richb

These are available at Amazon right now for $59.99 too, which has the benefit of free shipping in the US with the Super Saver option. The double VIP points promotion through S@H for October is nice, but S@H hammers you with tax and shipping charges, so for a single copy purchase Amazon is probably a better value. Also, I don't know if this matters to a lot of people, but these 2011 editions of Winter Toy Shop are different from the original set from 2009. The box dimensions were changed to conform to the new LEGO standard box sizes rolled out a year ago, and the "Boutique De Jouets D'Hiver / Winter Toy Shop" dual-language set name has been removed from the top right corner. I have not opened a 2011 edition of the set so am not aware of any possible changes to the parts/colors themselves. Again, that's probably not very important to builders, but from a 'collectibility' standpoint this may matter if you're shopping for (or reselling) MISB sets second-hand.

+1 for slovakiasteph Lightning fast PayPal payment, good communication.

I need to clear out some space in my basement, so am offering up sets from my collection to Eurobricks members first. All sets are adult owned. Everything is either sealed with various degrees of shelfwear, or opened and assembled for display, but will be complete with instructions & original boxes. If box condition is of paramount importance to you, let me know. Do not assume boxes are mint. All sets are located in the USA (I am in Ohio). I prefer to ship within the USA via USPS Priority w/ delivery confirmation. I can do UPS if you prefer, but it is more expensive. Prices were gathered by trolling some Bricklink stores. All prices are negotiable. No trades. Buyer pays agreed upon price + actual S/H charges. PayPal preferred. I have not traded on Eurobricks before so do not have references, but I have been a member of eBay since 1999 and have 100% positive feedback (link). I can provide references to trade threads at other forums for other hobbies if you prefer. I ship within 48 hours of receipt of payment. Modular 10182 x1 Cafe Corner $900 Open & assembled, with box & instructions 10190 x1 Market Street $800 Open & assembled, with box & instructions 10185 x1 Green Grocer $350 Open & assembled, with box & instructions 10197 x1 Fire Brigade $150 Open & assembled, with box & instructions 10211 x1 Grand Emporium $150 Open & assembled, with box & instructions Island Xtreme Stunts 6740 x1 Tower $50 Open & assembled, with box & instructions Creator 5891 x1 Apple Tree House $40 Open & assembled, with box & instructions 4996 x1 Beach House SOLD Open & assembled, with box & instructions 6754 x1 Family Home $75 Open & assembled, with box & instructions 5766 x1 Log Cabin $27 Sealed Legends 10041 x1 Main Street, Reissue $140 Sealed Town 10184 x1 Town Plan $300 Open & assembled, with box & instructions 6427 x1 Road Signs $30 Sealed 7641 x1 City Corner $50 Sealed 8403 x1 City House $50 Open & assembled, with box & instructions 3661 x1 Bank & Money Transfer $55 Sealed 7746 x1 Single Drum Roller $20 Sealed 7684 x3 Pig Farm & Tractor $30 Sealed 3221 x1 LEGO Truck $30 Sealed 8401 x1 City Minifigure Collection $10 Sealed 7639 x1 Camper $15 Sealed 8402 x1 Sports Car SOLD Open & assembled, with box & instructions 10156 x1 LEGO Truck $15 Sealed 3177 x1 Small Car $5 Open & assembled, with box & instructions 7566 x3 Farmer $3 Sealed 5612 x1 Police Officer $3 Sealed 7567 x1 Traveler $3 Sealed 5613 x1 Firefighter $3 Sealed 8398 x1 BBQ Stand $4 Sealed Holiday 10199 x1 Winter Toy Shop SOLD Sealed 10216 x1 Winter Village Bakery SOLD Sealed Studio 1374 x1 Green Goblin $35 Open & assembled, with box & instructions Mosaic 6162 x1 World of LEGO Mosaic 4 in 1 $10 Sealed 6163 x1 World Of LEGO Mosaic 9 in 1 $30 Sealed Star Wars 7660 x1 Naboo N-1 Starfighter $40 Sealed 8083 x4 Rebel Trooper Battle Pack $10 Sealed 8084 x4 Snow Trooper Battle Pack $10 Sealed Duplo 5488 x3 Farm Building Set $40 Sealed 5604 x1 Supermarket $40 Sealed Indiana Jones 7195 x1 Ambush in Cairo $15 Sealed 7682 x2 Shanghai Chase $60 Sealed Orient Expedition 7412 x1 Yetis Hideout $20 Sealed 7413 x1 Passage of Jun-Chi $15 Sealed Paradisa 6405 x1 Sunset Stables $50 Sealed Castle 10193 x1 Medieval Market Village $110 Open & assembled, with box & instructions 7953 x7 Court Jester $3 Sealed SpongeBob SquarePants 3825 x1 Krusty Krab (the good one) $75 Sealed Power Miners 8957 x1 Mine Mech $11 Sealed Space Police III 5969 x1 Squidman Escape $5 Sealed Prince of Persia 7572 x2 Quest Against Time $35 Sealed 7569 x1 Desert Attack $12 Open & assembled, with box & instructions

Spent my lunch this afternoon driving across town to check the other Kroger here. They had the signage on the shelf denoting $1.00 "LEGO Impulse Assort" but were sold out. Somebody else already beat me to that one.

It's probably different based on store arrangement/franchisee, but at the store nearest me there is a small section of $10-and-under impulse toys (Hot Wheels, Barbies, etc ...) near the breakfast aisle. It's where all the kids will see them when they're pestering you for Lucky Charms and Pop-Tarts. This was the first time I've seen LEGO in a Kroger in probably 20 years.

Kroger's grocery stores (Great Lakes/Northeast US) have some small impulse sets marked down to $1. My local store had 7566 Farmer and 7953 Jester available in stock. No limit.

Many Duplo sets are 1/2-price at US Toys R Us locations, and most are also included in a Buy 2 Get 1 Free promotion running this week. This morning I picked up 3 5488 Ultimate Farm Building Sets for the price of 1 for my little girls. This set is also 1/2 price through S@H, but with the B2G1 offer and no shipping, it's a huge bargain at TRU. That's 3 huge buckets of bricks for the rugrats.

Prince of Persia 7572 Quest Against Time on clearance at US KMart. Found two at my local brick-and-mortar marked $25.00, with another 20% taken off at the register at checkout -- so $40+tax for the pair. They had Ostrich Race set listed at clearance prices, but I could not locate any in stock. 7569 Desert Attack was not on clearance. Don't know about any others from the PoP theme.

Worth noting that while the bulk of the really desirable stuff was already sold out, what you can usually take from these sales is what is officially discontinued. Pirates was still available up until a few days before Christmas, and is now sold out. The category grouping under Themes was taken down, so the secondary market for Pirates should really ramp up. The two that are surprising to me are the 8403 City House, which wasn't available for a real long time by City standards, appears discontinued, as does the 9247 Community Workers pack, which has been in the store for years. I would assume that 9247 will now be updated with new parts, so red bicycles and the 3-wheelers from this set are likely out of production for some time. BTW, anyone that missed 8403, if you don't want to pay $60+ prices on eBay, as I type this there are four left in stock at Amazon (sold by Target) for MSRP.

... you take your kids to the LEGO store and spend more money on yourself than them.

Earlier in this thread (starting at post #512): http://www.eurobricks.com/forum/index.php?...st&p=679005

My LEGO space is becoming overcrowded. I'd like to flip some unopened sets if anyone is interested. Have: 10041 Legends Main Street Reissue. Sealed in box. Box has some shelf wear and creasing along one long, side edge. 10156 Promotional LEGO Truck. Sealed in box. 7660 Star Wars Naboo N-1 Starfighter and Vulture Droid. Sealed in box. 7412 Orient Expedition: Yeti's Hideout. Sealed in box. Significant shelf wear. 7413 Orient Expedition: Passage of Jun-Chi. Sealed in box. Significant shelf wear. 6405 Paradisa: Sunset Stables. Sealed in box. Significant shelf wear. 3825 Spongebob Squarepants: The Krusty Krab (yes, the good version). Sealed in box. 6162 & 6163 Mosaics. Sealed in box. 6427 Road Signs. Sealed in box. Want: 4954 Model Town House. Sealed in box. 4956 House. Sealed in box. Would also be willing to trade for Cafe Corner, Market Street, or Pirates and Castle themed sets. Located in Lancaster, OH. Prefer trade with other US collectors.

Take a stroll down any toy aisle today and the remarkable thing is that some of the most popular recent toys are the same toys that were on the shelves in the 80s. Over the last half of this past decade, in America at least, G.I. Joe, Transformers, Hot Wheels, Star Wars, and LEGO were HUGE sellers. One of the driving factors for that is that the 10-year old boys of the 80s became the 35-year old fathers of 10-year old boys in the 00s, and we all steered our kids into the same interests we had as children. Heck, even Nintendo enjoyed a renaissance with grossly inferior product the past five years -- sales driven as much by being retro as being "blue ocean." While AFoLs may not be the majority of the LEGO market by raw numbers/percentages, their spending accounts for a huge slice of the pie. Additionally, I think we need to expand the definition of AFoL to encompass those adults who make the purchasing decisions for their children based on their own history, though they are themselves only casual builders or presently in their dark age. In a five mile radius of my home, there are four major retailers that stock LEGO: Meijer, Target, Wal-Mart, and K Mart. All four of these retailers have expanded the shelf space they allot to LEGO by three or four times what is was in 2006. If I walk into any one of them on any given day, the out of stock items will invariably always be the same ... the creator houses, the non-emergency City themed sets, and the super-expensive Castle sets. It never fails. Nobody is buying the Toy Story or Ben 10 or Indiana Jones or Star Wars stuff with the frequency of the others, and kids are just not the primary purchasers of the first group. All it takes is one AFoL cleaning out a retailer of six copies of the Family Home (that's a $360 spending spree for tan bricks and windows), to offset ten kids begging for a $35 set. And the family home is a cheap AFoL set! These blind purchase minifigs are not targetted toward children. They will not be advertised on TV, they will not even be on store shelves long enough for kids to see them. They will be snatched up by the case by AFoLs and resold for $10+ on Bricklink and eBay. All of us know it, so I think it's disingenuous to argue otherwise.

The funny thing about this argument is that no matter which side you are on, both sides keep throwing out the same rebuttals, "it's a toy company," and "these are made for children!" On that, I call BS. TLG hasn't been marketing to children for at least five years. Oh sure, they might make products recommended for ages 2-5, or 4-9, or 8-13, but it's the AFoLs that are driving their year-over-year double-digit growth. Does anyone honestly feel all these $99 and up sets are made for children? Are kids buying the modular houses? The Creator houses? The Taj Mahal and the Grand Carousel? The UCS or Architecture sets? No. I grew up with LEGO, and I will make sure my children grow up with LEGO. My 20-month old daughter had a very DUPLO Christmas this past December, and my 9-year old step son has buckets full of Star Wars LEGO. But make no mistake, the biggest LEGO collection in the entire house belongs to ME. It's my name on the VIP membership to the LEGO store, my name on those catalogs that arrive in the mail, and it's my name on the credit card bill. TLG is more successful now than ever precisely because they're NOT a childrens toy maker any longer. That's ancillary to their core business today. Children don't have credit cards, and TLG have finally figured that out.

Everything goes out of production sometime, so I think it's safe to assume this is the last year GG will be widely available on the market. Stock of Market Street evaporated with the release of Emerald Night in Apr 09, then Fire Brigade displaced Cafe Corner in the product line over this past holiday buying season. So, given Green Grocer has been available since March '08, it'll be well over it's two-year shelf life when Grand Emporium is released. IMHO, Green Grocer, Emerald Night, and Medieval Market Village will all see the end of their runs at some point this calendar year. I would encourage getting them now while they're available at MSRP, because these are the three sets that I think will see the biggest inflation in their resale values on the secondary market once they're discontinued.

Re: insurance, most modest sized collections are likely already covered under your existing home owners policies. If you have a substantial collection however, it's worth the call to find out what additional insurance may cost. Of course, in either event, if you haven't done so already it'd be wise to make sure you periodically take pictures of what you have in the event of theft/fire, since you can't very well provide detailed proof after the collection is lost. I can't stress this enough if you have your collection in a basement (if your home has a basement) where catastrophies like flooding are rather routine. Even if you don't live in a flood zone, all it takes is a faulty hot water heater or washing machine hookup blowing out while you're not home to fill your basement with a foot or more of water in short order.

Silly me. I don't know why I wrote that last paragraph asking if you would have trains, when I notice now your location is Pittsburgh. Of course you're going to have trains.

Opinions differ on this and it really boils down to your preference, your imagination, and your ability to suspend disbelief. Oh, and of course your budget, space, and time! I do not mix the two because I see them as being essentially incompatible with each other. They are not only in different color palettes and level of detail, but also completely different scale. City/Classic buildings are typically only 6 bricks per floor high, 6 to 8 studs deep, open back, and constructed from traditional bright colors (yellow, red, blue & white). The modular buildings, on the other hand, are often 10 bricks per floor high, cover a 32x32 base, have closed backs, and are built in neutral or more realistic colors. The Creator houses, as a third category, fall in between these two -- they're generally 6 brick height classic scale yet closed back and with more ornate detailing like modular. As for which to go with, I like the modular, but this is entirely personal preference. Modular is what got me out of my dark ages and made me an AFoL. Of course, I still buy City sets that interest me either for parts or as vignettes (such as City Corner which I looted for the figs and bus in my modular town), but my town layout is to modular scale. Personally, this is perferable to me due to space concerns over anything else, because at classic town scale a person winds up with a tremendous amount of sprawl and half their LEGO budget sunk in road plates, whereas at modular scale a person may only add a building or two a year, but boy, is there some bang for the buck! I like modular because I want to build UP rather than OUT. The question is (to me), per $1000 you spend on LEGO, do you want it ... Taking up only a 50" x 10" shelf? or Covering a floor of a room in your home like road tiles are wall-to-wall carpet? At the start, you will probably mix them, but I personally believe once you have all those modular buildings in a row, you'll want your entire cityscape to look like that, or as your investment in this hobby increases, you will realize you have to go modular and build up because you cannot build out any further. Having writen all of that, if you're asking for a recommendation of which one you should go with, it would be helpful to know if you have a lot of space, if you plan on this being a permanent fixture like a piece of furniture, if you plan on building custom tables/shelves, and if you have an interest in trains. Trains obviously make it a whole different ballgame when it comes to sprawl and real estate. You mention having the older train station ... do you have trains, intend to have trains, and desire to eventually have a complex track or just run a simple oval?

OT: But I see with the Grand Emporium showing up in the store under the category Exclusives, Green Grocer has been shifted to Hard to Find. They still have GG in stock though. If anyone has held off buying one, it's probably a good idea to get that order in ASAP. Seeing the run-up on secondary market prices for Cafe Corner and Market Street, I don't think I want to even know what Green Grocer winds up selling for on eBay in a month. $400? $500? Right now I'm thinking a buy-and-hold strategy on Green Grocer is a better investment than the US stock market.

3 != 4

It's from the new MC Escher Architecture set. It's 8038, The Battle of Endor. Book 2, Page 41. http://cache.lego.com/bigdownloads/buildin...ons/4561749.pdf

Maybe it's just me, but this set goes wrong with every little thing like the sets that LEGO released through most of the 90s. There are simply far too many big, specialized pieces here. Sure, it looks realistic, but if I wanted hyper-realistic, I'd buy a model kit, not LEGO. I'm guessing the reason there isn't a piece-count on the box is because marketing didn't want to admit that with such a huge set there are only 19 pieces in the box. /sarcasm

I can't even begin to list how many wonderful things there are in this photo. Magnificent!

I think my favorite touch is the pirate bandana sideways in the trashcan. When I first saw that I was scratching my head trying to figure out what set I missed that had tied-up trashbags in it!

It would be nice if there were credits on the box or in the build manual so that we could know who designed what! It's the 21st century, TLG should allow all you hard working designers some attribution. At the least this is something that should be done after the fact within the large AFoL community maintained Internet databases; places such as BrickSet. I would have never guessed the same person that created the Fast Flyer also did Cafe Corner were it not for this forum.