legoloco

I was in a local Target yesterday and all the bags (40+) left had a 30% sticker on them & scanned at that discount price. I bought a handfull. Hopefully tomorrow that may change, if so I'll pick up a few more at 50% off.

I just want to point out some of the fine print for that program as I was starting to think it would be good to sign up prior to hitting TRU today: ...all purchases at a discount resulting from any sale, coupon or other offer or discount only qualify for $0.50 for each $1.00 spent. So it does not seem as good as it might appear at first glance.

+1 for JCC1004, thanks!

Will send a PM.

Can you tell us where in the store you found them? I'll try to hit one of their affiliate stores after work today. My Farm 7637 and Pig Farm 7684 are arriving today so I could use more pigs.

I thank you too prozac! I had seen the snowtrooper packs well before christmas and then completely forgot they were there. I also never knew that they would clearance items (I'm not an Aldi shopper). Anyway I was able to score some as a result which makes missing the Shop@Home sale a little easier. The Aldi stores in my area aren't as generous with the savings though, they have the Freeco Speeder at $14.99 and the Snowtrooper Pack at $6.99.

Great idea and well executed, good job!

The numbers just don't support your guess. Do a quick search on bricklink for the Zam Wesell torso, over the last 6 months 1,635 "new" torsos have been sold and there are currently 632 "new" torsos in shop inventories. There have been NO sales of "new" copies of the printed legs for that figure in the last 6 months and there are only 30 "new" copies of the printed legs in store inventories. Also, the printed torso without arms/hands for Zam Wesell has sold 336 "new" copies in the last 6 months and there are currently 829 "new" copies in store inventories. Add all that up and it tells you that 3,432 "new" Zam Wesell torsos have either sold in the last 6 months or are currently in store inventories versus 30 "new" printed legs in the same time frame. Do you want to believe that people have been hording 3,400 printed legs over that time period? And you need to remember this figure only appeared in one set, a $30 set, that was released about 8 years ago. I was guessing at the pick-a-brick link but I can't believe that people have been popping open almost 3,500 copies of set 7133 and selling off the Zam torso while hiding the legs to the figure. The Zam head is almost as available with about 3,000 "new" copies sold or in inventories over the last 6 months. More on topic the Tusken Raider torso has had 1,728 "new" copies sold or in inventories in the last 6 months. The armless torsos add another 110 "new" copies. There have been just under 4,000 copies of "new" tusken heads sold or in inventories in the last 6 months. Where as there have only been 84 "new" copies of the corresponding leg assemblies that came with the tusken raiders. Bare in mind those heads/torsos/leg assemblies only came in set 7113, it was a $10 set if I remember correctly, and it also was released 8 years ago. The hard part in figuring out how these items made it to market is that they were at their peak of flooding the market a good number of years back. Unless someone from bricklink who sold a large number of the items came forward and told us how they got them we can't pin them down any more to a specific store / country. I picked up 20 copies of the tusken raider torso WITH tusken head from a bricklink seller for $0.90 USD each maybe 3-4 years ago and the seller had tons more. I only bought 20 copies because I knew at the time it was hard to come across the correct legs for that figure. Now the first seller who has the torso alone in bulk wants $3.75 each torso so you can see things have changed and the numbers of available parts, while still great, are much less than they previously were. -David

Like everyone else has said they only came the way you saw them in set 7113. However, a LOT of the torsos were available on bricklink more so a few years back. It was the same with the Geonosian torsos, they appear only in set 4478 but they were readily available in numbers that never matched the heads/printed legs/wings. Again the Zam Wessell torso, only in 7133, was all over bricklink in a way the printed legs/head never were. I think we can all understand that if a rare torso appears on bricklink someone would want to buy up lots of it and try to make a "rare" figure to sell on ebay to people who are unaware of bricklink as a resource. Why were those items available in such odd numbers? I don't know. I've always assumed they were released by Lego either in europe or the U.S. as a pick-a-brick item and that's how they originally flooded the market. Does anybody remember any other Star Wars specific minifig part that appeared outside normal numbers? Not counting the Phase I clone parts that were available due to the build a clone events I think the snowtrooper helmet/pack and the AT-AT driver torsos were also plentiful a few years ago (well before the battlepacks were issued). -David

You've created a beautiful train and equally impressive is your ability to photograph it well to show off how great it is. Putting the train in the context of a scene was great to show it off. Great construction and attention to detail. On an off-topic side note I first saw the Royal Train photos years and years ago and I was blown away. You do incredible work consistently! Thanks for sharing this with the community. -David

Well I have all 5 of the LUL star wars figures which played a part. I wanted a photo of Luminara holding a regular chrome hilted lightsaber that was glowing but I didn't want to have to photoshop the glow so that meant to me that I needed to use two of the LUL figures. Luminara has a blue LED in her hand as does Mace, they only made blue or red LEDs in the figures. I put the chrome hilt in her good hand and tilted it at the angle I wanted it to make across her face, I attached the other end of the lightsaber blade (which the camera doesn't show) to the LED hand of the Mace figure. I then made a little base out of some long plates and attached Luminara's legs to it then I built up a little platform off to her right just outside the view of the camera lens. I attached Mace's legs to that, he was bent at the waist a bit but they were both stationary and attached to each other by the single lightsaber blade. Then all I needed to do was put the assembly in front of my camera / tripod setup so I had the image framed as I wanted and I pressed down on Mace's head to use his LED to light the lightsaber. My camera was set to manual focus and I have an electronic remote cable release (its a Canon EOS 30D). I had the camera set to full manual exposure so I took enough test shots at various shutter speeds so that the glow of the lightsaber wasn't too overpowering in the photo. @Roncanator: I do hope they eventually make a normal Luminara figure, she is one of my favorite Lego SW figures and I've got about all of them minus the newest ones or the chromed ones.

I had some time tonight so I tried to capture a photo that I had been thinking about since I did my ewok photo which appears earlier in this thread. My first attempts back then didn't work out like I wanted them to but I'm happy with what I've got now.

Great job with this and with the photos to show it off. Thanks for sharing.

I went through the exact same dilemma. Some background on me, I have been enjoying Lego since I was a young child but by the time I received set 452 Mobile Tracking Station as a 6 yr old kid I was hooked for life. I've come to realize I have a collector's mindset, I enjoy the process of collecting in general. I've always loved the Star Wars franchise and sci-fi in general. When I saw that Lego was going to release a Star Wars line in 1999 I was giddy like a child. Over time I also thought I would collect at least one copy of each Star Wars set put out. Of course I quickly added caveats such as the fact that I was only interested in minifig scale sets, not ALL sets. I wasn't interested in the UCS sets or the bust of darth maul, yoda model, technic droids, etc. I do like the mini sets so I collected those as well. Then I kind of hit a wall. I would buy other Lego themes if I liked the design of a particular set so I had boxes and boxes of sets taking up storage space. Back in the late 90s early 2000s in the states stores like Walmart & Target would have so much stock for christmas that if you waited until late Jan. early Feb. you could buy sets at 50-75% off by the dozen... and I did, mostly just for stock for other projects. But that added to a backlash I suffered were I would look at my collection and at times think it was rather dumb. I ended up selling a lot of stuff on ebay and bricklink as a result. I had a HUGE train collection and realized I'd probably never build the large town layout I always wanted so it all went. It got to the point that I decided to abandon my desire to have one of every minifig scale star wars set. It was a very hard choice to make as I didn't want to regret it later. I sold a lot of the PT sets and a number of extra copies of my OT sets. I changed my collection goal to wanting to have at least one copy of every star wars themed minifigure and I am happy with that. I would never want to buy a Twilight set and I picked up the figures from the Republic Cruiser set on bricklink because I didn't want the set but I "need" the figures. Then there are sets like the Rogue Shadow that have figures I want but buying them separately isn't cost effective so I'll have to wait until stores clearance the set out. And the retooled sets like the MTT, Slave I, A/X/Y-wings which were so much better in design than the originals that it allowed me to sell off my originals to other collectors. All in all I'm not sad that I made the change, I kept sets I liked, I buy new sets that interest me, and I have an outlet to continue to get figures from the sets that I would never want to buy. A lot of people change over time and it is important to update your activities/beliefs/habits when you realize you've changed and that your old ways don't work as well for you as they once did.

I had a few minutes over the weekend and I took a couple of shots. For me producing the image was a lot easier than thinking of a good set up. Once I came upon an idea to photograph it just took a little adjusting to capture it the way I wanted to. I had thought to call it Wicket's Wevenge but the tan hooded ewok is supposed to be Paploo and I've got nothing to go with that name.

Great photographs! I've been into photography for a long time now, switched from 35mm to a digital SLR a couple of years ago, I even have a 6x9 medium format rangefinder camera. I've always gravitated toward macro photography but I've stuck with nature/plants as a main subject. Thanks for letting us know your lighting setup. I was going through the beginning of the thread wondering what you were using, a small softbox or regular light with diffuser... Your method is nice and easy, and very inventive I might add. I look forward to seeing more of your photos and if I take any of my figs I'll post them too. Thanks!