MAB

I don't know as I've never seen their internal documents. But for a long time their output managed to be close to it and i have no doubt that they know it is used. Of course it could be coincidental that sets tended to contain a similar mix of parts no matter what the range or size of the set and so getting close to that ratio was a natural occurrence and it continued to happen when they started to use many and more smaller parts at the same time as increasing set prices. There have always been outliers, of course. CMF, single baseplate sets, anything that was electronic and not many other parts to average the high cost of the expensive part.

I think it has already started. Pieces got smaller while the ppp ratio remained roughly the same but at some stage that has to break as the average part size cannot keep decreasing. You need some larger parts to hold all the 1x1 parts together. Brickset has just reviewed one of the new JP sets and recorded the price per part as 25.1c and mentioned $50 is absurd for 199 pieces. Yet it contains a very large dinosaur and the pricing is not that out of line compared to similar Playmobil sets. LEGO and fans should forget about using the ppp, it is meaningless when you don't consider what the parts are and t doesn't really contain information about value since not all sets have the same type of distribution of parts.

I was comparing to PAB as that (presumably) gives a relative cost of parts to LEGO. I assume that expensive parts on PAB are expensive because they are more expensive to produce, and that cheaper parts on PAB are cheaper because they are cheaper to produce. Of course, that is an assumption and LEGO might also price gouge on more in-demand pieces. But it should give a rough idea of what the _relative_ cost of a set might be compared to a set containing mainly smaller cheese slopes and tiles. Comparing to BL is much harder, as that gives the perceived cost to fans rather than a cost to LEGO. And we all know if they make something in a popular colour it can be worth a lot on BL, whereas in an unpopular colour it can be almost worthless. I ignore the set part out value if I am going to buy a set (or multiple of the set) to part out to sell. I look at the actual parts, especially those with high part out value. Any new parts are always crazy high prices and early high priced sales will stay in the price guide for six months, keeping the listing price reasonably high, even though more pragmatic sellers that want to sell will be listing at a much lower price. But yes, for nearly all new sets, the part out value is typically higher than the cost of the set. The rule of thumb used to be buy if the part out value is at 2x the set price, but I don't think that works so well now as many parts will not sell at the average price as the market becomes flooded with other people parting them out. The opposite is true for older sealed sets. There, you normally find that the set is worth more sealed than parted out. Unless there are unique parts in the set, the part values have had time to stabilise to their likely true values which is often less than someone is willing to pay to get the sealed set to open themselves. There is no concerted action here though. For everyone boycotting the set, someone else will buy it. 10+ years ago, huge discounts (50% off, 80% off, even more sometimes) were possible on stock that wasn't selling when LEGO was "just a toy" (so few adult fans compared to now), nowhere near as popular as now with kids or adults and not really looked at as an investment by many. These days LEGO is just too popular for those discounts to happen. 20% is possible, but I find that if they go to 30%, the shelves will be cleared. LEGO has become so popular - especially with adults - that enough people buy what they want rather than caring about the price too much, and even the design too much. LEGO set prices based on what enough customers will pay. They don't care if they lose some customers due to pricing, if enough other customers keep buying. And they will keep buying. My LEGO spend (for myself) is probably lower now than it has been for 20+ years. Partly as I feel there is less value in it but also partly as I have so much anyway, I really don't need the bricks. Anything new in a set is nice, but more bulk brick is not really worth it any more to me. I often build new sets using online instructions with my existing parts. I might buy the occasional set for the minifigs or the new parts, or I might buy those on BL. I doubt LEGO really cares if I don't buy though, as plenty of others are buying.

Remember 'people' are not one. They are millions of individuals often with little in common. The people complaining online, especially about prices, probably aren't the ones buying. The price of the Juggernaut looks bad in terms of the awful PPP metric, but when you look at the parts and what they cost on PAB the price makes more sense. You might have boycotted 75385 but it includes Thrawn. Many fans have been waiting for a remake of him with some willing to pay $50 to get one. He will have sold whichever small/medium set he was in, whether it was an interactive base type set like it turned out to be or a vehicle or ship. Some people might not like that style of set but other people are buying for the miifigures and everything else is just bricks no matter what the instructions say.

404 error. I'll stick with Google.

Have you ever heard of a permanent marker pen?

Someone asked about these a few years ago, I cannot remember who or find the thread. I just came across my set while sorting out my stickers, so here they are ...

Presumably it was corrected in later print runs as the instructions on toysperiod don't have the same error. But no, it is not likely to be rare or worth a lot. Other sets of the period occasionally had errata sheets.

Where they are not broken, I can understand high prices as those parts are hard to find. Just as shocking are some of the prices where the clips of old bardings are broken.

The hops and the frames have come out really well, the light green colour really pops like the real thing. Maybe something is missing - there must be a barrel of beer hidden somewhere!

I guess some of that is down to "honest" advertising now, in that catalogues show what you can buy as individual sets rather than a huge diorama that could cost 1000s in whatever currency. I think also shelf life of sets has changed. Whereas they used to be available for multiple years, so chances are they would still be available to purchase when used in a big montage, whereas now I imagine they'd get complaints if they showed a retired set in an advertisement piece. A bit like the Modulars, where they typically show it in a line with the past two as they will be available at the time of release, but don't go further back. And of course, there is no Castle theme to do it with anyway. Plus with the rise of the internet since then, there are plenty of people building huge dioramas and showing them off, probably better than LEGO's own ones. LEGO relies quite a bit on partially independent fan-produced content, as we also see with all the freebie-based review sets they send out.

The tradition is alive and well. I spend ages looking at LEGO sets that I won't buy as they are too expensive and take up too much room.

Something similar happened with the black dinosaur neck/tail when it appeared in the Arvo brothers' Alien. It jumped from about 10p to £5-6 each. Many more have since found their way to the marketplace so the price has dropped again but there are still BL sellers that listed in that time with high prices.

It wasn't me, but someone paid £60 for one of these in 2023. I know, as I sold it to them. And based on today's prices, they got a bargain. But paid a lot more than the £2 I sold some others for in 2016 and 2017. They were originally 53p on bricksnpieces / PAB. Reinhardt's helmet was originally quute cheap. I bought 4 four £1.50 each. The price went a little crazy as it was a good stand-in for Sauron and you're looking at £15 now. I painted one to match armour.

Most diagonal building reinvents the wheel in the sense of it all comes back to pythagoras. For a 45 degree wall, you can just about get away with 7^2 +7^2 ~ 10^2, so an 11 long wall fits on the opposite corner studs of an 8x8 plate. This looks similar to what you have although you wall is complicated slightly as you use SNOT techniques as well. There are some true pythagorean triples that work and then there is using equal but opposite handed triangles to get a wider range of angles to offset builds rather than walls.

It is not a particularly interesting room though, just grey walls, a tomb and well. LEGO have shown that they want their book nooks to be interactive in that you can expand them by opening them so the Balrog scene is fine for me. Redoing Balin's tomb (from Mines of Moria) and repeating a couple of the Fellowship minifigures from Rivendell probably wouldn't sell well. Whereas the Balrog gives something new for everyone.

I guess there will always be problems with a service like this, where machine calibration will slowly change. I imagine for many people slight offsets won't be an issue as it is just a bit of fun, whereas for others they will want a top quality product. It is probably cheaper to refund when someone complains than check every order before sending.

And on BL there is a clear definition of new. It is not used. As good as new is still used. I don't understand the difference in your descriptions of (mint in box, unopened) and (mint in sealed box) and that is why people should use the correct settings on BL. If the contents are not used for building then select new, and if the box is still factory sealed then select sealed, if everything is present then select complete. People using their own conditions such as MISB, MIB, 9.5, 5 stars, etc just complicate things as they are not defined on BL. MISB causes arguments over whether only the contents need to be mint, or whether it means the box should also be mint. And using it implies a guarantee that there is no damage to anything inside the box, which a seller cannot guarantee if the box is sealed. Which is fine and those people should not be using Bricklink. They can stick to current sets at retail stores instead.

If they were doing a Witch King Battle set, I would hope the minifigure selection would include the Witch King. But I doubt the form works for that scene. Replace the Balrog with a bigger fell beast. Replace one figure with 3 or 4. Add a horse. Add some ground for the figures to be placed. It is soon bigger than the book nook.

I have sold 1000s of new minifigures on bricklink. I open a set, remove the relevant minifig parts, and put them in their own ziplock bag. I've never felt the need for it to be assembled to be called a minifigure. For me, having all the correct parts in unused condition just as if you removed it from a LEGO bag yourself is the best you can have for the secondary market. When buying anything on the secondary market, there is an element of trust on the buyer's part and reputation of the seller. For customers that lack trust, they will have to buy full sets direct from LEGO or retailers.

I stand by my logic that adding further horses to a carriage doesn't add to the playability of the set. They become one object. The playability of a carriage attached to one horse is the same as attached to four.

The castle set is a playset and adding another 3 horses to pull the carriage would add to the cost without really adding much to the playability. If anything it makes playing with it harder unless they are rigidly joined together. Whereas the Santa set is primarily a display set so needs more than one reindeer for the effect to work. Quite a few people bought extras to make 9, a bit like the ringwraiths in LOTR.

BL orders are purged after six months. A record of the order will be in your emails. No, we aren't paid LEGO shills.

As he faces away from the viewer, you'd see the holes in Gandalf's legs.

If you know their value then presumably you've looked them up on ebay, bricklink, or other similar sites. So sell them there. If you want to get most value then you'll have to list them individually. Otherwise do one big lot and let it go for maybe 50% of the value so the buyer can do the work of selling them individually.