MAB

Very elegant and smooth rotation. Nice!

More exclusive in that fewer will be produced but presumably also very low demand so unlikely to sell even for RRP let alone a markup. I guess that is what is stopping resellers buying them at this late stage. With so little interest in it, they aren't worth touching. It is interesting, the increase in production numbers has probably hit the right sort of levels, high enough to last for some time and also appearing to make it less interesting for resellers. I'm seeing a lot of Mountain Fortress for sale in the UK, barely selling at £350 or even lower. The higher production numbers might mean they are less interesting to resellers overall, and going into the hands of people that want them as they are not worth investing in. I cannot really see any of these regularly hitting even 50% markup - there are simply better LEGO sets to be had from retail stores than buying these at inflated prices in future. Whereas when the numbers were lower, the more limited numbers meant they were more attractive. So that puts worldwide interest in the region of ~20000 +- 10000 for these sets.

I don't mind seeing those other cheaper options for sale, so long as they are not on shelves where there is LEGO branding. Often the shelf edges have the LEGO name running their length or other LEGO advertising, then other similar branded products are on the shelves. That is misleading but possibly unintentional (but still wrong). Then at the other extreme there are the market sellers that use a LEGO baseplate to display figures or have a few LEGO minifigures so put up a LEGO sign, yet sell loads of cheap knock off figures then claim that the sign is allowed as they sell a few cheap City figures even though most of what they are selling are knock off Star Wars figures, Super Heroes, etc. I'm pretty sure they know exactly what they are doing ...

If they were using the name LEGO to market clone brand sets in their advertising or instore, then they deserve everything they get.

They did an experiment here where you could buy online BAM at the instore price but it only had a very small selection of torsos, legs, heads, etc. It would be nice to see that revived but with a much larger range of parts now so many more are available through standard PAB.

The reddish brown hood was available, but I think it was only up for about a few days to a week before it got removed. I know as I bought just six of them to hit free shipping on an order thinking they would be easily available in future.

Be careful if you use New Elementary's links for Nazgul parts, as they have the wrong hood. The correct open one is not available at the moment and they have used the old style closed neck one. They have moved so much stuff to bestseller for Europe now, I actually had a problem finding enough standard parts to checkout without the fee this time. I think the removal of parts is a good thing. They cannot keep everything in stock for ever, but just as importantly, it means the secondary market for new parts can thrive just with a delay when those parts are removed from PAB. There is a danger that this kills BL for new parts being parted out from sets. There is already a huge race to the bottom in price for common parts, it is becoming not worth parting out sets unless sellers can recoup costs for the more exclusive parts (and minifigures). That is not a good situation for anyone in the long term.

Are you going to use it in historic builds?

It doesn't look like there is anything in it that castle fans wouldn't already have, aside from the packaging, so not a big deal that it is exclusive.

Given the growth of LEGO fandom, I imagine there are plenty of fans of The Simpsons and fans of LEGO that weren't into LEGO 10 years ago.

I hope not. They are a bunch of ragtag rebels. It would be too uniform-like if they have faction branded capes.

And yet we get plenty of muskets, rifles, Tommy guns, pistols, swords, knives, etc. The existing rifle would be perfect for Elmer Fudd. I imagine the reason we didn't get Elmer Fudd is partly down to numbers. There were more important characters to do and, with today's views, they also wanted to include some females even though they were minor characters when the cartoons were made 50 years ago.

It is presumably as they don't know anything else.

I'll be waiting to see if they fill in gaps in the minifig roster before buying anything. Skinner, Barney, Moe are top of the list and then Lenny and Carl. Hopefully they won't do Smithers, Comic Book Guy, Moleman, Frink, etc again. A new theme might push up the demand of the existing Z list.

Fire Brigade. That is the one that was most lucrative for me. It was readily available at a relatively low price just before Modular collecting really took off in numbers and prices still shot up despite it being discussed on reseller forums for about a year before retirement. It was £100 in Oct/Nov 2013 with a Christmas GWP with each one, then easy selling for £300 mid 2015.

No, I couldn't find one. The only practical way is check the poster before reading.

They've already shown an image on it on the official website, just not done the press release type announcement. I'm not sure what purpose those announcements serve any more. Everyone that knows it is coming, knows it is coming. LEGO might as well just do the press release on the day of release, so if people see it they can buy it.

I remember comments of the time saying that the set was too expensive, too big to display, too black for dust, not enough minifigures and that there was only one exclusive figure. It also didn't help that they sold Saruman's skirt piece and the Zamor sphere palantir on the bricks and pieces service ( both under $1 each at the time!). Of course, there was also positive discussion from those that bought it.

The original sets were of a different time. Sometimes popular sets sold fast and that was it, they had their production run(s) and that was that. Especially for the one year themes/sets, they didn't necessarily make more production runs due to demand to keep a popular set on shelves. If anything, stores were proactive in clearing all stock near the shelf end date. Anything popular wasn't discounted but wasn't replenished near retirement date whereas poor sellers often got discounted heavily by supermarkets. Whereas LEGO tended not to heavily discount like supermarkets and sometimes stock hung around, and that would be what brickset records. Orthanc was D2C. It stuck around a long time as it was not a regular retail set. Retailers want new inventory on their shelves, not sets that have been out for years. Whereas for D2C sets, LEGO could keep them in stock, selling slowly over a long time period. I'd imagine Orthanc was the worst selling LOTR set. For its time, it was very expensive and Saruman had been done in a very cheap set. There weren't huge numbers of adult LEGO LOTR fans back then either so far fewer people willing to pay high prices for sets compared to now.

They are no longer cheap, but Saruman's torso and skirt piece (or plain white legs for a cheaper option) with standard elf hair and head make a reasonable Celebor.

They also gave Sylvester and Tweety Pie a baseball bat and giant hammer to beat each other with.

Remember that these have to appeal to the general public too, not just fans of the franchise, to sell in high numbers. I had heard of about a dozen of the original DC series. And I bought a few of them like the throwback Batman and Wonder Woman, and Bat-Mite but only for his comic. For a second series, I doubt I would have heard of many of them if your list is anything to go by.

I can see that it is useful if you already have a list of element IDs but some databases like Brickset get their information from LEGO direct anyway. I cannot really see the point of building a list of element IDs from Brickset and uploading them without knowing whether a part is for sale or not, when you might as well just enter the set number at PAB and get the same inventory and know whether the part is for sale or not. Bricklink is more understandable, if you have used studio to design a set and export parts lists.

Being a large set also helps with getting votes. How many people look at the detailed piece counts on the design page before voting, and how many just look at the gallery to vote where this information is missing? Maybe it would be better if there was some restriction into the total amount you could vote for weighted by part count, a bit like selecting a fantasy football team where players cost different mounts. But no doubt they want to keep it simple, with the flexibility that they choose the sets, as it seems to work in that whatever they pick they seem to sell well. For each round, five different sets could have been chosen and sales would probably be the same, the only difference is that different people would receive life changing amounts of money.

Or twelve cars, at least one of each team but two teams with two racers.