Zeya

I finally had my first foray into brick-and-morter bag fondling two days ago. TRU had a New Year's Day "buy two get one free" sale, and it's repeatable. So each series of 3 minifig packets you buy you're getting for the price of two. The math worked out to $2.90 per bag, including tax (assuming you buy in multiples of 3). Luckily they had some new boxes at the front. I ended up going about 2 hours before closing and they still had a healthy amount out. The staff at this TRU was very familiar with us bag-fondlers. Here's a bit of back and forth: Me: [Fondling a bag] "You know what I'm doing, right?" [so they don't think I'll axe murder them] Employee: "Oh yeah." Me: "You don't mind if I look through these for a while, do you?" Employee: "Oh yeah, no problem." Me: "So, how many crazy people like me have been in here today for these things?" Employee: "Dozens." Later on one bored employee even picked up a stray bag and started feeling it. He said "I think this is the guy with the shield. I can feel the shield right here." Anyway, I ended up buying 3 bags earlier in the day (just made sure they were unique among those 3) and then 15 at a trip later in the day, spending about 45 minutes feeling bags there. The second batch of 15, I had 6 duplicates! This was my first time out doing this, but I was still surprised at my errors. End result is that I'm missing 4 figures: fisherman, hula, cyborg, and race car driver. I'm going to return 3 of the duplicates (they DO allow returns on these right??) And I'm going to hang on to 2 duplicate elves and a pilot, maybe to sell later. I see elves selling for about 9 bucks on BL. I think on future trips, I'll just buy like 40 packets, take them home and decode, and then just return the ones I don't want (unopened after identifying). ---- Some responses to previous posts... I was thinking of doing that. Do they sell them MISB (sealed package) on BL? How much did you end up paying per unit? (I need 4 particular ones myself...) I was at my local Lego store (Santa Clara, CA, USA) to buy an Imperial Flagship and they had a box of the series 3 out on the shelf, and this was on Dec 31st. I was surprised to see it, but it was there. I didn't buy any because I spotted it as I was ringing up and I was with 2 friends I didn't want to hold up with a bunch of bag-fondling. I was at TRU on Jan 1st and they had a small impulse NinjaGO out on the shelf. It was a black ninja with some sort of wall of weapons near him; a really tiny box. I was surprised at the price by the way and thought it should have been a couple dollars cheaper. I'm always checking when I go to Target and Walmart near me (San Jose, CA). In the past 2 months I have yet to see a trace of minifig packets. I don't even know where in the store they would keep them. I always look in the Lego aisles, the front by the baseball cards, and on the racks at each checkout aisle. Nada.

I got 15 of the new collectible monitors at my TRU during the new years buy 2 get one free sale. I'm pretty sure I both am missing about 4 of them and also have a couple duplicates. Reading the new dimples and fondling bags is pretty rough.

I bought an Imperial Flagship with two gift cards ($140), VIP points ($15), and $40 of my own money at my local Lego store. I also bought Kraken Attackin' and Cannon Battle at TRU because I know Pirates is going away. I was in my dark age until October you see. I really want Brickbeards Bounty at least...

I am 28 and have no real embarrassment buying Lego. Some people make it sound like the uncomfortableness that happens when buying "family planning" goods. First of all you can just pretend you're buying for your non-existent son or nephew's birthday if you are that worried. Heck I was at TRU recently to buy the two largest Kingdoms sets and at the checkout behind me was a man in his 80s buying large sets too (city and creator houses). That would have made me feel comfortable if I wasn't already anyway. Also, I tell myself that there are other much worse hobbies to have. My girlfriend knows I could be out on a motorcycle or blowing money on booze. The worst you can say of Lego is that it is pricey and takes up a bit of shelf space. There are much worse things in the world, know what I mean?

Lego is going to eventually sell series 3 on S@H, right?

Today is my birthday! My girlfriend got me an $80 gift card to the lego store and a Lego mug:

I'm glad. I checked a mere 3 days ago for that set, and it was only found at Legoland apparently, and the person/people selling it wanted upwards of $17 for it. $4 is a much more reasonable price. I hope they release the attack wagon polybag set at retail as well, so I can collect all the sets.

NetDevil makes Lego Universe. NetDevil is apparently struggling with its other project, which doesn't bode well for Lego Universe (expansions, fixes, etc). That's all.

Hello. I personally haven't played Lego Universe. This news is kind of tangential to Lego Universe... I am in the software industry and have a friend who used to work for another Gazillion company. (Gazillion basically owns several companies including NetDevil). NetDevil has been working on Lego Universe and another game called Jumpgate for the past 2-4 years now. Obviously LU is out now, but it seems the Jumpgate game may not be in good shape. Here is a news story about their publisher (Codemasters) filing a civil complaint for not delivering the game on time: http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/31893/Codemasters_Files_Complaint_Against_Gazillion_NetDevil_Over_Jumpgate_Delays.php My friend also had the opinion that Jumpgate was struggling in development, but take that with a grain of salt since it's kind of 3rd- or 4th-hand information. I've been keeping my eye on the game for a while because it sounded intriguing. Although I feel that my MMO days are kind of at an end now due to being kind of burned out on them in general. Anyway there you go. I thought someone might find this interesting.

Good analysis. I have a local flea market person near me that sells boxes for $130 apiece, at least that was his price for series 2. That's not a bad price if you want to buy a whole box. But considering there are only 2 fisherman per box taking you below the 3-complete-set scenario, that kind of kills the appeal of buying a box. I was going to buy a box and sell the complete sets I didn't want to recoup some cost. I'm really thinking I'll just buy a set of 16 from BL or eBay, especially considering I would have to go through this every 3 months like clockwork going forward (series 4, 5, 6 etc). I'm still hoping someone will open a MISB box of figs and tell us that the 2 fishermen per box doesn't hold true for all boxes. Maybe those count stats were based off of a picked over box or something.

Legoland is a country that doesn't have low-quality products. Legoland is a country, right?

Because they sell out almost instantly. If you owned a store, you would raise the price on it once you caught wind that there is a high demand and limited supply. Basic economics.

(USA) Costco has some discounts and have added some sets they didn't have before: 3182 City Airport - $80, S@H wants $100 8098 Star Wars Clone Turbo Tank - $100, S@H wants $120 ...and then a couple of duplo sets I won't bother citing prices for: LEGO® Duplo® LEGOVille Deluxe Train Set LEGO® Duplo® LegoVille Big Farm Set Be aware that every time I go to Costco, I check for Lego in the toy area and they never seem to have any. Others have reported seeing Lego in the brick and mortar stores though.

Can you link to the guide you're talking about?

I just saw this on S@H: link I was thinking if the Kindoms/Castle windmill rumor is true, it would be cool to have that and this modern windmill set up, side by side.

I had similar questions when I joined. I would add that if you take a look at reviews, you'll see them list 3 or more prices, sometimes estimating the price for other markets. They'll usually list Euro, USD, and AUD. Note that the US and Germany are the largest Lego markets, at least that's what people say. It seems that the US gets better prices than any other country, leading to a little bit of jealousy and grumbling. Note also that people on here post in English. But for some it's a second language so don't confuse bad grammar / leet speek for people trying their best to communicate in their second language. You should read the rules post or whatever it's called (let me find it...) : http://www.eurobricks.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=18718 Also, see the rest of the pinned topics here for other important stuff: http://www.eurobricks.com/forum/index.php?showforum=6

I'm glad I could help out. Unfortunately, I am not (yet?) an expert at Lego. I just came out of my dark ages. I responded because I happened to see that tent piece elsewhere on this site. But I can recommend the website Bricklink to you. It's basically a treasure trove of set information. They have pretty much all Lego sets, broken down by inventory (bricks) and show exactly everything that is in the set. I would see which unique looking bricks are in the photo and then try and find them on Bricklink by doing a search in the catalog: http://www.bricklink.com/catalog.asp If you only have a notion of what theme or set something is from, maybe try going to a page like this: http://www.bricklink.com/catalogTree.asp?itemType=S and then look at images of the sets in that theme and see if you can spot it. Like maybe you see a tall roof piece that looks like it's from Harry Potter. Look at images of completed sets and try and spot it.

I stand corrected. Everything is fine here. I just didn't have things rotated properly.

That's a tent from the Adventurers theme: http://www.bricklink.com/catalogItem.asp?P=tent Only appears in one set, 5978 Sphinx Secret Surprise: http://www.bricklink.com/catalogItem.asp?S=5978-1

I couldn't get a pirate sword in his hand, or a random goblet I tried. I assumed at that point that nothing else would fit in his hand either.

Ignore this. I was mistaken. Bug: The monkey (74999 MONKEY), which is only found in LU mode, has hands and feet like a minifig, but you can't place any accessories in them. They also won't attach to other bricks like a pole, etc. I'm not sure if other parts like the monkey have this problem. I can't think of other non-minifigs with hand parts like that.

Bad movie thread? Sweet. The Blair Witch Project - Still mad about losing 90 minutes of my life and this was, what, eleven years ago? Props to them for raking in heaps of cash though. Paranormal Activity - See above. The Fourth Kind - See above. Lol. Jungle 2 Jungle - Saw this during a christmas break in high school because of lack of things to do. We had to walk out of the theater, it was that bad.

Well at least you have Tim Hortons and polite strangers in Canada. :)

UPDATE I updated my lxf and photo for my 6239 Cannon Battle. It was just a quick change to have the proper "pearl gold" 297 color on two of the bricks. I learned how to do this thanks to Aanchir's post (quoted below).