Flandy

The more playset nature of recent UCS sets must be down to a lack of profitability in the expensive, large, display only models, and you'd have to admit, that their increased value now that they're out of production is down to rarity. Rarity is another way of saying poor sales, so I don't blame TLG for making the newer UCS sets appeal to a younger market. On the other hand, there aren't many truly unique parts in any of the UCS sets new or old, a bit of printing here, a canopy there, some minifigs (which people would gladly buy seperately in larger numbers) and packaging/instructions. The second hand market shows that we're dumb enough to pay a lot more than original retail price for an authentic looking display model, so why not replace the UCS brand on things like the new Hoth set, and the sandcrawler with UPS (Ultimate play set) and then keep doing the real Premium quality UCS sets on a limited edition basis, with a slightly increased price to cover the lower sales figures? Nobody wants to pay more ever, but when the choice is what you want at a bit more money, or not getting what you want at all, then it's not really a choice. Speaking personally, as you may notice from my meagre post count, I've only just got back into lego since Christmas. I missed out on pretty much all the UCS sets while I was busy doing boring things like playing with cars and buying a house, but it's always been something I love. Between helping my nephews and neice with their lego, and building and Modding all the star wars sets I could get my hand son, it's really got me hooked. I am up for any and all the UCS sets I can get, but I'm not gonna pay the ludicrous prices that things like the death star, millenium falcon, SSD are going for these days.

I've done the colour swap on mine and come to the same problem, those darned grey hinges. It was Jangbricks on youtube who inspired me to do the colour swap and on re-watching the video, i see he changed that hinge set up completely. Pause at 2:32 to see what I mean: The hinge is a 4213 plate, guessing the other part is 4315 but as the original roof had a front and rear opening sections, I suspect the rear is now none opening.

Finally picked up the UCS tie fighter, I will be saving that for a perfect building day! Previous to that my most recent purchase was the 75081 T-16 (great tusken, need more of those!)

Kind of looks like an inside out tyre?