MAB

Indeed. Anyone with a Sauron for sale is not a scalper but a reseller. Scalpers would have sold all theirs months ago, or just sold the set.

Yeah, I don't see those as just old children's toys. They are nostalgic vintage collectables. I sell quite a lot of minifigures, old and new, and it is funny how people view prices. I often get comments along the line of you want how much for that, it is just an old child's toy. It is nearly always described as a "child's toy" by a buyer even though it is for themselves. So I tell them if they want just an old child's toy they can buy these ones at 10% of the price. But of course they want the vintage collectables and not the generic City figures.

Modern minifigures, especially fairly generic City ones, are dirt cheap. Even for nostalgic themes many figures are still reasonably cheap, even if some hard to get ones are expensive. Vintage ones in good condition are expensive because so many nostalgic people want them so they are really collectables rather than just an old toy and so are priced differently to unwanted old stuff.

Very. I bet the hat will be expensive though.

The problems I have with them are (1) not being able to switch arms, (2) not being able to pose legs and (3) even worse not be able to move wrists. Every castle soldier having to hold a sword or bow at the same angle is not good.

Kids do that with licenses too. There really isn't much difference between making up a story involving Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader compared to making up a story about a generic forest man in green (called Robin in some locations) stealing treasure from the rich, or pirates hiding treasure on a deserted island, and so on. Classic sets were essentially unlicensed versions of common and well known stories that kids already knew how to play with, and knew the character types. I think that is partly why it is hard these days to come up with something truly imaginative without having associated media. Without a storyline from LEGO, whether from cartoons or comics, games or online media, I imagine kids have a much harder time playing Dreamzzz, Nexo Knights or Chima than Classic Castle, Space and Pirates. And then there is little difference between unlicensed and licensed when it comes to story telling and imagination.

Speed Champions Simpsons car, and The Homer. :-) Personally I hope for a decent CMF line again, especially if they can fill in some of the missing characters.

More to the point, why should they get into in-house themes? If a kid or adult likes a particular license and they buy a licensed set, it is no different to when they buy an in-house set. They build it, they play with it, they make up stories based on others they have previously experienced.

Barad-Dur is a tower, and I expect there to be rooms inside. The scale is different and they make it feel like Barad-Dur is smaller than it is by including figures and a few rooms inside but it still kind of works. Whereas Minas Tirith has buildings on the mountain and I don't expect a secret lair hidden inside a hollowed out mountain. That is why combining both scales in this case doesn't work for me. The minifigure scenes I want to see for Minas Tirith are pretty much all outside. Very little of interest happens inside the buildings, and definitely not inside the mountain. Whereas Barad-Dur is only seen from a distance in the movies so the interior is unknown and they are relatively free to make stuff up. Very little happens just outside either so they don't miss anything. I dontbthink Minas Turuth and Barad-Dur are really comparable when it comes to creating LEGO sets. Rivendell and Minas Tirith are more comparable.

I would. GBC are one popular fan creation especially at exhibitions that LEGO hasn't made 'theirs'. I like that they are all purely fan creations and not official. As soon as LEGO decide to release their own, these displays will become less interesting as official modules start to replace fan creations. Also I don't think they make very good home displays, as even a few units take up a lot of space. Displaying a whole circuit would surely be impossible for most people.

Indeed. If they want a microscale city, then do a microscale city. If they want minifigures then either do them on a display stand or do minifigure scale instead of microscale. Adding in minifigure scale play features to the back of a microscale set will end up the worst of both worlds.

If the exterior is shaped as the city but the interior is a room, then it will be poor compared to a minifigure based set without the constraint that it has to fit into an upturned cone.

This is my worry too. But also that a mnifigure scale interior won't work in this case as there are not rooms inside the city. If they have to go microscale for the city, I'd prefer minifigures on a display stand like the Star Trek set rather than using a lot more pieces to create a poor minifigure scale interior in the mountain.

I'm hoping the Witch King is left out to appear in another set, as a microscale Minas Tirith is not interesting for me especially if it is hollow and turns into an interior play set by rotating it. If they are doing that, it also makes sense to include minimal Gondor soldiers in Minas Tirith if the minifigure scale side is interior and keep them instead for a Battle of Pelennor Fields set. Although chances are, they will leave the Witch King out, minimise the number of soldiers and not do a Battle set. I'm glad there are already decent third party options for both. I doubt the helmets or armour would be available on PAB unless they use generic parts, and if they use generic parts then we already have them.

I imagine release in the next six months. And presumably it will be available for a couple of years. So even if it is $500, putting away $20 a month will be enough to buy it during its shelf life, and better still allows the buyer to look for offers or deals.

They could do what they did with the remake of the UCS Millennium Falcon and issue UCS wheels for the boxes.

It might be that when teens are into that semi-rebellious phase then they are also starting to rebel against their 'little kid' toys too, and where they are still into their toys then there is too much difference into what they might be into. There have been some smaller sets and especially CMFs in the past that touch on themes like the skater boys and girls, the trendsetter, various gamers and DJ characters, a few goth-like figures, k-pop style fashion, and so on.

Windmills, and any build where you want something to spin or swing.

So Ninjago can never replace realistic sci-fi, but City is "poor" because it is too realistic? This type of set doesn't look very NASA like to me. This looks like a direct descendent of earlier fantasy-based Space themes. Ninjago (along with City) can replace Castle, Pirates and Space. We know that because it has literally replaced them. Times move on, and kids' interests change. Classic Castle, Pirates and Space are now just nostalgia based ideas primarily for adults covered by ICONS.

It doesn't need to replace realistic space / sci-fi, as City does that. And Ninjago covers much of fantasy. Then there is the shorter lived 'guest' theme of Monkie Kidd, Nexo Knights, Hidden Side. That is LEGO's current unlicensed arrangement, with no need for one year themes.

The LEGO Movie showed them they can create a successful theme by mashing lots of different ideas together so long as there is consistency between them. That is essentially what they have continued to do with Ninjago, the theme that can have space rockets, mechs, futuristic vehicles, traditional ships, futuristic and traditional architecture, pirates, snakes, robotic and underwater adversaries. And it all fits together unlike the classic themes, or Atlantis and Galaxy Squad or Alien Conquest.

I'd assume in the Rivendell range rather than The Shire.

I imagine it is part but not all of the reason. I expect there to be a whole list of different reasons for different countries, some where it is clear cut and others where it could have gone either way. And although it would be nice, I doubt bricklink/LEGO would ever tell us because then it would be "why country A, when country B has the same or similar rules", "country C is more important than country D", and of course there might also be financial reasons and/or strategic partnerships where they would not want to disclose secretive information. Not that any of that helps the genuine sellers or buyers where they are affected by it. But at least they have a little longer to both benefit from pre-Christmas sales this year and to decide whether and where to shift their business to. On some forums and youtube, some people are saying it is the end of bricklink with such bad press. But it really only affects about or less than 2% of buyers when you discount the scam accounts from Vietnam. So it will be interesting to see what the order numbers are like going forwards. For me, they have been tending to an all time high over the past two years when looking month by month (although I keep records on order value rather than order numbers). Even in the last two weeks, about 1/3 of my orders have been from what appear to be new, zero feedback buyers. Whether they are new or just messed up the account integration and need a new account I don't know, but if bricklink can tap into the large number of AFOLs that have been buying / collecting sets and get them to start MOCing as well, then I imagine it will continue to grow. I guess most people (especially adults) start by buying sets then discover bricklink when they want to take the hobby further than just official sets. If so, then then the increase in LEGO fans in recent years will continue to filter through to growth in BL too.

Many countries have new marketplace laws around tax reporting and collection that are coming in, or have come in in the last couple of years. In the UK, tax was always due on sales (on profit after expenses) whether it was sold on BL, ebay, vinted, etc. But, guess what, people didn't declare it. So now sites have to pass on details to government when someone hits 30 orders or £1700 per year. The EU has similar rules, as do many other countries. Similarly VAT was never charged on BL fees but now it is, it has to be collected and remitted in each country where they operate. Laws change and even though business models worked in the past, that doesn't mean that they can ignore new legislation. It is true that any costs are tiny compared to the LEGO groups total earnings, but that doesn't mean that it should not be financially well managed. Even though links are closer than ever with LEGO now accounts are merged, it is supposedly a separate company and if it became loss making I would imagine LEGO would just cut it. I'm not sure how much of an issue it is for the global image. I don't think many customers in LEGO stores or toy stores know about bricklink, or use bricklink, or care about people in other countries access to bricklink. I imagine the numbers are small and get smaller in that order. A lot of youtubers made videos about it once other people had, but I wonder how much of that is because they actually care and how much is because outrage at LEGO gets them hits and they profit from that, or they need to because if other youtubers are outraged then they need to be to keep up.

LEGO can never kill the secondary market for LEGO products and they know that. If they remove items from BL, they would get sold elsewhere (look at the Osprey set). They can choose to destroy their site but that market will move elsewhere or they choose to have some involvement and get the information they want (and some income that is tiny compared to their other operations and probably barely covers their staff and infrastructure costs). But if they choose to have involvement it has to be cost effective. And in some regions it won't be. I'm surprised they didn't take preventative action against Vietnam earlier given how much trouble users there were causing. Of the 100000 or so buyer accounts being blocked, 60% of them are Vietnamese and nearly all of them are scam accounts, used to try to scam others or advertise gambling sites. Those users are pretty rude. I guess the issue is if they block them then the same users will just use VPNs to do the same thing from other virtual regions.