dotmike

Thanks for the good advice, hewman. I'll be sure to pick up the new sets/exclusives I want at the first sign of the 20-25% (and 20+10) sales, value permitting. I'm also hoping that there is some slashing to clear of "expired" themes, especially POTC, which doesn't seem to have been the hit the stock levels were anticipating? Maybe it's too early though. And perhaps an EOFY sale is the time to hope to see old unsold modulars (eg, Fire Station) sold at half price. Anyway, I'll do my bit to report on sale items - smartphone in hand, I usually do it straight from the aisle in question!

I haven't really paid attention in the past (distraction of kids, etc), but with the big EOFY clearance sales, do they get progressively better as time goes on? That is, do they start off with the 20%-25% discounts, clear some stock, then discount further as June 30 approaches? Or have the retailers pretty much already decided the lowest prices they'll discount to, and not go below that, even if the object is to clear as much as they can before the beancounters arrive? I'm suppose I'm asking is it worthwhile to spend big as soon as the sales start, or to hold out until the end for "real bargains"? I think I saw over on a blog that these sets had been seen in a David Jones, who currently have a 20% sale running. So you could get get the Lighthouse for $56 and Hillside House for $80 today if you were near a DJs who had them. Or of course wait until Wednesday and see if Myer has them at 25% off at $52.50 and $75. Update: yes I did, it was here: Bricks Down Under - David Joness 20% off Nice little blog for local LEGO, just not updated very often.

Also, until 3D printers (the kind that can create solid objects) become a few orders of magnitude more sophisticated, LEGO is less likely to become a digitally purchased product, unlike books. (Amazon sells at least as many Kindle books as hardcovers, and other statistics that show where the pulped tree version is headed.) It'll be a sad day in the future when instead of busting open a beautifully illustrated cardboard box (whose cover art does not always match the contents, *cough* pearl gold *cough*), and hearing the snap of stiff plastic bags ripped open and the delicious tinkle of fresh bricks crash onto the table top, you instead fire up your printer and churn out the latest recipe of bricks you've purchased digitally...

No problem, and thanks for checking! (It's very much appreciated when people here post their findings.) With the frequency of pricing screw-ups recently - eg, TRU with their POTC QAR at $128, Target with their POTC Cannibal Escape at $31.20 - it's always a possibility. And the key to taking advantage of it is to move quickly, as pretty soon the retailer wakes up.

From a comment I saw in an OzBargain thread: it's possible that Myer Melbourne City have started the clearance sale early this weekend, but perhaps just the city Myer, not the suburban stores. I'm in Sydney and not in the city so can't confirm. But if anyone wants an early jump on their stock before other AFOLs clear it out with the cash they've been saving all year for these sales...

I don't want to sound grumpy this cold Saturday morning, but if this interminable debate over how much we're being gouged by LEGO's pricing is going to continue (in a sales thread), then please at least read the previous posts. Denmark has a VAT tax rate of 25%. For actual production, $180 sounds like a figure pulled straight from the air. Once the machines are tooled up, a unit would cost astonishing little to produce. LEGO consists of varying grades of plastic, cardboard, and air. The real money is in the design, the branding, the reputation, marketing, transport, and what the market will bear for a luxury "art" product. Whatever it costs to manufacture, as long as they're making a profit after they've purchased the raw materials and paid the factory running costs, they can charge whatever the market will bear. Maybe that figure is some retailer's wholesale cost. Now please someone report on which Targets are selling the Pod Racer for $119 instead of $149, and whether Myer really has a sale going today in some departments (toys?).

Could you perhaps confirm those prices for sure, as they genuinely would be mistakes for that Target and I'm sure some Star Wars collectors here would like to pounce. At my local Target last night they were most definitely priced at the correct prices: (Also, if you are going to post pictures in this thread, please make them useful to the sale discussion, like these ones. Deep-linking to Bricklink product photos doesn't really add anything - they don't provide any proof of price sightings, etc. Sorry to be a thread nazi.)

I think that's common for us with the LEGO set inserts, as the included materials are probably the same globally, but the distribution schedule is region based. It's even more annoying when you give a set to say, your 6 year old, and he gets his heart set on one of the advertised ones in the insert. However, because you've bought the set near the end of its run, the set advertised is now out of production, not on any shelves, and the eBay / Bricklink prices have doubled because it's become a rare collectible! I suppose if they are selling at, say, a 40% margin on the wholesale price, then even a 25% sale still gives them a 15% profit, which is apparently what a lot of consumer electronics products are, especially iPods. As long as the volume is there, it's probably worth their time to keep selling a popular product. (The margin may even be higher for a bulk buy like Myer is capable of?) Though I have to agree with you, that after seeing on my late night shopping runs what looks like the same old sets week after week, it's hard to feel they're moving a lot of stock. But maybe the shelf fillers are very good at replacing sold boxes with identical looking new ones! At the moment there are a lot of unmoved POTC sets... I wonder if in a month or so we'll see those slashed to clear?

Thanks all for the info! I sympathise, ORTC, that they make you wait after the dept stores for stock. The Big W sighting is encouraging for a simultaneous rollout. Myer in my area was relatively late to get POTC (after the Target sale had finished) but there's hope for next Wednesday if the reps have started stacking them up in different stores. If not Wednesday, there's going to be as good if not better sales soon after. I figure $180 is an acceptable local price point to me, which could be achieved by a Myer 20% + 10% sale. (249.99 - 20% = 199.99 - 10% = $180.) Any more and I'm going to have to hold and ponder the box for some time, until it hypnotises me into walking it to the checkout. The 2507 Fire Temple?! Now that would be tempting.

Forgive me if this is common knowledge, but is the new 7965 Millennium Falcon an exclusive to Target? I saw it in a Target store today at $249 (Miranda Sydney if you are desperate for one, they had plenty). However, it was in no other department stores in the shopping mall, which includes Myer, David Jones, Big W, and Toys R Us. Was Target just lucky to get it first, or do they have either a limited time exclusive or full exclusive on it? The main reason I ask is that if Myer has this 25% sale coming up (and presumably later on a 20% + 10% Myer One variant), it could just pull the set into buy-here-rather-than-import territory, whereas Target doesn't often go beyond its 20% thing. For an expensive set, every 5% makes a difference!

It's barely worth mentioning this, but David Jones' online store has a 20% off sale on toys including LEGO. All humdrum stuff and there's probably shipping on top. I'd only be interested if the Pet Shop modular was a David Jones exclusive, but even it is, it's probably a few months away.

Probably closer to the movie (Thursday, 14 July 2011). I wonder if they'll bring back the previous HP sets that were cleared so drastically at the end of their Australian run in January? The Burrow and Dobby's Release were slashed pretty dramatically to get them off the shelves. I assume so, as between The Knight Bus, The Forbidden Forest, and the exploding bridge Hogwarts add-on, they aren't really enough to justify the theme's reappearance by themselves. Still hanging out for a TRU 20% coupon... (I want the lighthouse, and it's not viable to import (freight would be ~50% of the value). I hate exclusives / restricted early availability where a store just around the corner has them! Too tempting to say, "hang it, I'll just pay RRP." Which is equivalent to saying, "please give me a lobotomy.")

Any whiff of a 20% Toys R Us coupon coming up? They have one for 20% off baby stuff on the back page of their current junk mail, but I doubt they could be convinced LEGO fits into that category... There are one or two interesting things out in Toys R Us: aside from the Ewoks, I also saw the 5770 Creator Lighthouse Island, which isn't even up on Australia S@H yet. It was $69.99 (vs a retail of 39.99 USD = $37.60), so a 20% discount would make it a little more palatable.

(River Song) I find this thread fascinating, and seeing the original pre-production concept art explains a lot about how the set came to look like it does. Thank you for posting it! For play, I built a more movie like Fountain of Youth, embodying the "hole in a rock" look that they went with in the final film. Here it is:

For anyone waiting for this theme, Pharaoh's Quest is now trickling into Big W stores: The pricing is on the high side as usual - the Scorpion Pyramid is $148, which is lower than S@H's $159.99, so Big W is effectively giving a discount of 7.5%. The US RRP is $99.99, so we're being fleeced of course, though not quite as bad as the POTC markup of double the price for most sets. Normally it'd be a case of waiting for a 20-25% sale at Target, Myer, etc, but I think someone mentioned Pharaoh's Quest was exclusive to Big W which, if so, probably means those prices are as good as it's going to get in an Australian store (unless they eventually hit Big W's clearance rack).

European barcodes and Australian barcodes are usually the same. USA barcodes are often different. (That's why the barcode scanner apps for iPhone and Android often fail to work on Aussie products unless the app searches a worldwide database.) So you'd probably be able to return it. The main other risk is if the box gets crushed in transit, Target may not feel it is in suitable condition for a return. Personally, though, I'd just enjoy your early purchase and use the "paid too much" pain as a lesson to encourage patience in the future - as justification for the wait to get an overseas delivery. I ended up buying the rather poor 4192 Fountain of Youth set at $29, even though I just know we're going to see it hit super clearance in a month or two and go for $12 or so like Harry Potter Dobby's Release did when they wanted to clear them. That's a set no one is buying.

I have little time for "intellectual" critic reviews that seem to expect near impossible things, such as a freshness and novelty from a movie that could never be achieved by any sequel (by definition, only the first movie can be the truly novel one). When really the movie should be reviewed on whether it delivered a rollicking adventure with characters we know and love. Plot holes and pacing flaws in a movie like this are inevitable, but it's hardly what the movie should stand on. Critics that see their job as putting down movies that don't aspire to be high art perhaps need to review their own performance. In the case of the unreadable "maggots" reviewer (I walked out on his review just as he claimed to walk out of the movie), such an antisocial, bile-filled individual would clearly never enjoy a visit to Disneyland or other mass market entertainments that many of us mum & dads & kids enjoy. I think POTC: OST delivered at least as much as the other POTC sequels, and I've been telling my friends it's worth seeing. It would be sad if people took notice of the critics and stayed away. Without a decent box office return, future sequels wouldn't be considered, and the LEGO POTC line might end earlier than it should, just as Indy and Persia did.

Yes, called it! (No warning, I swear.) I guess that can be this thread's new motto: "If no one else has a sale on, Myer will soon enough." Heading in there now hoping they have something interesting. I suppose the discounted Fire Stations went ages ago. Yeah, they're useless. Maybe they think 24 hour trading will save them?! I can't tell you the number of times I've woken up at 3:00 am needing a LEGO set... (Although I did actually appreciate Kmart's 24 hour trading when the Nintendo 3DS came out: very easy to grab one at midnight for $288. Of course, I didn't like it and sold it on eBay a few weeks later, but that's beside the point.)

I think the 20% off sale at Toys R Us is still on until Sunday (22nd). I assume it's all LEGO, not just POTC? Myer hasn't had one for at least 2 weeks. They're about overdue aren't they! (Subtle comment on the frequency of Myer sales. All depends on how good business has been I guess. They've seemed pretty busy to me recently. At least, their orange packets of Series 4 minifigs were cleared out in no time flat.)

Yeah, I bought a Big W online special last year that was so aggressively stuffed into bubble wrap, I think the wrapping did more damage than the post! Plus there were some uncovered box bits that the strong sticky tape stuck to which meant the box artwork got ripped when it was removed. So, Big W Online has some good prices from time to time, but maybe it's not the best choice if you're a pristine box hoarder.

Thanks for that report! I phoned too but got the recording so had to leave a message to be called back. I'm more confident that us down under pirates can get some treasure after hearing your order has been placed.

I saw On Stranger Tides today. The movie fountain could not have been more different from the LEGO fountain! When seeing that translucent blue LEGO column in the set, I was expecting an upwards gushing stream of water, peaking at the top and then cascading down, like a garden fountain. Er, no. Not only that, but the shower curtain should have been horizontal.

Any update on this? Wanted to hear the story before we all start calling and annoying them!

Why the hostility towards PayPal? Usually it's the vendors that have had a bad experience. (I had one selling a computer on eBay, and I then refused to use PayPal for a year. I relented because it's just so damn convenient, and the convenience encourages buyers to bid higher.) Usually PayPal goes overboard protecting buyers, at the expense of sellers. That is, they'll reverse a transaction if the buyer makes a case (lost in the mail, etc) and the vendor is left high and dry. That usually explains the horror stories. Oh, and the fees, which again don't affect the buyer. Anyway, there appear to be two Australian BrickLink vendors who would almost certainly welcome a fee-free bank deposit as payment: The cheapest is $65, here.

Well, I tried. I printed your receipt and took it into Hurstville. I explained a friend had bought this yesterday, had photocopied the receipt for me, and could they price match his price? Out came the manager, who proceeded to explain about the TRU signage mistake, but was adamant that he couldn't match that price. Maybe if I was a better sweet talker (and/or better looking) I would have got a deal, but in this case, no ship. But thanks again for posting the receipts and congratulations on your own sweet deals! (And good luck to anyone else attempting this price match - there may just be some TRUs who are more keen to keep potential customers happy. Or you may be sweeter talking/better looking!)