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MAB

Eurobricks Archdukes
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Everything posted by MAB

  1. MAB
    So long as the variants of existing characters are different enough. If they did a series in which there were 8 completely new but niche characters and 8 army builders, it would sell very well to SW fans (but probably not kids). If it was all existing characters in only very slightly different costumes or existing prints but different combinations of existing parts (so yet another Luke in Tatooine outfit, Han Solo with a different crease in his shirt, etc) then great for kids bad for SW collectors. The licensed ones tend to be characters that you only really need one of each and not army builders (although I do have a Homer Simpson clone army). Putting in some generic rebels or stormtroopers could really mess up distributions as some people will want one of each whereas others will army build (like unlicensed series).
  2. MAB
    It wouldn't bother me too much if they did kill it, whether by mistake or on purpose. With the original series they used to be a cheap impulse buy and provided something a bit different that wasn't really available in sets. The price now is pretty much on par with LEGO comics (at least here) where you typically get a foil bag with a known character inside. From a kid's perspective you get a figure you know and a comic vs some random figure you might not want. In some stores you can also buy Creator and similar polybags for £4 and occasionally small boxed sets for £5. You can certainly get a lot more for your money, especially if the parent wants the kid to gave something to do on a journey or in a restaurant or similar. Opening a figure and finding you don't want it is not great. From the collector point of view, do they still get new collectors starting at Series 22, having to wait a full year before collecting series 23? Do these new collectors try to collect them all at this late stage? I think it might be time for something similar but new, and killing it could be the start of that. I think some stores are already a bit fed up with them. I see far fewer supermarkets that take them compared to five or ten years ago. Plus I don't think they have the sell through rate they used to (at least for unlicensed ones) - one store near me still has a couple of dozen packs of series 20 in a series 21 box, along with S21 packets. That could of course be because collectors just buy complete series online or buy a box instead. And then there is the opened bags problem, I often see minifig parts on the LEGO shelf where someone has opened a packed and dumped it.
  3. MAB
    Yours is two weeks older. They were packed in weeks 17 and 19 2022 in Billund.
  4. MAB
    Yeah, it is the sort of thing where if you ask people what this is, most will say a LEGO brick (or a LEGO or LEGO). When it isn't. I think the wording they are using is wrong, as they have shown that a minifigure advertising a brand is possible to have two trademarks - eg. theirs and Ford's. The problem they have when it is another company or fan group doing it outside of their knowledge.
  5. MAB
    Same here. We have plenty of ruins of medieval castles here. Most follow the pattern of having a keep, stables, sometimes a seperate kitchen (fire!) and store, maybe a separate great hall where visitors would have access (don't want them in main living quarters), maybe a separate chapel. The town/villages were outside. There were some castle towns, but they were relatively small. Larger walled cities are quite different.
  6. MAB
    I've got late 60s soft rubber tyres like these ... nearly all are dried out, hard rubber. And 100s of these from 1970s ... all in decent condition.
  7. MAB
    I think you can still print on LEGO bricks according to their policy. We understand that the AFOL Community would still like to celebrate their community events and activities via use of customized items and are pleased to confirm that according to current corporate policy fans are free to print graphics on LEGO brick elements and custom builds made of LEGO brick elements to celebrate your community activities and events. There is a really simple work around, don't give out custom minifigures. Instead, give out custom printed parts, such as a torso. Parts do not make a minifigure until they are assembled. LEGO even refers to them as bricks ("search for same brick", "you haven't picked any bricks", etc) through their pick-a-brick service. So buy what LEGO themselves call 'bricks' and then do custom prints on these 'bricks' according to their policy, just don't complete a minifigure.
  8. MAB
    If they are truly blind figures, then (probabilistically) taking 18 figures from that box is no different to taking 18 from a new box, as you cannot know what was removed and nobody else would have known which ones to remove. It changes slightly if you see someone open boxes from that box, since if they open figures from that box that you want, chances go down, but if they get ones you don't want, chances go up. Assuming box contents are not mixed up with other boxes. Statisically it is better if they sold half sets of 6 known figures if the series was 12, since you'd have a 1 in 12 chance of picking randomly but guaranteed in a buy 6 get 1 you want box. You would have to sell more if you picked randomly from a series if 12 than if you had to sell 5. But then it is even better if they sold known boxes of 4, better still 3, better still 2 and better still 1. If they did a complete set of 12 or random boxes of 36 (guaranteed three full sets) and you wanted multiple of one figure, it would be better to find a new box and pick one, buy it, open it and stop when you get three of the figure you want. At most you'd need to buy 36 figures to get three, whereas you are guaranteed to have to buy 36 if complete sets.
  9. MAB
    That would be great, although they'd obliterate their core business. If you could buy all minifigures without sets, then their brick sales would tank. The thing that keeps secondary market prices high is demand vs supply. If there was infinite supply, then demand is easily satisfied. Even popular characters that appear in many sets and have massive supply are not worth much. It is only really variants or characters that appear in one set, often an expensive one, that are worth much. They didn't say classic sets. Different people read that question in very different ways. My reading of it was unsold old stock rather than reproducing 10 or 20 year old sets at a buyer's request. LEGO never qualified what it meant.
  10. MAB
    Maybe yes, maybe no. Schrodinger's tyres. You don't know until you open the box.
  11. MAB
    If they believed that, maybe they should be clear what minifigure means across all LEGO owned companies. The LEGO website is clear about distinctions between minifigures and droids, skeletons, etc. Collectable series that included Unikitty had character written on the packet, not minifigure. Yet LEGO's bricklink has cars, wardrobes, cups, single bricks, and so on listed as minifigures. They need to be consistent as to what a minifigure is if they want to protect it.
  12. MAB
    Yet they don't seem to do much about custom printers making and selling licensed prints on genuine LEGO, even when they are from current themes such as Super Heroes, Stranger Things, etc.
  13. MAB
    The problem is if it is a sought after figure by many people, then reseller prices will be high. At least in a store, you know resellers cannot remove all the high value ones by feel. But that then turns all buyers into resellers if you sell on the figures you don't want to get the ones you do want.
  14. MAB
    It does look great next to MMV and MVR. I think that is the best line of action. Unless you have the display space for a huge castle!
  15. MAB
    I don't think LEGO is that creative any more when it comes to CMF. They have already shown that they are happy to reduce the in-house designs from 48 to 12 per year, in favour of doing more licensed instead. My assumption would be that licensed CMF sell better than unlicensed. This latest series does seem to be becoming at least partially themed again. Maybe it would be better if they did unnumbered small but themed series during the year - so for example doing a series of six monsters near Halloween, six Christmas themed ones after that, and so on. Do people really care that they are numbered any more? Would a blind bagged but unnumbered series all based on a particular theme sell better or worse than a collection of random characters labelled with "Series 34"?
  16. MAB
    With anything like this, with official sets you have to give a little when it comes to scale. The size of the courtyard type area inside the curtain wall will nearly always appear much smaller than it should be in a lego set, unless you have endless wall sets to make your own as large as you want. Otherwise, the keep would be very small to be in scale with the wall perimeter. There are downsized MOCs of the blacksmith that look great but probably still large compared to the castle. I imagine any solution (aside from MOCing at the correct scale) will always have an undersized castle and keep with the other village buildings being oversized.
  17. MAB
    If you are only after a specific one and will be selling on unwanted ones, you might as well just buy random packs one at a time stopping when you get it.
  18. MAB
    They look good, and it fits with the printed cape on the front. Fortunately I have quite a few of the chainmail torsos from Kingdoms and the fright knight cmf to do similar figures.
  19. MAB
    Remember not everyone wants them as a series. I often go for multiples of one figure and zero of the rest. There are some that LEGO must know will be popular, I'd prefer them to skew the distribution of those. Everyone is equally disadvantaged!
  20. MAB
    Go back in time a week to when I first posted it.
  21. MAB
    Bricklink. Although the cheaper ones have just about all gone now. The Classic King set sold approx 30 per month in March, April and May but almost 400 in June. I imagine that has a lot to do with the Castle without a king. Castle stuff is flying right now. A couple of days ago I parted out a Kingdoms chess set, at prices decently above recent sales. More than half has sold in two days.
  22. MAB
    It is a nice MOC. But for IDEAS, I think you'd have more luck removing the base and the false perspective background, replacing both with some standalone 3D scenery for the trees and some rocks.
  23. MAB
    Changing from 16 to 12 didn't get here either. Later series look like you have missed some if you display by series. I'd like them to reduce the numbers to maybe four characters per series, but have them themed within a series and multiple series out at once in different packaging. That way, they are still blind and (not) cheap impulse buys but you know you are going to get a character you are likely to want. So they could do 4x warriors in one series, 4x fairies and pixies, 4x animal suits, 4x skaters, 4x robots, 4x aliens, etc Although this is coming from someone that uses them in MOCs and often wants multiples rather than displaying otherwise unrelated figures as a whole series.
  24. MAB
    Yes. I have done three orders of 40 figures so far. The parts range is very limited and you can only order a max of 40 figures per order. Some parts were quite scarce / high value and some have already been removed. Some prints are a little hard to work out what they are and they don't tell you product numbers.
  25. MAB
    Great! The roof is the perfect shape for this.
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