MAB

I used to be a die hard cmf collector. But it wasn't expensive or hard to do. Up to about series 14 or so, you could regularly buy them here for £1.00-£1.50 each, then trade with others to complete a series. Occasionally I had to pay a higher price to get more sought after ones. I used to pay up to £4 including postage to buy S6 Romans. As well as the complete series I also bought just over 100 Roman soldiers but have long since sold them once their value rocketed. I stopped collecting when too many similar ones were getting done, then soon after the retail prices went higher so I rarely buy them even for parts. Then the dominance of licensed sets. I also collect monofigs, I have done for years. I "invented" them for myself before I found out others were collecting the same thing. But I only do it with normal released parts. I understand why people buy and collect what they like. They enjoy it, and have the money for it. That is what I do with my collection. Hoever, I don't feel the need to try to rationalise why other people buy specific things. They are collectors and spend what they can afford on what they want.

More sets means more choice, which is good. The only people that will find a problem with this are the ones that think they must buy all of them and cannot choose for themselves.

If you screw brick separators into a strip of wood, they make good coat hooks. l glued a few tiles onto the bottom of a kitchen table leg to stop the table wobbling. Perfect thickness.

I have most winter village sets but won't be buying this. It is yet another North Pole fantasy setting, rather than a winter village, very similar to the Gingerbread House and incredibly boring minifigs if you have older sets, especially the workshop. I can see the appeal if someone is new to the series but otherwise it doesn't add much. The reindeer is nice, but will clash horribly with the brick built ones they already did.

Before the pandemic, they weren't selling 300 - 400 Euro sets to poorer people. I doubt that many richer people will be losing jobs after the pandemic.

I'm not going to squirrel any away, and definitely not now. Maybe towards the end if they have decent discounts. But not now. That's a good tip about templates. I know in the past I've had to remove 100s of plates due to a 1 plate shift error that propagated before I realised. I think many LEGO collectors/investors are midway between extremes. I'll invest medium term (1-2 years) when there are discounts on sets I like and I think will sell. But then I'll also invest - and scalp - on items that I am sure will do well at Christmas, or that I can take from one country and sell in another.

Nice. What are the two on the far right? Are they LEGO or custom prints/stickers?

That is superb.

Plus many sets don't smoothly rise. There is typically a step in price just after retirement and then either a long plateau or more likely a slow increase and then, depending on the set, severe drops where sets are re-released or better or just new versions come out. I would never hold a set released now for a decade. It is better to take the money after the initial fast increase and re-invest than hold for the long term. This is where 30 or 50% after retirement is better than 100% after ten. Especially if you got a significant discount just before the set is retired. It will be interesting to see what LEGO does with the mosaics in the long term. If they continue doing them, then these ones could well rise in value after retirement, at least as complete sets. There will be collectors that get into them late and want the boxes and instructions to go with the common parts they are made from, and some that want sealed copies never to open. If they do a Star Wars heroes set, that makes Luke, Han, Leia and Rey or similar, then some people will want the Sith set and it will be too much hassle to order the 1000s of parts on BL so they will be after the complete set. I think a number of LEGO collectors (as opposed to full on re-sellers) also do it with twos. That is buy two, sell one at double price. Or even buy three, sell two at 1.5x price. Those are still reasonably feasible with many but not all LEGO sets. They are do a little work, get my set for free. They are not strictly investments for profit, more investments to get a free set. Being able to sell current sets at 3x in future is quite unlikely these days, even though it was relatively easy in the past, so the rule of threes is not going to work for most sets.

And Cantina, sets are coming though now.

One problem then is how to hang it. Of course, DIY/MOCers have made loads of solutions for it but not ones using official LEGO parts. When covered in plates a 48x48 baseplate is heavy and is easily detached from a hanging plate if you only use a couple of plates with hole in. Plus working on a 48x48 baseplate one stud at a time is quite hard, and very easy to make errors. Whereas working on smaller sections that attach together is less likely to lead to errors. I imagine play testing taught them that. Again mosaic MOCers have been able to do this fine in the past, but for people new to LEGO, I imagine they would find it hard to complete a 48x48 mosaic on one piece, but find it much easier to do 9 16x16 ones. It also gives natural break points. But I agree about being able to build something similar for less money.

LEGO investing isn't really safe. There are some sets that if you buy at the wrong time or price will not make a profit once sold after accounting for fees. Similarly some sets, if parted out, will not completely sell.

Prices vary across Europe. It was 299 Euro in some countries. And remember that this price includes VAT / tax, whereas US prices do not.

I'm guessing a regular 32x32 baseplate, so his 16 will be 4x4 or 8x2 baseplates. In the picture, you can just about see a join in the line of tiles, possibly where the baseplates butt up against each other. I can't wait to see the whole collaboration set up.

And they already did non-IP related versions of an Amazon and Atlantean king ... And along with all the other relevant CMFs then I imagine that is as close as we will get to a mythology line. Plus they also overlap with existing LEGO / Disney too (Hercules and Hades, plus a weaker link to Ursula)

Plus Ninjago City has only been off the shelves for a little over six months. The Taj Mahal had a break of about 7-8 years. Nearly everyone that is willing to spend the $300 on Ninjago City will already have bought it. Better to have something new at a similar price that appeals to both people that have Ninjago City and to people that don't have Ninjago City, rather than people that didn't buy Ninjago City during the 2+ years it was available but have decided that in the last six months they do want it.

46 of them are already opened. And why not, if they can open safely? Production is different to selling. If they can produce the stock, it is better that they sell it than someone else sell it.

There was already stock in the system, which could be sold when factories were closed. They were able to shift European stock to the US. There is always slack stock in the system but this year that slack stock that would often need to be discounted was sold for normal prices. I imagine they have been affected. Smaller production runs will still mean shortages of some sets. I imagine popular sets will be hard to find before Christmas as the lack of production earlier in the year will feed through. Luckily, there factories are highly automated and need very little staff presence, and social distancing is relatively easy in production.

True, and in fact being rare doesn't mean it is worth a lot, just that it is often expensive if it sells. Some rare to find and rare to use parts have very low sales volume because they are so expensive, and so people use alternatives. The inventory may appear to be valuable but in reality will not sell very quickly at the price. Again, this is where it is often better to have something that is less valuable but in much more demand, than something expensive with little demand. The tiles are now common parts and available on B+P for 4p, so probably about 4c/5c or so in the US and Europe. That will hold down the value of the tiles. I doubt the BL average will climb above double that.

For switching points, SG90 type servos are a cheap alternative to Lego motors. You can get quite low quality ones for about $1 each and these are perfect for switching throw switches on points.

From an adult view, yes. But that has been true for a few years and City has still been a top seller. I wonder if the balance is changing and now more parents don't care to much if their kids play with licensed rather than unlicensed toys.

I don't think it would. Many people that want it have already got it. They would need to find many new customers that did not buy it last time to make it a successful seller. Whereas if they released a similar size and detail but different set, they will sell to both new customers and the ones that already have Ninjago City. It is a similar argument with Modulars, with some people wanting re-releases of old sets. Better to have something similar but new that sells to both old and new collectors than something that is only appealing to new customers.

Sure, but are the BAM and PAB walls? Yes, for kids in families that can afford it. However, one set does not make a theme successful or a top selling theme. Unless the smaller sets in the theme that are much more accessible to many, many more kids are attractive enough compared to other themes then the theme will not be a top seller again. Most successful themes (including Ninjago of old) have very good high end sets for the relatively few that can purchase them, but strong sales of the smaller sets too.

It depends what you mean by make more money. Selling sets as opposed to parting out means that you sell everything in one go, and you have to do very little work. Parting out means you have to spend time to part out the set, then pick orders as and when they come in and package many orders. While you might make more money as a percentage of what you paid for the set, you spend way more time doing it. If you factor out the time used, you earn far less per hour parting out than if you sell sets, even though you may make more money on that one set. Then there is compounding. Even if you make only 20% after fees on selling a set, you can reinvest that in one go. Let's say it takes two months to sell the set and you reinvest it all. That means that you can make 1.2x1.2x1.2x1.2x1.2x1.2 your initial investment in a year. That is almost 3x your initial investment and you have sent six orders. Whereas if you part out, any minifigs and rarer parts might sell reasonably quickly, but the common parts will sit for a while unless priced very cheaply. Some parts won't sell no matter how cheap. It may appear to be a great idea to get inventory worth 2x what you paid, but it doesn't mean you will get that in money and also not in a necessary reasonable time. Of course, you can also reinvest money in dribs and drabs as you get orders. This of course is where it is better to have a large store so cashflow is more constant and you can buy larger sets with more sought after minifigures (which is where much of the money is). I don't think you'd make much at all parting out mosaics. The new base parts will probably sell well, but the plates/tiles not so well. If you buy it at the right time - before Christmas if it goes out of stock, or just before retirement, then you can sell it on quickly in one go at a decent profit. Of course, it is not so black and white, it all depends when you buy sets and what you pay. Parting out definitely gives you an inventory worth more per set, but not necessarily more money overall due to the lower turnover rate. And in terms of profit per hour of work, sets will nearly always beat parts unless you are able to buy expensive and good selling parts cheaply. It may seem that getting inventory worth 2.0x what you paid compared to selling as a whole set for 1.2x what you paid is a better deal. It isn't always, depending on how you sell.

There is a nice book on sleepers (specifically Anglo-Scottish ones) called somewhat unsurprisingly "Anglo-Scottish Sleepers". You can see some images from it here: https://mediadrumworld.com/2018/03/07/23696/ There was a London-Scotland Pullman called the Queen of Scots, but it wasn't a sleeper. It left in the morning and got in to the destination in the evening, so no need to overnight on the train.