MAB

Yeah, 2012 sets. I got a load of the smallest one for £2 a piece on clearance. My last ones recently sold for £15 or so. Lots of people do buy small sets on BL and ebay. There is the shipping problem, but I normally find people buy multiples of a small set. You'll be surprised. It depends on the buy in price. I bought a very large box (60 sets) of one speedorz set, at £1 a set, as I wanted some of the parts in it. The minifigs alone sold for between £1.50-£2.00 each in batches of 10, I kept the interesting parts and sold off the other parts as a job lot for about another £40. One of my best investments of last year! I wouldn't buy at RRP, but if you can get a decent price, then there is always profit.

^^ Uruk-hai army was available at Tesco for £12 for a while in the UK, that was 60% off. I know as I bought 20 at that price. Still kicking myself I only bought that many.

They died out at about the start of the licence era. We did get 4Juniors super heroes (Spiderman) and they were not so popular.

I don't think PJ is to blame. If LEGO had sets planned, then they could have shifted other themes around. They had warning. If they thought it was financially viable. It probably wasn't finanically viable. Why shift Galaxy Squad or City or Friends when they make money, when LOTR was not shifting that much product. I have every Hobbit and LOTR set, and got at least 33% off every one except Orthanc. That was 20% off. The Hobbit final sets were on sale at 50% off within six weeks or so of release in some supermarkets in the UK. It appeared that stores just did not want these sets on their shelves.

Some CMF rise in value, but some cannot shift for RRP even years later.

I wouldn't buy for the same price, since the generic mini figures would not be worth as much as the licensed ones. Selling the licensed minifigs (and other parts) off can give a significant return for those that want it as a building but not as a GB building.

How many large sets are you going to hold to ensure you get one that goes to 3x rrp.Of course you have to sell more small sets to make the same amount of money, but small sets sell quite well as many people buy them. The number of people that will pay $600 for a $200 set if there are similar $200 sets available at retail is not so high. It probably won't be too long until they redo a modular. They might not do a cafe corner again, but a cafe on a corner (and probably look better than the original, fitting in better with more recent modulars). Or another fire station in five years time. While you can still collect them all, I imagine some people will aim to have a nice display rather than a display of everything. A row of 12 looks good. Is it necessary to spend a grand getting an earlier one when you could buy four future ones for the same price?

Buyers don't get milked, they choose to buy luxury items. I bought two parts from lego, cost me about 65p each when they had them in stock. For a bit of plastic. Did they milk me? It turned out I didn't need them after all, so I sold them at the going rate about six months later, which was £6.00 each. Buyer chose to buy from me. Was he milked? I don't believe I took advantage of him. He was buying the part to put together a retired set, and it would have cost significantly more if he had bought the complete set rather than the parts. Sure I could have sold at a lower price and made his purchase price lower, but why should I? He was willing to pay £6 each after all. It's a luxury, not a necessity.

They would. I just sold off my last Dino sets, the small sets sold very well. When you can pick up little sets like Wizard Battle for £4, it is very sane to invest in them. Small sets sell well to all budgets, don't take up much room and are often available at at least 50% off. So even 1.5x RRP means tripling your money.

As above, check for the minifigs and expensive parts. If it turns out a few cheap parts are missing, it matters not.

LOTR video games have sold well over the past decade. There is a reasonable overlap between LOTR fans and gaming fans, whether or not it's Lego. It's impossible to test, but I reckon the dimensions games would have sold well without the minifigs.

I'm also interested how you define reasonable. If twice (for example) is reasonable, why is 3x greed? For me, reasonable is what a buyer will pay, as it is reasonable enough for both sides to lead to a sale/purchase.

I wouldn't buy either for short term investment now. They aren't expected to retire in the very near future and the current promos do nothing.

The second is wrong. But why is the first? If everyone has the same chance to buy anything, and a company agrees to sell to ine person (whatever they do with it), then it has nothing to do with a second person that misses out. Whether it is BAP, exclusives or sales at Walmart. Is buying everything and selling it worse than buying everything and not selling it?

Insurance too.

Although it is formally the same theme, I imagine the buyers of the original sets will be quite different to the reboot. Sure, there will be some overlap but this is not like LOTR and Hobbit, where Lego fans tend to buy into both. Probably closer to SW, where some people are original trilogy collectors only, ignoring the prequels.

Gladiators didn't always fight to the death though.

Who said it was massively important? It is a detail they went to some effort to put in, and based on the publicity shots they got it wrong. To some people, details matter. Like if they had called the Doctor Who sets Dr Who instead, I can assure you some Whovians would have complained. Details matter to fanatics.

Yet lego went to the bother of designing them so they are different, apparently based on those promo shots.

What do you mean by proper reseller? Walmart and Amazon?

Everything is details. They've obviously designed the torsos to match the character clothes, then got them the wrong way around.

Would you care if they had too many stripes on the arms or the GB logo in the wrong place, or no printed glasses if the character wears glasses in the movie.

Grab a piece of foam rubber or even a tea towel, use this inside the jaws of pliers to pull the bar out. The soft material will protect the parts from damage, but allow a grip on it still.

An opened box is an opened box anyway. Opened at both ends doesn;t really matter to the value. I'd prefer a box opened carefully (invisibly) at both ends with a craft knife, rather than one with the tabs broken.

No they haven't. Some of their parts these days are on par with lego's, and that's ignoring lego parts that regularly crack (cheese slopes).