darkhorse

While I think the Arkham set looks great, and I'd like to use some of the build design for other creations, the actual theme itself doesn't mean a lot to me. Actually, neither does the Monster Fighters theme, but the HH looks like it would plug into a modular-style town quite nicely. Which is something I'm interested in. So it's very much a taste thing (and the HH becomes expensive to part-out. The green parts alone, just over 300 of them, come to around $72 on BL. Taking into account stock levels, and before shipping, most likely involving several vendors. If I don't see them in store the next couple of days, I might have to look at doing what this thread isn't about) While on the Monster Fighters - the online price for the MF train is $69, yet I'm sure it's tagged and scanning at $99 in store. Is it normal for the online store to be different from the physical ones? It doesn't seem to be an online-only special like Big W, so I guess you could ask them in-store for the lower price?

It's worth calling them up ahead of going in, because the stock checker shows it available and at the store in question, staff didn't know anything about it. In this case, there wasn't even a (small) gap, just not on the shelf at all. No label either. My guess is that in a number of cases, it's still sitting somewhere in the pallets out back. Maybe call daily to check, because from the number of people they had unpacking toys, the stores have received a lot recently. Other stores had the tag for it, but with the smaller ($129) castle in the space. So possibly not put up yet, or possibly sold out. Real quick.

Myer Carindale wouldn't match the Big W sets (Seaside House and Forest Police in my case) as their sale hadn't started yet. Annoying, but oh well, Big W next Thursday it is then. A check on the Campervan was "no stock in Australia" - basically it's been very popular everywhere and they weren't sure that it would be back in again (at least in time for the sale). 10% voucher worked though, another thanks to Distortme.

On ShopForMe - am I missing something here or does this offer look reasonable given the possibility that Myer won't reduce some LotR sets by the full 20% or 25%? (or in the case of the mining states, not available at all?) http://www.shopforme.com.au/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=34_104&products_id=549

Ah, well, now there's a few ways of looking at that. I'm not the best to pick "best set" from an aesthetic point of view, but from value and other views... This is on the assumption of set 7946 vs 4184 Price per piece: 7946 has 933 pieces, 4184 has 804. So if you're looking at raw pieces, 7946 has the edge. Re-use: Black Pearl can't be rebuilt into something much other than a boat. The hull pieces are similar, but not exactly the same as the Imperial Flagship. So with some modification, you could possibly make a Flagship in different colours. Or some of the other boat sets. It's still a boat (a quick look through the parts lists doesn't show a lot of really interesting stuff outside the boat bits and the minifigs) The King's Castle comes with a lot of the wall panels that are typical with castle sets, but IMO they can be rebuilt into more - churches, wizard's towers, etc. There's also a fair number of grey arch and red roof bits which always have potential for re-use. Uniqueness: King's Castle doesn't appear to be on Lego.com, so I'm guessing that end of life. I've not seen it at K-Mart or Big W for some time, so that price probably represents the best available unless someone is really slashing prices. And from memory the RRP on it was $160? So $119 would be around 25% off. BUT, and it's a big but - the replacement for it looks to be 10223. RRP of $180 on AU Lego.com, so hopefully available for $120-$125 at some point in time in the future in sales. 10223 has 1575 pieces, thus representing bigger value in terms of price per piece, while still having a lot of the grey arch / red roof / red-brown wood bits that King's Castle has. It loses the 1x4x5 panels with the rounded windows though, so if you're partial to those, there's 16 of them in King's Castle. IMO, if you had to put together a King's Castle piece by piece off Bricklink in a couple of years, most of the pieces should be easy to aquire. I believe the minifigs may also be across sets, but I'm not good at tracking minifigs. Black Pearl, thus far, is only set with the black sails and hull pieces in the sizes used by that set. 7029 used black hull with a Viking look, but the remaining ships that have the same hull shapes as Black Pearl are red-brown or dark brown. So if you've got a hankering for a black (old style) ship, this is pretty much your only option. I'm taking a punt and guessing that the minifigs are unique as well. Therefore trying to acquire it piece by piece off Bricklink is probably going to be a) more expensive pieces and b) you may need to get pieces off more suppliers. That last one is worth noting, as more suppliers = more shipping, which drives your costs up. Personal View: I don't follow PotC enough that I feel the need to collect all the sets. I'm not a collector that needs one of everything. Still, if I could only get one of the two, I'd go the Black Pearl, only because I'd probably rebuild the ship into a bigger, badder generic black pirate ship. Frankly I'd probably try and offload the PotC minifigs. But that's just me. I've always liked the Kingdoms/Castle series from way back, but I'm not disappointed that I've missed out on a cheap castle, because there's always another castle around the corner. Er, that went on a little longer than I expected. Hope it helped.

A quick rundown of the local K-mart, so others might be able to find them. Scan to see if they have been reduced. Gripe loudly if they haven't . RRP from the AU lego store for comparison 7187 - Escape from Dragon's Prison - $25 ($35) 7188 - King's Carriage Ambush - $35 ($70) 7189 - Mill Village Raid - $69 ($120) 2506 - Skull Truck - $69 ($100) 2509 - Earth Dragon Defense - $29 ($60) 2254 - Mountain Shrine - $25 ($35) 2258 - Ninja Ambush - $6 ($10) 2508 - Blacksmith Shop - $25 ($40) 2516 - Ninja Training Outpost - $5 ($8) 2520 - Ninja Battle Arena - $49 ($80) 3368 - Space Centre - $69 ($120) 3661 - Money Transfer - $49 ($90) 10231 - Shuttle Expedition - $99 ($160) Probably some of the best discounts on (Australian) RRP that I've seen in a while, so good luck everyone

Yep, for laughs I threw the Volkswagen and a bunch of other stuff into Amazon just to see what could / couldn't be shipped. I used to think that none of it would, but some at least appears to fall through the cracks. Here's my sample: 4184 (Black Pearl) - blocked 4195 (QA Revenge) - allowed 7189 (Mill Village Raid) - allowed 7573 (Battle of Almut) - blocked 10193 (Medieval Village) - blocked 10194 (Emerald Night) - blocked 10197 (Fire Brigade) - blocked (not Amazon LLC or Amazon Export though) 10198 (Tantive IV) - blocked 10199 (Winter Toy Shop) - blocked 10210 (Imperial Flagship) - blocked 10211 (Grand Emporium) - allowed 10214 (Tower Bridge) - blocked 10216 (Winter Bakery) - blocked 10217 (Diagon Alley) - allowed 10218 (Pet Shop) - blocked 10219 (Maersk Train) - allowed 10220 (Camper Van) - blocked (not Amazon LLC or Amazon Export) 21005 (Falling Water) - blocked There doesn't seem to be any real pattern between allowed and blocked - age, licenses or "type" (eg modular buildings) all seem to vary. Unfortunately, I don't know if the allowed / block lists vary either over time, and it may also vary by which Amazon you try. I agree with Hewman, it's hit and miss. Because it's new and in the "hard to get", I think it won't show up in any local stores for a while, I seem to recall reading that the "hard to get / exclusive" items are only available through S@H for a number of months before local retail can stock them. That could be old info though. But S@H or BL are probably the only real options right now.

Hard to say what a "good" price will be, but here's what I think from a quick look around: * RRP on the AU version of Lego.com is $169. That puts it into the $35 shipping category for a worst-case scenario of just over $200. * RRP for the US is $119, so Bricklink prices probably won't be below that. The set weighs around 4lbs, and a recent quote I got for a 4lb set was approx $51 (about 6lbs total with the packaging). So your best BL price is probably going to be no better than AU RRP. More sets lowers the average shipping slightly, but for once the price difference between AU and US isn't larger than shipping costs alone. * Google hasn't turned up which store will get the exclusive, although that could just be my lack of google skills. It's a fair bet that a) it won't be out for a while (like most Lego "hard to get"?) and b) if it's Target, Myer or DJs, it can be gotten for 20% off the RRP. Guessing maybe by midyear sales in 2012? * Best case is probably going to be Myers with it's 28% Sale + Myer One offer. Unless you want three of them, in which case it's Myers with 3 for 2. If Myers gets the set. * Best bet if you want one soon(ish) may be to trawl the various Amazon sites, they're more likely to have a price less than RRP for that zone and I believe they get better shipping terms. The issue is whether they'll ship the set to Australia. Hope this helps. It's only my opinion, it almost certainly differs from others

Oh, excellent! Obviously I was in and out too quickly, because I missed that. Also interesting that they were taking the 10% in addition to the 20% - well done there. Now, here's hoping there is something left... :-)

I wouldn't have thought so until I saw those signs. But Carindale also didn't have anything up about Atlantis, and the price marked on it was still $119 or whatever it was normally, so it could be that Carindale hadn't caught up with the rest. Normally I'd expect all the Myer to be the same, so I'm interested in what others report in. Might be that I need to stop looking at the closest one (Carindale) and go a bit further on Lego hunts.

Well, it seems Myer Carindale didn't get the internal memo. No signs up for 25% off, only signs for 20% off until Sep 30. And signs for the 10% Myer One only applying to catalog items. Was the 25% for two days a sign advertised sale, or a flyer/e-mail advertised sale?

Yep, I'd agree that that it's not consistent for Big W. I didn't see any of the Portal/Atlantis/Airport stuff reduced, and had noticed the price for CoA @ $112 as well. Which makes K-Marts $89 look a bit better, and if you can get it at Myer for $79, well that's a pretty good result at this stage. Portal for $80 is pretty darn good as well, 1000 pieces for < 10c / piece. But... I did find the Fire chopper / boat for $29, with a number of each at Big W Capalaba. No yellow sticker or anything, just the regular tag. Boat was out on those stands in the middle of the floor, choppers just on the shelf. So either they're clearing them without drawing attention to them, or it's the new regular price. Onto K-mart. More consistent, yes, but beginning to consistently annoy me. The clearance tags on the Atlantis and the Kingdom stuff is OK, but sticking a Clearance $199 on a Queen Anne was a bit naughty in my books. I recall they did that last year with one of the Star Wars sets as well. Best of luck hunting the bargains everyone. Looks like there's a little clearing taking place before Christmas requires shelf space, but it's not easy to track.

Agree on the pieces. I hadn't paid much attention to the games for pieces, because I'd assumed they were a less than optimal way of getting bits. And tan bricks are one colour I'm not particularly short on at the moment. A lot of 6x6 plates, brown tiles, tan corner panels and those big grey plates could certainly help though Now I just need to find a Myers with them in stock. Not sales related, but I'm hoping someone with Lego contacts in Aus might know... Is the Maersk train going to be picked up by any of the majors?

I'd guess $50, although I didn't see any at Myer Carindale when I checked this morning. Obviously they've sold well unlike other games which there were still plenty of. Also of note: A sign in Myers had the 3 for 2 games offer running until September 11th. I had previously thought it was finishing today, so you've still got a couple of weeks to hunt down what you want. It seems there isn't a great deal of price difference between Myers and K-mart / BigW on the games, so that deal probably represents the best value you'll get for a while. Until others mark them as clearance. If they mark them as clearance... I went out to scope most of the majors to see if any of the reductions mentioned in the last few pages were widespread. The results were disappointing. I'm sure by this time last year there had been a big run of clearances, but there seems to be very few this time around. Either stores are getting better with their stock management, there has been a declaration from on high that clearances aren't to occur as often, or it's a store by store basis. At any rate, the only things I saw with clearance tags were the City of Atlantis (7985, K-mart, $89, no previous price mentioned) and a number of Bionicle sets (didn't pay attention to them as they're outside my interest). That 7985 @ $89 is around 25% cheaper than Myers ($119), so it's not exactly an "OMG, must buy now" sort of thing either. Crossing fingers for older stuff to get the Yellow Tag of Happiness soon, but the various Myer sale permutations are beginning to look like the best going around. Until you open a browser to Bricklink can of worms...

Nice as it would be, I suspect not. Here's the problem, from the shipping page: PC & Video Games, Toys & Games and Software items and accessories * United Kingdom (England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales), Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland (Republic of), Italy, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland. Note: third-party sellers on Amazon.co.uk may specify their own delivery destinations. See International Delivery on Marketplace Orders for more information. So... Unless there's a loophole somewhere, free shipping won't happen. As Ang11 stated, Amazon.com/.co.uk won't do it directly, and third party doesn't qualify for free shipping. The exception might be the Lego books. Just tested with three Brickmaster books, and free shipping shows as an option.

It could be a store-by-store on the markdowns - Carindale had the 30% off markdown signs up (though none in the toy section), but none of the toys had the red sticker required to trigger it. There was only one Fire Brigade left, so maybe they didn't feel the need to mark it down, but there were tons of Slaves, so I would have thought they'd be marked down. Calling ahead (and hoping you get someone who actually knows the toys) would be recommended if it's a bit of a trip.

I'd agree with that. As you noted, other companies set prices for a year - IKEA for example. But at least they revise the prices after the year. Green Grocer, for example, was 100 UK / 150 US / 250 AU, and that ratio hasn't existed in those currencies for at least 2 years. Picking a recent release - Winter Bakery is 50 UK / 55 US / 95 AU. UK -> AU has been around 1.6 for most of this year, and US -> AU has been pretty close for a while now, so currency isn't coming into it. It isn't tax either, because UK had 17.5% vs our 10%. (I used the S@H prices for hard to get items to illustrate the price setting point. It's not quite so bad with popular sets and the major stores) I'd argue that shipping does cost more - witness the difference in shipping rates on Bricklink - but... S@H prices don't include shipping, they whack that on after. It really is what they think the market will bear, and Lego is alone there. PC & console games have been like this for a while, for a product that's little more than a disc inside a plastic case. I suspect that the problem is distribution, not retail. Much like the book retailers can't import from OS if it's available locally via the distributors, I imagine there's an Australian based distributor setting the price points. I'm not in wholesale / retail so I can't say that's definitely the case, it's just a guess. Again, another guess, I think this is going to get a little tougher. Shoppers have got savvy with sales in the past few years (witness the 300+ page thread ), the retailers know this and are trying to swing it back. K-mart has changed from the "% off this Thursday" model to the "low everyday price" model that Big W use, and Myer's have come out stating a few times they'd like to cut back on sales (haven't succeeded yet). There will still be sales, but I don't think they'll be as good as the past couple of years. It will be worse if they all get their stock / ordering levels under control, and the number of clearances reduce. But yes, hammer home to any prospective Lego buyers that sales and clearances are the way to go. It's got to get back up the line eventually. I think this is where the big win is, at least while the $AU is high and the US economy is struggling. The main obstacles are shipping (generally cheaper the more sets you get, so long as the total is under $1000), finding the best combinations of stuff on Bricklink or other sites if you want multiple items, and Gerry Harvey banging on about the lost GST. Get in now before the government eventually caves in. I'm assuming they'll cave in because the other alternative, allowing retailers to import directly, hasn't exactly gone well (see books). (I don't think Harvey cares about GST, and probably knows that 10% won't make a difference to people buying stuff. But delays and extra customs charges for assessing all this stuff, which will be passed onto the purchaser, turns those easy overseas purchases into prolonged and not-so-cheap-and-easy ones.) Overseas buying becomes better if: a). there's overseas brokers / shipper, who can receive items from multiple sources and combines them into a single shipment. So you want three items, one is cheapest at US TRU, one is cheapest at Bricklink, and one is cheapest at US S@H. Individually, shipping would really hurt, but combined they're not too bad. b). there's like-minded buyers in a similar location. So there's a half-dozen people all in the same city that want a particular set going cheap. Again, individually it might not work out, but combined I'd think it would be pretty good. I'd love to think that the normal retail situation is going to improve to reflect the strong currency. I'm pessimistic this is going to happen, so... stock up in the next year. Good luck and good shopping.

Checked Lasoo, and between Target, TRU, Big W and Myer, there's nary a mention of the L word. So... either they're coming later, or Lego sales are going to be situational sorts of things (x% off for 1 day only). In the case of K-Mart & Big W, they probably won't bother with a catalog, it will be yellow stickers (if anything). Myer / DJs might release another one once they realise how many of what type of toy is left over.

Myer got the Flagship back in? Didn't know that, hopefully that will be in the sales. For the SW folk - don't know if it's been posted previously (my search skills are naff), don't know if it's better than the K-Mart / Big W sale prices, but the Clone Turbo Tank is $162 on Fishpond with free shipping.

I was thinking similar thoughts earlier, when I noticed there was a bucketload of Fire Stations while the G.E.s were not so much walking out the door as overtaking Usain Bolt... They may get cleared post-Christmas, or they may hang around until the next mid-year sale when management needs to clear stock and balance the books. They were something like $220 in the mid-year sale this year, with another 10% off at random times for cardholders. I figure a good number of those that wanted them got them then, not knowing if it would come back in stock later. So it's going to take a serious discount to motivate people to pick up extras. And the most I've seen off Lego at either is 33% via the 3 for 2 offers. There's another thread on here speculating Post Office, and I've seen a suggestion elsewhere for a bank. Of the two, I'd think the bank would have more "cool stuff" that you could put in it. And the minifigs from previous sets need somewhere to get money to spend at the Green Grocer and the Emporium, right? My bid? A modular frontage for a train station, only because it would save me trying to come up with one myself. I don't think this will happen as the modular size is too small, unless they did a "double modular". You could put some offices on the upper levels of the train station too (I've been thinking about this one a bit). Another one - library. It would fit the modular size, you could do multi-storey easily with different sections (shelves, study areas, multimedia, etc) on different levels. A similar thing could be done for a museum. Left field - another apartment block with a laundromat on the ground floor. Similar to how the GG is done. Minifigs need to live somewhere, right?

A similar thing happened with the Fire refresh, although at least the number of pieces didn't decrease! 7945 (2007) - 600 pieces, and I recall the RRP was $90 7208 (2010) - 662 pieces, and S@H price is $140 Granted, there's some inflation in 3 years, but not in the order of 50%, and the $AU is a lot stronger than it was in 2007. I'm pretty sure the Kingdoms / Castle refresh went through similar inflation. It seems this time they've kept the price down but disguised it in drop in pieces. It will depend which majors pick it up. If Kmart and Big W get it, the "standard" price will be lower, and thus the sale prices should come down a bit. I'd peg it around $130, allowing a sale to bring it down to around $100. Still, feels like a kick in the teeth given that Big W has carried 7744 for around $90 for the majority of this year. The particularly annoying thing about the much higher S@H price compared to the US is that the usual issue, shipping, doesn't apply in this case. They hit you for that separately.

DJ's at the bottom of Queen St Mall (Brissy) is out of Grand Emporiums. And it sounded like they wouldn't be getting any more. They've got plenty of Fire Stations though, around 10 at a guess. I agree, it's not a great price for them at the moment. However, with DJ's, Myer and I think Toyworld or TRU all having Fire Stations in stock, surely there's potential to get cheap ones later? Another thing I don't understand - why is the Fire Station RRP (based on S@H) $300, and the GG & GE $250? Any gurus know?

DJ's Carindale had a small "sorry, we stuffed up our catalogue price, it's really $239" sign up, so get in while you can. Or hide the small sign when you go to the registers

Possibly today, tomorrow and the weekend? (again, untested)

Fishpond apparently has 10% off and free shipping this week: Reference There wasn't a lot there that stood out, but the 8404 Public Transport could be worthwhile if TRU haven't brought the price down. Note: I've not tried the code - didn't see anything I wanted. But someone may be able to use this.