runswscissors

I feel your pain. Try barnes and noble.com! They seem to be the only ones that have any kingdom sets that I've found!

Funny, it turns out the "Customer" that called the day before was actually MY WIFE! Sorry though, I'm giving the set I ordered to my cousin. Don't tell my wife I ordered one, she'd be pissed that I didn't trust her to get one!

THANKS FOR THE ADVICE! I just called my local shop and they are shipping one to me! My wife was supposed to get me this set, but said she couldn't because it was sold out. She's going to be REALLY surprised when this set is wrapped up under the tree for me from "Santa". ;-) I don't blame anyone that's loading up on sets. Good for them. I thought about it, but decided to only get one. If people are willing to pay $100, then I say go for it! There's plenty of people out there that need the money these days. Good for them for figuring out an interesting way to do it! The clerk was VERY nice to me on the phone. I could hear it was CRAZY in the background. He said he had another customer call and ask to do the same yesterday.

I can't wait to check out the newest Annapolis store. Its the only one close enough to visit (and apparently we are getting another one in MD now - weird!). I'm planning on checking out Annapolis in early July! WOOHOO! My wife has already given me permission (*cough* not that I need it *cough*) to get whatever I wish. :-)

Don't quote me as being exact, but if I had to guess, I'd say its in the $40,000 - $60,000. Things are certainly rough right now though with about 10% unemployment. But the exchange rates aren't too bad. I think they were much worse back around June, 2008. Here's the most recent exchange rates I have from last week (6/12ish): Canadian $ 0.89546 Australian $ 0.81236 Great British Pounds 1.65008 Euros 1.39616 So, one US Dollar would be ABOUT.... 1.12 CA$ 1.23 Aussy$ .60 GBP .71 Euro But I really don't think the largest difference is exchange rates. They are somewhat stable and even when they are shakey, large corporations can get much better deals because of the large volume of currency they go thru. My company does a fair amount of business overseas. One way we hedge our losses against currency changes is to have foreign currency accounts. We've got a Euro account for our French business, an Aussy account for our Australian business, etc. All local transactions go thru the account (We write checks directly out of the account for expenses and make deposits for sales). If my relatively small company does this, I'd imagine Lego does too. I can't imagine Lego is depositing US$ Checks into a Euro account. The bank KILLS YOU on exchange rates. All our transactions go thru a third party exchange company. Exchange rates only apply (for us) if we need to fund accounts that are getting low (meaning that region is loosing money) or when we do consolidated statements. And its only a gain/loss on PAPER when we do the statements. Meaning, it isn't really a loss! Its like saying the new car you bought last week is worth $1,000 less then when you originally bought it. If you aren't planning on selling it this week, its current value is meaningless! And, I believe its been stated several times before, but our prices are pre-tax and it seems European prices are after tax. My final thought on this is price points. Retailers don't want to price things for 67.53 or even 43.00. They want things to be nice and round. I think they do a basic currency conversion and then round up to the nearest X5.99 or X9.99. So if an item is $20, they probably don't want to price it as 12GBP, so they bump it to up 15.99GBP. Just a thought. Sorry for the long post and sorry if I duplicated anything written in the prior pages. I couldn't read thru all of them right now.

I ordered the train and the separate power functions collection. I don't care about the flex tracks. At least not yet. Plus, it was $20 cheaper without the tracks. Train was $100 and the powerfunctions were $100. I got a notice this morning that something had shipped, but it turned out it was ONE ITEM from the power functions collection. Nothing else had shipped as of this morning. I placed the order April 3.

That was my first SW set and still remains one of my favorite. It is a bit ugly, but it is very close to the actual SW (Hasbro?) Snowspeeder toy I had back in the 80s. It was gray just like this set. I loved this one so much (and all of the Hoth type sets) that I have 8 or 9 of these. The new Snowspeeder that came out a few years after this one wasn't nearly as enjoyable as this set! I gave up Star Wars collecting a couple years ago (I couldn't handle all the "reissues"), but I still kept all my original Snowspeeders. Great review!

That looks great!! Very well done!

Sorry....I'm always late to the party. I've got two of the Akro-Mils (sp?) drawers and I LOVE THEM! I just recently bought the second set of drawers and I found them at my local Target for about $16! Amazon and other sites had them at about $30!! I was all set to order one off of amazon.com but I remembered I had purchased the drawers at an actual store. I'll probably go back soon for a third set. I can't recommend them enough! I started out using zip lock bags - storing them in very cheap bins. But I find the drawers much easier. I still keep the bigger items in the bins, but I've upgraded to much nicer brand name bins (rubbermade, maybe?). Spend the extra $1 per bin and get the good kind. The lids don't seem to stay on the cheaper bins!! I also use fishing tackle boxes for my extremely small parts. You can customize the tackle boxes for lenght (mine goes up to about 16 inches in lenght, but only 1.5 inches wide). All my 1x1s and minifig accessories are in the tackle box.

Amazon's prices seem to be back to normal now. :-(

That used to be great news, but Kmart's inventory (at least in my neck of the woods) is pretty awful! I'm in the Baltimore, MD area and I haven't bothered to go in a Kmart in years! That used to be my number one place. :-(

Runsw/scissors here. I've been browsing the forums for a long while now and I figured it was time to sign up and officially say HI! I've loved all things LEGO for a couple decades now, but I've mostly focuse don the Star Wars sets. Unfortuately, I really hated the "reissued" sets. I kinda felt let down by LEGO for continuously putting out new versions of sets they've already done (X-Wing would be the biggest offender). Recently I unloaded about 90% of my Star Wars collection to another collecter because I was sick of keeping up with all the new sets. Most of the newer sets are amazing, but I just don't want any part of that anymore. Now, I mainly focus on the City and Train sets. I can't wait for this next wave to come out! See you guys on the boards! OH - and great site!! -Scissors

I'm all about the small collection now. Although with all these great City sets coming out, I don't know how small my collection will stay. The TRU sales are usually where I bulked up on my sets. Those and the K-Mart buy one get 50% off sales. K-Mart used to have a great selection of LEGO sets. But they've really gone down hill the past few years. The reason my collection got so big was because you needed to keep the dollar amounts close when taking advantage of those sales (as I'm sure everyone's figured out). Buy two get one free doesn't really work when you buy a Fire Station, Police Station and a fire truck!

I have to say I completely understand your point about not wanting to sell the sets off. I read that post and I HAD to register just to express my support. So hello, this is my first post! X-D I had a decent sized collection (mostly older stuff...I've gotten pissed with all the reissues and stopped collection SW sets). I had nowhere close to what you have. But it was pretty sweet. Of the super expensive sets, I had 4 AT-ATs and three RGSs. Those alone on ebay would total almost $1,750 depending on how high they would go. But the time involved in selling them was crazy! I didn't have the time to list EVERY set, track its progress, watch the bidders and examine their bidding history, etc. Most of my sets are opened and built. I was trying to make sure EVERY piece was there to get the best prices. The time involved was just too overwhelming! I was only selling the most expensive of the sets on ebay. It wasn't worth my time to try to sell of $10, $20, or even $30 sets. Besides, after the cost of packing the boxes up, shipping, and the listing/paypal fees, I didn't get anywhere near what I wanted for them. I did get lucky though. I sold a nice sized set to a guy that was kinda local, so I told him I was interested in selling EVERYTHING. I really got lucky because he had deep enough pockets to actually pay such a huge price for them. Even with a very very very big discount - I still got almost $1,500 from him! It was so worth it because I sold them "as is". I didn't guarentee that every piece was there. Vassel's collection is mamoth! How many of you guys would LOVE to have his collection? Now, how many of you could even afford to buy his collection if he offered to sell it to you for 10% of the MSRP (saving 90%)? You'd STILL probably have to spend several thousands of dollars. Even though it'd be a great deal, I wouldn't be able to afford it. That's the problem when you've got such large collections. It gets too big to even sell. As for why he has so many - if you find a deal on a set, you can't pass it up. At least that's how I was. I would definately look into insurance for them! A tip for storing...I always opened mine - so I'd put smaller boxes into larger boxes. I could cut down the size of my stored boxes to about 1/4 the original size by doing that. As for the unopened boxes, I've got no idea. Good luck! Sorry for such a long first post! Seeing your pic makes me miss my collection. :-(