Zeya

On the boxed photo you can see the words "The ship does not float" Did they have that on Brickbeard's Bounty? I like the set. I'm excited about the figurehead (statue lady). I don't think she has any printing though, unless it's in a dark gray color that I can't make out among the compression artifacts. Have we ever seen that hair piece in black before this set?

Do not take it out of the packaging to rotate the arms or push down the head. If that's the way it came, you shouldn't mess with it. Like you said, it risks damaging it - scratches and bending the soft metal. I wouldn't even open the packaging that surrounds it, period. You just want to keep it in top shape until you go to sell. I recommend swaddling it in bubble wrap and keeping it in an air-conditioned environment free from prying eyes or natural disasters, such as in a bank vault box. I'm glad to hear you're going to wait at least a couple years to sell this. You won't be disappointed that you waited. I would pay close attention to this. He's talking about an uncommon plastic toy that they probably made at least hundreds if not thousands of. If those are selling for 3.5k, your solid gold piece of which there are 5 of... that's got to be worth a lot more. I keep thinking it would sell easily for 10k, but I can easily imagine it going for double or triple that, maybe more, if you can get the attention of the wealthy Star Wars collectors that people have mentioned. Ugh, I'm so jealous of you!

This is very impressive. I love all the greenery and how this MOC looks good from all angles. The Tia Dalma figure made me laugh too. It's a challenge trying to make a fleshie like that, having few female heads and none to speak of in a darker skin tone.

Haha this is awesome! I like how you included the monkey, C3P0, and the crystal skull.

When I came out of my dark age, I thought for sure that Brickbeard's Bounty was the exact same as a ship I had as a kid and Lego was still producing older sets. I was totally wrong. In fact, going back and seeing just the differences in minfigure printing was staggering! Things seemed so much more exciting and vivid in my mind's eye. But yeah Brickbeard's Bounty is not a re-issue; it's from the 2009 Pirates line (on store shelves until the past 6-8 months or so). The re-issues you're probably thinking of are from the "Legends" line that they had for a short time. They re-did a couple of the pirate ships and one of the castles. The "Legends" had notable differences and they weren't 100% true to the originals, it seems. I think the Legends sets were some time around 2000-2004. I'm too lazy to dig up links on brickset or bricklink.

Geordie Laforge from Star Trek? Ha, I'm just kidding. I realized after reading the post that this must be a nickname for a city or region.

I saw the first episode of Game of Thrones. I liked it a lot. I guess the "season" is over now so I can enjoy them at my leisure. This will do until Boardwalk Empire starts up again.

Maybe if there are five times as many votes for a Spartan as there are for the next most popular choice, then there will be a pack of five spartans!

So much for the collectibility aspect. The CMFs are now available in the calendar set, the build-a-mini bins, and now in this special "best hits" pack.

No, it hasn't run for three waves. There was one wave of sets in 2010, and then there are new sets for 2011. Based on the little ads I see in the 2011 sets, it looks like they will continue to sell the King's Castle set from last wave, but probably not the other sets. At any rate, nobody really knows if there will be future waves of Kingdoms or not. I would speculate it's a good possibility they will based on some interview comments I read stating that Kingdoms has sold pretty well for TLG. I say just get what you want. You can still find most sets for retail price, at least in my country (USA). There's also a very nice exclusive set "Medieval Market Village", which is technically under the Castle theme, but if you take away the two soldier figs, it makes a nice Kingdoms set.

I have both of these. You should get the forestman. The first series of collectible minifigs are only going to become more scarce. The Target Practice polybag will probably be available for a while - there's even a Lego store promotion for this month or the next where they give one for free when you spend a certain amount of money. At any rate, that polybag is cool but it gives you stuff you already probably have. The figure isn't unique and you have like four of five of those types of guys form other Kingdoms sets. And the apples and leaf is cool, but still common stuff. I think the S1 forestman is pretty unique and a better buy.

I believe a mid/late August date. That's the time when things start showing up for the *shudder* Christmas season. You want your stuff to be on the shelves right after Halloween. Also, TRU would be the first to know about and get the things on their shelves. I thought it was strange that we got CMF3 and CMF4 so close together though. I took from those release dates that we would be having 4 series a year, but apparently it's 3 per year.

Using recycled materials for packaging is good. But I will say that I often see press releases from most consumer product-based companies touting their improvements in packaging. This is usually the lowest-hanging-fruit as far as the cost of improvement is concerned. Unfortunately, other improvements tend to come with a significant hit to overhead costs and if there's not a law requiring certain things, they become deemed too expensive to address. So basically, things like this are good to hear. TLG seems like a great company and I'm sure they're following all health, environmental, and human rights laws. Let's just say I hope to see more reports like this in the future, extending into other physical aspects of the product.

I think an admin sets that. They usually put it as a joke or when someone gains a reputation. FYI, asking an admin for a particular title likely won't get you anywhere except maybe a timeout.

Instead of a large thin board, you could use two thinner boards, one for each side, just something big enough to put a couple of nails into. So you would have two smaller boards running vertically and that should link the two cabinets together well enough. You might still have a problem with the whole thing falling over. And adding more cabinets would add more stability issues. I'm starting to think it might be better just to mount them to the wall and not stack them at all. That would have the added benefit of buying a little more table space. (My lego table is packed away in a dark corner with not much space. I wish I had the amount of space some people post on this thread. I would love to have a basement, but nobody has basements where I'm at due to seismic activity - yet another reason to get these things stable!)

I just got my third Akro Mils cabinet. I can confirm that it's a little scary having them stacked. Sometimes I go to pull a drawer out and it tilts and wobbles a little bit. You have to be careful and not move too quickly. I'm thinking about either mounting them to a wall or making up a sort of bracket/frame that will solidly attach the top one to the bottom one. Another problem I have with those is that if I overpack a drawer, I end up with some elements sticking up and making it a pain to open/pull out a drawer. I'm reaching a point where all of my elements of a certain mold will not fit into their assigned drawer. For example, 2x2x1 slopes are getting plentiful. I plan on getting a sterilite bin and using large ziplocs to start holding overflows of common mold types. Then my Akro mils drawers will just hold a sampling of the collection, with bins/ziplocs for "deep storage". I might put a marker (maybe a sticker) on the drawers where there are bricks in deep storage. Oh, my maturing Lego collection...

This is interesting. All it would have taken was one unique minifigure or significant variation for me to buy this product. As it is, I'll have to pass. I'm going to hazard a guess that these are produced in China at the same place the CMFs are allegedly made. Most of the other "battlepack" products are made in China, yes? (Not bagging on China; I just have an interest in how Lego is made and marketed.)

It's been confirmed that Collectible Minifigures will be around for at least series 6, 7, and 8 - that should last all of 2012. I predict there will continue to be smaller-sized Creator houses or building structures. I suspect that Kingdoms will continue, with a renewed focus on military-based sets. This year's wave was a surprise for me, with respect to what they designed. I hope I am pleasantly surprised next year as well. I think PotC will continue. I sometimes wonder if maybe the sets aren't flying off the shelves, but that's probably just my perception. We still haven't seen any sets from one of the movies in particular (the 3rd one, I think?) On the other hand, perhaps the Black Pearl set might be a last hurrah, considering the variety of minifig characters they're packing into that set. And lastly, I think that Atlantis and Pharaoh's Quest will be discontinued. In its place, I would expect to see a new action theme. You know, something like Rock Raiders and Atlantis where there are a plethora of little gizmos and monsters and moving parts.

I love the winter sets. Let's dig through the blurriness and see what's going on here... I count 7 minifigures! We've got a postal truck. By that figure, he's got a couple of letter-printed tiles and a knapsack on the ground. The boy in the foreground has a dog and a bone in his hand. I can't make out what he's holding. Is that a whip? On the bench is a lady with a package. Next to her I guess is a snow pile. It looks like a man in a green parka is shoveling snow onto that pile. Or maybe the snow pile is actually a little white dog or cat. In the back there are a couple of musicians. One has a banjo, and the other one has a saxaphone? There's one last woman in the back putting a letter into one of two red mailboxes. Hopefully she'll have a dress printing. It looks like the post office has an array of bay windows going in a semi-circle. That looks like a fun build. I like the white tiles on the roof for the snow. It's hard to make out what's going on inside that gazebo. There can't be more minifigures back there. It's got some inverted arches in a tan color. That star on top was also seen in one of the other winter sets as a christmas tree topper. I'm not sure if my eyes are tricking me, but that lamppost is pretty interesting. It's got a curved arm coming down that holds the lamp. We've got a couple of little pine trees too. I wonder where the lightbrick goes in this set. Maybe it lights up the star on top of the gazebo. Maybe you press down on the star and that lights it up. Okay, I'm done here. All will be clear when higher definition photos come out in a few weeks or so.

I got around to putting this set together over the weekend. It was really a delight! The new animals are really great to have in my collection. I didn't realize until it passed through my hands just how small the goats and chickens are. The little boy is a really cute little minifigure; I really love his face printing. The woman is nice too. I suppose I could have lived without the soldiers in this set, or one of them could have had a unique accessory or torso printing, but that's a minor complaint. The play features of the mill and barn are neat. I didn't realize until I put the set together that you rotate the chicken (wind vane?) on the roof to crank the hook/lift. I guess a Lego person has to get way up on the top of the barn to work it? I think it's interesting that we have the old brick-built chicken in this set serving a mechanical function - it's kind of like a passing of the torch to the new chicken mold. I had fun building this. I think it fits in pretty well with the Medieval Market Village. It is a bit less detailed than MMV, but you can always add some tiling to the roof to make it fit in better. The minifigures fit in with MMV with no problem at all, as do all the animals. I really hope TLG designs more sets like this going forward.

At my Lego brand store they typically give you the current magazine when you pay. Not sure if they would give you a second coupon though. That would be epic.

Wow that is lucky. I'll chime in with my suggestions too. - I would build up a presence on several of the major fan sites. This would be the primary place for that, in my opinion, but there are other large forums too. Bricklink, brickset, everywhere you can find. When you go to sell, make a forum posting on all of them. You want to publicize this as best you can with the fan community. For your posting... I've never sold such an expensive item on eBay, but I imagine that's the best place to do it. When you do: - Take plenty of good quality photos. Have someone give them the photoshop treatment so the color balance is looking good, etc. - As said before, good photos of the authenticity certificate - Write up the story of how you obtained the item. The more long-winded it is, the better. The more people feel there's a backstory and history, the more attached they will be. - Be generally very descriptive almost to the point of excess. Make sure everything is proof-read and spell-checked. - Probably wouldn't hurt to get translations into other languages for your listing, especially German (Germany is one of the largest Lego markets). Maybe even get translations for Spanish, Mandarin, Japanese? - I'm not sure if you're in the USA, but don't forget to pay sales tax to the IRS. If you're dealing with thousands of dollars, best not to risk getting audited. And depending on how much it is you might want to do a mid-year tax payment to avoid a penalty come tax return season. - You'll probably want to set a reserve price limit, just in case the bids don't meet your expectations. People set no reserves for cheaper (sub $1k) items, which can foment more bids. You may also want to consider waiting until the economy comes back up to do your listing. Luxury items like vintage cars and jewelry tend to sell much lower in a down market than in a booming market. E.g. a nice restored Porsche in 2011 sells for much less than it would have in 2004. It's great to hear that the money will go for your son's college fund. Good luck! I wish I were you, and I don't even collect SW! <- Green with jealousy.

Does anyone have a good tool and technique for applying stickers? I see people mentioning tweezers... I put together my Creator Lighhouse Island set recently, and they have these reflective stickers that go on a slope piece. I botched it up so it's even going off the top edge of the slope. I don't want this to happen again, especially with a more noticeable stickered part like an outside castle wall or something.

Wow, congratulations! Those look like excellent sets. The little shell fuel cars look really charming. *sigh* Don't tempt me into buying train sets now! I spend too much money as it is!

By far the best theme ever is Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium: http://www.brickset.com/detail/?Set=66208-1 Hehe that was a joke. I ran across that browsing around Brickset. The best theme is obviously Pirates.