spider-man'. Having said that, they gave it to me at the reduced price. I only grabbed the cycle chase set, as they didn't have the Daily Bugle in stock. The funny thing is that the Doc Ock set (from 2012) shows up on their website as 20% off whereas the 2013 sets aren't yet listed.

Super Heroes 6869: Quinjet Aerial Battle available at Amazon UK for £49.99. Price shipped to Australia is AUD$88 vs RRP of AUD$129.

That's interesting. Just this week I bought an opened 8466 for less than half that much. My biggest interest was in the wheels/tyres, and 4 of those on Bricklink cost more than I paid for the entire set. The 8466 is exactly the type of set I was thinking about - a huge and impressive set that came out a dozen years ago. It was only in the last couple of years that sets of similar size have come along that appeal to me the same way, e.g. the 9398 4x4 Crawler.

That's a pretty good theory. For me personally, it's only been in the last 2-3 years that the bigger Technic sets have really appealed to me. So prior to that it seemed like I had to find older sets to get bigger impressive ones. It will be very interesting to see what the updated mobile crane does to the resale of the older one.

This has certainly been the case for sets that I've been following since coming out of my dark ages. I've long since given up on ever owning a number of the UCS Star Wars sets, but lately it seems that I just have to wait patiently and I'll score a nice older Technic set (e.g. #8674 Ferrari F1 Racer 1:8) for a modest sum on ebay.

Looking great. Keep it up!

I haven't even opened up the NXT 2.0 set that I've had for about 12 months (curse those building backlogs)! I'm also really looking forward to these new sets. I guess the fact that they're apparently backwards compatible with the NXT stuff means that at least my current set won't go to waste.

Thanks BrickieB for posting my model - glad you liked it . If you're interested in that one Raeik I have a number of pics taken in order when I disassembled it that you could use as instructions. (I had to disassemble it to prepare to move house ).

Amazon.de are having 20% Lego for purchases over 80 euros. I picked up a 9398 4X4 Crawler AUD$154 including postage. Other reported sets that they'll currently ship to Australia are the Pet shop, X-wing and Tie Fighter.

Note: I'd posted this a week ago but it was lost in the recent outage. I've since rebuilt it from scratch, making a number of changes along the way. Behold the speederbike from Return of the Jedi, built entirely from the Desert Skiff 9496 set. I obviously had to make a number of compromises due to limited parts and colour selection, but I'm still happy with the result. Edited to fix broken Flickr code on 2014-01-10.

Wow. Thanks Brickdoctor - it's an honour to have my MOC on the blog! I agree about the design of those curved pieces. As soon as I saw the desert skiff set, the first thing I thought was that they'd be perfect for a speederbike. I didn't realise that the rest of the set would lend itself so well to putting one together.

Nice review. Don't forget that you can also build an IMHO somewhat accurate looking speederbike out of this set too.

WOW! Fantastic choice of model, amazing build and design, and excellent photography and post. Thanks so much for sharing this. I'll definitely be supporting this on CUUSOO!

Such a simple but stunning build. Well done! I love that glowing light brick - it really finishes it off.

Brilliant! I love this. Very very well done.

An absolutely amazing build. Congratulations on a job well done. I would love to have this on display in my collection!

This looks great! Please keep us posted as it progresses.

Where do we find this fwiw? I am now still interested in this set. The page is here and they had them on Wednesday but currently it is listed as 'sold out'. Sorry about that.