CP5670

Sure, but my examples are just a way to illustrate a point and have no significance beyond that. Of course I can change or elaborate on them. The main thing I'm saying is that as long as there is uncertainty, the price ($3, $30 or whatever) means nothing if you don't also consider your chances of success. If you pay 10 times as much for a 10 times greater chance of success, then you are no better or worse off. You are correct that with a 1/2 probability you may still have to buy several sets to get what you want, but the chance of that actually happening is much lower than if the original probability had been 1/16. One essentially pays for that reduction in risk. As for your second comment, you apparently didn't understand me. All I've been saying is that you have to account for uncertainty when deciding what is a fair price on something. The $3 cost of each minifig may still be high for someone who only wants one or two figures because it's a high risk purchase. For someone who wants all the minifigs and multiples of each one, the risk is much lower and the minifigs are a better deal. You know, this is exactly what I have been saying from the beginning. It seems we are in agreement after all.

These are some very creative ideas. The staircase one is especially relevant. I think minifigs were never really designed to stand up on their own, and they fall over quite easily on flat surfaces. It might be useful to have some sort of stands for them, similar to what the Toy Story soldiers have but thinner.

The yellow color does look really out of place. It looks as if they built the police station on top of a derelict Blacktron 1 outpost. I like the station otherwise though.

I can see your point, but you need to also take the probabilities of success into account. Suppose that in my original example, there are only 2 possible sets you can get, only one is in a theme you like, and you have an equal chance of getting either one. This is not that far off from what we have with the minifigs, where you need to buy something like 8 to have a comparable chance of getting any single kind. You can greatly increase the odds by trading, but that could also be done in my example. As I've said earlier, it all comes down to how many of the different figures you actually want and are willing to pay for.

If you want a particular minifig though, especially if it's one of the rarer ones, you would need to buy several bags. I see most of the people in this thread planning on that. The price could easily add up to that level when you buy in quantity, and there may still be not that great a chance of getting what you wanted. Of course, if you like all the figures and intend to get a large collection with several of each, then it's a different story. I certainly wouldn't mind having them all, but it will probably cost at least $60-80 to get a full set (even if you take the randomness out of it and assume you get exactly one of each) and there are just other Lego products I would rather have for that kind of money.

The condition of this 6395 set was strangely lacking considering it was MISB. It had the smoky/yellowed bricks issue described in the quality thread, and a few minifig heads and torsos were smudged up as well. Although I got it for quite a low price and it was still a good deal. The set itself is awesome in any case. I totally see where you are coming from.

If you find the "social experience" of trading fun, then what I proposed is no more absurd than the situation with these minifigs. I will only gamble if I am getting enough of a premium for the risk I take, and that isn't the case here given that I only want a few of the figures. You cannot necessarily conclude that they will be more expensive either way. If the bags were clear then it's also possible that the BL sellers would snap them up faster, increasing the supply on BL. It all depends on what TLG's initial supply for each minifig is like, relative to its demand. As for the collectible value, TLG doesn't really care about that since they see no profit off what the resellers make. If you look at this as a purely business decision, there are arguments to be made both for and against it. It will attract collectors who want most or all of them and are willing to keep buying until they get what they want, but it will turn away more casual buyers like me who are only interested in a few of them. I was saying what could happen in a hypothetical situation, if they did decide to make the figures a standard item. If they are really going to sell out that fast, then perhaps TLG's business strategy on them is less than optimal.

That would just indicate that TLG's estimates on the initial demand for each minifig were off. After the initial batch, TLG would increase the supply of the popular figures and reduce the supply of the unpopular ones. This is no different from what happens with regular Lego sets, or most other products for that matter. Imagine a situation where you can only buy Lego sets on S@H randomly, with a fixed worth of say $30, but you don't actually know what set it is or if it's even from a theme you are interested in. This is basically what is happening here. I personally am only interested in a couple of the figures, and am more likely to not buy any of them at all instead of buying a whole box of them. Reselling or trading the figures I don't want takes up valuable free time that could be spent doing more fun things, such as building.

This is really nice. I like the alien heads and the generally evil look of the whole base. It's good to see some classic-styled MOCs like this around here.

Same here. This is my main problem with these minifigs, and the reason why I'm not going to buying them outside of Bricklink unless you can feel inside the bags. The second batch of minifigs looks cool, but like the first batch there are only one or two that I'm really interested in, and none that would justify putting up with the hassle of blind purchases. We get enough randomness in normal Lego sets already, with all the dodgy quality going around.

There is a red axle extender sticking out next to the battery box. I hope it's not a manual switch of some sort. Maybe it simply shows the current position of the function switcher, similar to what the 8082 forklift did.

The Black Thunder is quite a bit larger than the 5590 helicopter. It might technically fit, but it would probably look too big in comparison to the truck.

The US boxes had the buggy on the front and other countries had the tractor. Apparently TLG thought a tractor wouldn't sell well in the US for some reason. The main model of the set was obviously the tractor though. A dynamic link contains extra commands for the server (usually specified by a question mark), instead of just a direct location of the image. I'm not sure why EB doesn't allow them though. There might be some technical issue with getting them to display properly when embedded in posts.

Looks great. I like the look of the engine, especially with those pneumatic hoses. There is actually an ongoing thread about this. You certainly aren't alone in your building style.

Wow, how did you manage to get all those tiles? I think at least half the tiles on there have never appeared in any set in those colors. Even the test mold pieces usually only exist in trans-clear, red or black.

Yeah, the single model I did see over there with studs was one of your microscale creations. And those are some very nice constructions showing the benefits of studs.

I have always lived in the US, mostly in the DC area until I moved to NJ three years ago. I have been to India 8 times as my parents are from there, although the last time was over 10 years ago. I went to Norway last summer for a conference, and several places (Austria, Switzerland, Hong Kong, Japan, and some others I don't remember) when I was 4 or 5. I don't really like travelling in general and only do it these days if there's a good reason.

Then it wouldn't be Kranxx anymore, would it? If they are going to the trouble of making a new mold, I don't think they would base it so closely on the existing Kranxx head.

Those bottom tiles are actually stickers meant for the control center and came with 8094 and a few Lego Education sets. There are 21 of them in total. Unfortunately, the stickers are not exactly the right size for 2x2 tiles and tend to hang over the edges, which causes them to fray over time.

I went and gathered all the different arrows I could find in my collection. I wish we were still getting these in modern sets. They look nice on both Space and Technic models. I got a bunch of these in a 6395 set last summer (MISB, but the condition was worse than most MISB sets), but they had been packaged along with a bunch of tires and the printing on most of them was smudged up. I still need to try and find replacements for them.

There are some new types of gears I've wanted to see since I was a kid. The main thing is a large ring gear with teeth on the inside, so we could make planetary gearing mechanisms. The turntables have long been the only piece like this, and the center hole is too small to be of any use in practice. This type of gear would open up tons of new possibilities. Gears with helical teeth would also be very useful. They could be connected at angles not possible with normal spur gears, and would also be quieter and stronger. Another one I can think of is a 24t idle gear, similar to the dark gray 16t one. The type 2 differentials already have this kind of gear built into them, so they just need to make that into a separate piece.

It's not just the piece count, but also the size. This 8043 looks considerably smaller than the bulldozer to me. It could just be the angles the pictures were taken at though.

I like just about any colored (not trans-black or clear) transparent windscreen, and any kinds of printed arrow tiles. If a Bricklink store I'm shopping at has any such pieces in new condition, I always buy some even if I don't have any particular use in mind for them.

It actually seems the other way around to me. The older visor is a deeper red while the newer one has an orange tinge to it, especially if you remove them from the helmets and look at them from the top. Yeah, and I don't think Kranxx's head would fit in a ordinary hat either.

I agree with this. I don't mind that piece itself but the fact that it's used as a mudguard on everything. I will also add this wheel: The one thing that has remained with us from the juniorization era is the overuse of this wheel. It works fine on trucks but is used on almost every City vehicle TLG makes these days, despite looking kind of like an off-road wheel. The change with the triple pin was more recent than the others, and was done in 2008. The bush pin also appears in other colors these days, but is predominantly red. I don't like all these odd colored pins either, as their bright, primary colors stand out on Technic models and look bad.