MAB

Yet if people are willing to pay the prices, then they are realistic prices as they are the market rate. Like anything that is sold, the value is what it is sold for, that is what it is worth to the buyer and seller at the time. What other people value it at is irrelevant. Just because other people don't value it as highly it does not mean the price paid is disgusting. If someone offered me £6 for something that I can sell for £60, then their offer is no less disgusting or ridiculous than the price someone else is willing to pay and the low-baller clearly doesn’t know the market or possibly even appreciate what the object is. Their offer of 1/10 of the price that someone is willing to pay is just as disgusting as the 10x more than their valuation that someone else is willing to pay. Why is £60 a disgusting and ridiculous price for an incredibly hard to find collectable item? As that is what the palantir Zamor sphere is, not just a small plastic ball. If someone wants a small plastic ball and only sees it as a small plastic ball, they can buy a cheap small plastic ball instead of a hard to find collectable. The cost of the raw goods may be similar for both, but for those that appreciate what they are and know the market, they will know they vary massively in value. Just like the Rivendell set is worth significantly more than the equivalent weight in random LEGO bricks, random clone bricks or other plastic objects of the same weight. Or like a Sauron minifigure is worth significantly more than a Harry Potter minifigure.

Are kids buying these? The only people I've seen in shops interested in them are adults and older teens. If someone only buys 3 or 4 that isn't really different to buying 6.

I've used various non-LEGO motors a number of times in the past. They are dirt cheap, especially if you take them (and lights / LEDs, wires, etc) from old toys from a goodwill type store. Rather than trying to fit them into an old broken LEGO motor case, I tend to just build them into a small LEGO box made of plates and bricks or brackets. Then once assembled, glue a small gear onto the motor shaft. It is best to assemble the box on a larger plate to ensure it is the perfect size, then just dump a load of hot glue into it around the metal casing of the motor (away from the moving parts) to keep it centred in its new LEGO compatible case. They are ugly, but if buried in a model anyway it is not a problem. And as they are custom, you can have any LEGO attachments you like for the motor box - studs, technic holes, technic pins, etc and they can be different attachments on different sides.

And the older ones rarely sell, but do occasionally sell. Most HP and the more popular Star Wars sets are not worth investing in because they will be done again and dont hold their value if selling on as used once you are done with them. The weirder ones that won't get a remake can do better but there are always other cheap sets from the franchise available. But those old (sealed) ones do sell if the right collector comes along and has to have it, and in that sense it is worth just setting a high price and stashing away. I'm not sure I'd want LOTR to become like HP. On one hand, is great to get a huge range of sets. But on the other hand, when you are getting 10 different Harry Potter (or Frodo) figures a year with slightly different prints, or you buy a (insert scene) set here and two years later they do the same scene again, looking better at 50% bigger and 75% more expensive, then a long awaited figure in a huge set where all the other figures are repeats, it just becomes tiresome. I never really collected HP (but have some sets) although I used to collect SW but not as a must-collect-everything type collector. I think I had something like 35 Lukes of which about 20 were slightly different but just five main outfits and in the end got rid of all the duplicate outfits, keeping two of each type for display/MOCs. I don't really care about variations in creases in his white tunic. While getting new outfits and scenes is great, I already have the four different Frodos from the first round (in reality just two outfits) and another 4 MOC figures in other outfits. It is even worse if the sets are all adult priced and duplicate the past. Despite being beautiful, I didn't buy Rivendell. I have all the named characters already (aside from old Bilbo and his parts were on PAB) and I used its design to build a smaller version (but bigger than the old Council set) that fits on my shelving so it was not worth buying. But then, it would probably be just as annoying to get smaller sets of Frodo with Sam, Frodo with Gandalf, Frodo with Gollum, and a mid sized set of Frodo with Sam, Gollum and Faramir, and a really large set with repeats of everyone plus a single Gondor soldier. There is the feeling of missing out if you are not buying the small sets as they are duplicating figures or repeating scenes, when in reality you don't actually want them as it is all duplication.

They just shipped my order from mid October. Shame, I could have complained and got more points!

Those prices are not ridiculous to other people though. That is why transactions take place. If sellers want to sell, then prices have to be realistic not ridiculous. But they only have to be realistic to the people willing to pay most. If I have ten items to sell and 100 people want it, I don't care what 90% of the people are willing to pay. I'm selling to the people in the top 10%, even if the other 90% think those people are paying ridiculous prices. The 90% can go without as they are not willing to pay the going rate. I'd even say that what many of the 90% are wanting to pay is ridiculously low. I see it all the time selling on ebay, people making offers way below the market value. But they can go without. About a year ago, I sold my last spare Palantir. LEGO were selling them for about 50p when they were current. I had one in my BL store for £50. Someone messaged me asking if I would accept £10. I refused and they messaged again with a rant about price gouging and a crazy price for a toy ball. I offered to sell them a different coloured marbled Zamor sphere for the price they were willing to pay. But they weren't actually interested in getting a toy ball, they wanted a specific coloured one that is very hard to find now because of demand. I blocked them, re-priced at £60 and it sold within a few months. Now the going price for new is £100+, a used one recently sold on BL in the UK for nearly £80. My £60 price for a toy ball was not disgusting or ridiculous, and actually looks like it was a decent price for the buyer now. As to whether they should re-release sets that were released 10 years ago, what LEGO cares about is whether they would sell now. They obviously believe that there is an adult market for LOTR sets now, as they have released two large predominantly display sets aimed at adults, plus further Brickheadz display sets with little play value other than the build process. I assume that they don't think there is a marker for LOTR children's playset toys though as they have not attempted to reboot the theme with any sets aimed at children. I also assume that they do not believe there is a market for either children's toys or adult display sets for The Hobbit, as they have not done any. In that case, the reason for not releasing them again in future is not because they have been released before but because they don't believe they will sell well enough. And I can understand that, as The Hobbit fandom, especially among adults, is not in the same league as for LOTR, and I cannot remember the last time I saw The Hobbit movie merchandise for sale. It doesn't matter if there are some people willing to pay high prices on the secondary market, that does not show that there is sufficient demand for re-releasing old sets. If LEGO believe that there is a large enough market for adult aimed display sets for The Hobbit, or children's sets, then there is nothing stopping them making those sets (if they get agreement from Warner/New Line). Having made them before and some people wanting the sets or just the figures as the few available are too expensive for them to afford is not a business case for that. Having released them before is not an excuse to release them again, if there is no real market for them. I imagine it is far more lucrative for LEGO to be releasing sets with larger fan bases that buy merchandise such as Home Alone, various Disney movies, Indy, BTTF, Ghostbusters, and of course Star Wars and Marvel. And LOTR.

Orthanc was on the shelves in 2015. That is LOTR. The theme was still being sold in summer 2015. Therefore not dead iin 2015. The dwarves are from The Hobbit. We don't know if they will produce The Hobbit sets again. It is a less popular movie series, and merchandise didn't sell well. It is Fantastic Beasts to Harry Potter. There are plenty of cheap toys available if you want a toy. Don't forget that. The original LOTR and Hobbit sets are not toys any more. They are collectables, with prices governed by high demand and low supply. They are being sold to adult collectors, not children. If they sell, the price was reasonable to the buyer otherwise they would not have bought it. If people were not into LEGO LOTR or Hobbit when it was available and only recently got into the theme, they have no right to buy at 'toy' prices of the past. I have sold probably 60 LOTR and Hobbit sealed sets in the past 18 months. I think I have had 7 or 8 messages from buyers after receiving them thanking me for selling them, something that rarely happens with other themes. They were not disgusted that they were able to purchase sealed sets at a price they were willing to pay that would not have been possible if I hadn't bought and stored them carefully.

Try to avoid the problem. For example, get your kids to use the LEGO on a large tray or a large drawstring bag to stop them spreading over the floor.

Yes they did. Both themes were on shelves until summer of 2015. A theme is not dead if sets were still readily available on shelves in retail stores.

It wasn't that long. Both The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit themes lasted into 2015. And Rivendell was out in 2023. And we haven't had any new sets for The Hobbit in Icons or BH, so it might be that LEGO don't bring them back at all.

Yes, I know. I have been selling on bricklink for 15 years. The point still remains - a smaller unprinted tyre/wheel is £8.30 on PAB. It is very unlikely that the new printed versions will be cheaper than that even if they are available on PAB. The set price tends to limit what sellers can sell parts for. I doubt a set of the 4 new tyres could be sold for more than 50% of the set price, and a lower percentage is more likely. Above a certain threshold (that will vary from person to person) it makes sense to buy the set for the parts you want and keep the rest for MOCs, MODs, or sell them on.

I doubt they would do anything related to te Scouring of the Shire as it wasn't in the movies, and it would make a fairly happy set quite depressing. Both those aspects could well negatively affect sales.

You think large printed tyres are going to be cheaper on PAB than BL? The unprinted tyres from 10330 are £8.30 each on PAB. The four tyres are just about half the price of the retail price of the whole set. Whereas they are about £1.25 each on BL, even though they only appear in this one set.

Isn't the 'sword bag' one mould? I thought the idea of this was that it was different parts produced in the same mould then bagged, so you get the lot whether they are needed or not in the instructions. I won't be buying either way, but I'd prefer to see the budget put into the build to make a great Bag End, rather than a minifig pack containing something not as good or similar to the original build but with loads of dwarves. I also think more hobbits would be boring for an AFOL. There are plenty of existing current torsos available, and suitable heads, legs and hair are cheap. It is easy to put a generic hobbit together for about $3 USD. I think the other issue is that we have only been getting LOTR based sets recently and nothing from The Hobbit. Both New Line/Warner Bros and LEGO surely know that, especially among the adult fans which these sets are aimed at, it is the LOTR movie trilogy that is favoured over The Hobbit. The Hobbit took a lot at the box office, but merchandise sales were not particularly good. Would they jump from a sure winner with the LOTR brand on the box to a more risky version with The Hobbit logo?

For me, there has only been 1 CMF series of interest per year for some years now. Cutting it from 48 generic figures per year to 12 is a big part of what made me give up collecting them. Now I tend to buy multiples of one or two figures only.

We already got them. I doubt they'd put 15 figures in a set at this price point and if they did, the build would be no better than the existing Bag End.

It works whichever way a collector wants. There are also Dimensions sets, Comic Con packaging with common figures and parts inside, the store build of Sting, key chains, sticker sheets, and various computer games, and so on if you want to be completely complete.

Same here. I occasionally swap arms and, as I prefer fleshie figures, I swap lots of hands. Never had an issue. But I very rarely swap legs from hips, partly as it tends to break the little nub on the hips and they are then forever wobbly or not quite straight and partly as there is rarely the need as legs tend to match the hips.

I imagine it will be LOTR rather than The Hobbit, given the last few big adult sets have been LOTR. Either way, I'll be skipping it as I have the original and that fits nicely on a shelf.

Oh, I see. I got confused by the modular name as those ones aren't GWP for buying Modulars, just the first GWP of the year with any spend over the threshold.

They've changed it to discount at the checkout.

Do you mean in the small bakery shop?

I doubt there will be any retail sets, aside from the existing MTS. Unless they reboot Castle, I cannot see Wolfpack getting their own sets.

Yes, they are getting greedy and are using a subscription model. Delete the app and use an alternative.

One does not simply use an incorrect quote.