dotmike

You shouldn't have a problem if you want one. Yes, the LEGO S@H RRP is 299.99, but I'd seen that TRU 199.99 price some months ago, so I knew they'd been selling them for that (not just during sale times). It was just that by the time I wanted it (for someone getting their start on the modulars) my local TRU had sold out of all theirs, so I had to try other TRU stores. Today, I price checked the set first, then took it to the counter and gave it to the checkout girl with the printed 20% voucher. She scanned the set first (199.99), then the voucher (-20%), which reduced the price (159.98). She then clipped the voucher to the register, and I paid. Done.

How much would those Toyworld vouchers make a Winter Village Bakery? (Not that I really have the opportunity, the fuel cost of the drive to the nearest Toyworld would probably negate the saving.) I did go into two Toys R Us stores today and can report no 2507 Fire Temples - the TRU magic portal to the US hasn't opened yet. But I did find a 10191 Fire Brigade and it scanned at $199.99, so the TRU 20% voucher above brought it down to $159.98. I'm happy to pay $9.98 not to be waiting for Fishpond to both offer the deal again and then to randomly cancel the order!

Thanks for the offer, I'll keep it in mind. I'm kinda hoping over the next month for the bargain basement prices retailers resort to for clearing overstocked shelves. If instead it goes discontinued and gets into the Café Corner / Green Grocer league, feel free to gloat as you double the price! Seems hit & miss. Forum posters seem to have a love/hate thing about them, depending on whether their order at that super keen price goes through or not. I think it's the "it's coming, sure thing, any day now" followed by "it's cancelled" thing that most annoys people. I will try again if/when it comes back "in stock".

Timely, thank you! Armed with the coupon, I'm going to hit up a TRU tomorrow in the hope of finding a 2507 Fire Temple. Long shot, I know, but apparently TRU in the US now has them, and if you recall, TRU was the first retailer in Australia to get Pirates of the Caribbean, which was soon after POTC appeared at TRU in the US. Also been instructed to find a 10191 Fire Brigade (cheap) for someone who is getting into modulars. I saw a few a month ago at TRU reduced to $199.99, but they went during an earlier sale, so don't like my chances there. (David Jones has plenty at 299.99... And a Fishpond order for $150 fell through, of course.)

There are reports in the papers that David Jones and Myer haven't done so well in profits. Low consumer confidence and all that. I wonder if this means more sales are on the cards? I've noticed a few David Jones stores with plenty of modular 10191 Fire Brigades on the shelves. I wouldn't say no at ~ $160. C'mon retailers, our wallets are waiting!

I'd always wondered about Target starting their mid-year toy sale somewhat later than Big W, Myer, Kmart, etc. Also, the way they saturated commercial TV with advertising for it so far off (the ads started back in June). I thought maybe the message was "Don't spend ALL your money at the others, we've got good deals coming up too!" But now I think they probably sell a decent amount of stock before the sale even starts, simply because it's there and people are impatient. Anyway, I don't think you should be allowed to post in this thread unless you've bought LEGO on sale! (Seriously, though, you're just encouraging LEGO Australia to overcharge us. We're meant to be giving them the message: "We'll only buy when the price is good.")

Bought one this afternoon, along with two blue baseplates. Thanks for the enthusiasm making me take another look!

If one was very naughty, one could buy them now, hide duplicates behind unlooked at items on the shelves (Megabloks would do), then when the sale starts buy the same sets again and return them as the ones you bought using the pre-sale docket. Of course no one here would ever do this. Er, I meant, the definition of an AFOL is someone who would do this! Based on my previous post, I'm tempted to say yes!, though Myer have been restocking through the sale, so it's equally possible they're freshly arrived. I'm betting there will be another MyerOne 10% extra discount the weekend before the sale ends, so the price could have been $287.10 for the AFOL who hid them, until you had to go and foil their cunning plan! It's actually $79.99 RRP and is a Kmart special, so $59 actually represents over a 26% discount, so that could have helped make it seem like good value. I thought it seemed a bit sparse, even though I liked the windsurfer. You've convinced me to take another look.

The funny thing is, these tracking reports are actually more interesting than the sales on at the moment! (I'm not even looking forward to the Target sale, as I'd already Bricklink'd an Alien Conquest fix.) Still, to try and get the sale theme back on track, has anyone heard about another MyerOne extra 10% off the 20% sale coming up? My memory of last year is that there was a second one on the weekend before the sale ended. So in this case, it could be either the Saturday and Sunday of 16/17 July, or more likely 23/24 July. Also, I stumbled across six Emerald Nights that had been restocked right at the end of the sale, so if you missed out on this year's Imperial Flagship or Tower Bridge, there's still hope for both getting one, and getting one at a good price.

You might be right about that - $130 was certainly the cutoff price for me when it came out, and it's roughly on par with the US price with GST added, ie, a "fair price". Or it could just be the time of the year with the toy sales bringing people into the stores. A certain percentage of shoppers will buy, so increase the number of shoppers and the sales made increases. I don't regularly watch the 6:30 pm slot commercial current affairs shows, but ACA happened to be on when I walked past a TV last night and they had a segment on the upcoming toy sales, specifically those at Target, Big W, and Kmart. It was of course an extended ad for these stores, but it did show the crazy buying behaviour that is expected. The sales rep from Target was actually holding a LEGO Diagon Alley box, explaining that at $223 with over 2000 pieces, it would keep the kiddies occupied for hours!

I agree, but what if the reason The Black Pearl didn't come out with the first wave was that they decided to redesign it? I don't know the backstory to the leaked image, but is it possible it actually dates from the time other preliminary images for sets like The Cannibal Escape were first revealed? If so, the fact that it didn't appear with them could suggest it's having a redesign. Of course, I always (cynically) thought the main reason The Black Pearl didn't arrive with the other sets was that they didn't want to take sales away from the Queen Anne's Revenge. Given the latter's expense in Australia, I talked myself out of buying one and to instead wait for The Black Pearl, for which I have far more emotional connection than Blackbeard's sword remote controlled vessel.

Well, Myer Miranda continues its reputation as one of the worst sources of LEGO: I popped in around 9:30 am and saw... no Imperial Flagships, no Tower Bridges, no Millennium Falcons, and at the register, no free membership vouchers. Plenty of tables and racks stocked with all the humdrum stuff, boxes of bricks, etc, but it looks like the above hadn't arrived for the sale. Maybe later? Oh well. Too sick to go anywhere else today so it may have made my mind up for the stuff I was ambivalent about. Wishing everyone better luck at better Myers!

Almost identical experience for me a couple of days ago (just a few days short of 4 weeks shipping time, with the $15.98 option). My stuff was packed in a much bigger box than needed, and even with plenty of air pillows, it still managed to get slightly crushed. I think B&N must have a special crushing machine, similar to those things in Ikea that test drawers. But for the huge saving (this order was during the 30% thingy) over the Australia Recommended Ripoff Price, I can probably iron out the crush when the box is flattened for storage. Good luck everyone for the Myer sale tomorrow! Just wish I could get excited about Tower Bridge... It's no Taj Mahal. Also, hope everyone saw that Kmart's got the Marina ready in a week.

Right at the start of the sale is good! Running Thursday through Sunday. So the prices of key items are now... Imperial Flagship $197.10 Tower Bridge $287.10 Republic Frigate $143.10 Motorised Excavator $251.10 Ewok Attack $35.96 Hillside House $70.20 Lighthouse Island $50.36 City Passenger Train $161.10 Sort & Store Head $26.96 Queen Anne's Revenge $134.10 Flo's V8 Café $85.50 Big Bentley Bust-Out $89.10 No, you just present your card. The code is for ordering through the web site.

Sounds viable. I can see it selling more at $350 than the RRP of $449.99. And it's easily within Big W's margin: the current Falcon is around 7.5% off its RRP ($249.99 down to $228) on the shelves right at the moment. 7.5% off the Shuttle would be $416.24, a bit steep for the big toy sale. 20% off, which most retailers seem to be able to do without blinking an eye, would be $359.99. Call it $350 and watch the rich kids' parents plonk down the plastic! However, I'm sure many AFOLs will be trying to get it closer to its 259.99 USD ($245 AUD) retail price. $100 easily pays for freight forwarding, especially if free shipping on Star Wars at US S@H pops up again.

I've seen that and I've also seen the reason why: a couple of times over the last month there have been ripped open boxes near the shelves, sometimes patched back up with a store "clearance" sticker marking down the price, other times looking newly violated. Big W is also the main place I've seen collectable minifig packets ripped open. Hopefully the security cameras caught these idiots, and I can understand why they're protecting their larger stock. Have you tried aiming a hairdryer close to the sticker for about 20 seconds, then peeling it off? It's on old trick for getting off aggressive adhesive: the heat is hot enough to melt the glue but not hot enough to set fire to the cardboard (which, as all us Ray Bradbury readers know, happens at Fahrenheit 451). Me too: I never use the thumb push areas, instead I slide a thin sharp knife inside the folds at both ends, and gently pry the ends apart. I then collapse the box and store it flat. The box could be reconstituted in a few years and look almost new. Virtually all my larger set boxes are as pristine as an open box can be - there's a scale for box condition on Bricklink somewhere. Now going back into hibernation until the sales start!

It's in many larger David Jones right now, and at 20% off if you get it before their sale ends.

Agreed. Myer seems to be transitioning to a perpetually-on-sale model (as this thread regularly reports, they're the most frequent sale holder) so it looks like they may be starting to put the price up so that a 20% discount brings it down without eating too much into their margin. It'll be $319 during the sale, instead of around $304 which it would've been if they'd priced it at the RRP of $379.99. That said, Tower Bridge is a little "special". It's an exclusive, it's heavy (+5 Kg), and it won't sell in huge numbers - probably the same people will buy it that bought the Eiffel Tower and Taj Mahal, and the price is much the same as those were. Judging by the Bricklink price on those, if you'd bought a few sets to put under the bed for a few years, you wouldn't care too much about the couple of extra dollars at sale time!

They are for the AAFOLs: Adult Architect Fans Of LEGO! That's good news. I actually have a few making their way from B&N, courtesy of their 30% discount, but they didn't have Farnsworth House so I wouldn't mind picking it up locally. Anyone seen them in a similar art gallery shop in Sydney?

Thanks for the alert! Good for those who want to get some of the recent sets but their Myer is holding out on displaying them and they don't have a David Jones in their local shopping centre (Hurstville comes to mind) or do but it also doesn't have them in (Miranda joins it in the useless group!). Might use it to get a Hillside House. Or may wait until a 20%+10% MyerOne sale and get it with a few other things I'm hanging out for where the extra dollars will add up into a decent saving. Good that TRU is joining the sale party. Where they say "full-priced items", does anyone know how that works for something in one of their racks out the front (not LEGO) where the price is advertised as "was 89.99, now 69.99"? That's sort of a price change rather than a temporary discount, so really the new price should be discounted. I suppose they might revert to the original price for coupon purposes. Oh well, worth trying. Also: Barnes & Noble - I have an order 2 weeks and counting using the second above cheapest shipping option (15.98). I don't think it makes a difference (between this and cheapest 12.98 - it's still snail mail USPS). If you're in a hurry and/or hate waiting week after week for the postman, choose express, which uses a courier. The impatience cure might be worth the extra $20.

I saw them recently in Big W Miranda (Sydney). The Falcon was $228. Didn't look at the others. The trick to Big W pricing is take around 7.5 to 8% off the RRP. That generally works for most sets. Some isolated ones have a bigger discount applied, recent examples being The Temple of Atlantis ($96, a 20% discount) and Queen Anne's Revenge ($146, a bit over 25%). But usually it's around 8% and that's what it is for the Millennium Falcon ($228). If you can make it to David Jones, you can get it for $200, or if your local Myer gets it in during their sale, $187.50.

The Sunshine Coast is looking very appealing right now! Not only is it not freezing like Sydney and all the other southern cities, but your Myer actually gets the good stuff out for the sales. Enjoy your building!

Plenty's the word! In my ~5:30 pm stroll, I saw a well dressed gentleman pick up a QAR and excitedly show it to his lady partner. I was a bit far away to eavesdrop, but something to do with how much?, no, back it went on the shelf. That's hardly the first time I've seen that sort of sticker shock. The POTC range is just too expensive for what's in it, even at 25% off prices. Which, being honest, is where RRP prices should have started. I previously bought all the smaller sets (The Mill being the most expensive) because I am both a Pirates movie fan and an AFOL, but even I couldn't bring myself to go for the dead air that is Whitecap Bay, London Escape, etc. (I did buy some of the minifigs off BrickLink.) Judging by how full the tables and shelves are remaining even with 25% sales (Target already had one, and this is Myer's second in a fortnight), it's going to take more than that to move them in significant quantities. Bring on a 50% no-one-is-buying-this-stuff sale!

Checked out Myer Sydney city on the way home. As with other cities, they hadn't put any new stock out. I have the sneaking suspicion it's out the back to be wheeled out after the sale, which is being used to help clear the decks of the old stuff first. Disappointing. Myer's dead to me now. (Well, until they have a 20%+10% MyerOne sale in a few weeks with the new stuff out.) Didn't want to go home empty handed so went next door to David Jones and picked up a Lighthouse for $56. They had all the new stuff out for their 20% sale. Tons of Millenium Falcons, Frigates, Podracers, Airwoks, etc and still quite a few modular Fire Stations and Grand Emporiums.

New sale catalogues have appeared (have a "No Junk Mail" on the letterbox, but of course Lasoo is all you need). Disappointingly, Target has 20% off some toys but the LEGO brand isn't listed. Toys R Us has certain LEGO on sale, but the discounts are pretty lacklustre: mostly Cars 2 sets at around 20% off, and a few selected Star Wars sets: X-Wing Fighter (59.99 down $10), AT-AT (149.99 down $20), Republic Swamp Speeder (39.99 down $10), Battle of Geonosis (69.99 save $10). Also advertising the new Creator sets (Hillside House, Lighthouse Island) but at full retail, except for Log Cabin (39.99 down $10). Pretty dull. Myer will get my cash this week.