fred67

Really? No... really? It's just a round 1x1 to replace... you've probably gotten a red one just from extras in most sets. What I like about these reindeer is that they didn't give you eight, but they are brick built from fairly common bricks and you can build it up to eight (or nine) easily... just not with the eyes.

These are great... you've really put a lot of thought into these, and I (mostly) stopped buying castle when the Fantasy era ended (although I did buy dragon mountain). I would definitely buy these sets if TLG released them. My only problem... your sets are too nice - you WAY underestimate what TLG would charge for them, IMO.

Yes, you need an account. No, you order from each store individually, as each store has different terms and conditions (some have minimum buys, minimum per-lot requirements, required insurance for certain orders, some have specific add on fees). Think of them as individual stores tied together through a common interface. Some stores have instant checkout with pre-calculated shipping, but unlike shopping elsewhere, you submit an order and the seller usually figures out how much shipping is and THEN bills you. It can be scary not knowing exactly how much you're committing to - I think that's what keeps most people away, but it's generally not that bad... most stores let you know how they calculate shipping so you can at least estimate.

Funny, I just looked at this thread again wondering what color it will be so that I can build my display stand (the Series 11 have been waiting for almost a year!). Sadly... we still don't know? If it's yellow, can someone post a link to the pictures from the show where they were shown? Yellow is good because I have a lot of it, but sad if it's a repeat.

HEY! Let's not let this CMF Trading System here die out! I have one of the largest "haves" list, but think I have been held back by having such a small "want" list, but I've just expanded my want list and am open to offers. My post is here, and while I prefer trading in the US, am open to worldwide trading if multiple figures are involved.

Bricklink doesn't really like to give you the ability to get best prices for lists of things... they would never sort by wanted list prices, they won't even link directly to the catalog from items in someone's store, so you can't look up if it's a good price from there, unlike when you browse the catalog. It's stupid... it takes two seconds to open a new window and look it up, but sellers would be mad if they linked directly. Another thing is that, even though you can find cheapest individual pieces, Bricklink wants to make money, and they take a percentage, so the higher the sale, the more they make. So people have suggested these changes on the bl forums before, they always get shot down.

There was an Ideas blog post about the sets having another run...

If you say so, I guess I'm a closet feminist.

The boxes they sell now have too many different types in too many colors...

As I mention in another thread... I used to go to the LEGO Store a lot when my kids were younger. My daughter likes LEGO, but not like I do, so she might have picked out a set or two (Belville, FTW!) The only time she asked for a P@B cup is when they had pink and purple bricks on the wall... EDIT: of course, that might have been because she could build with all my other colors anyway, but still, it was the only time she asked.

Point by point: 1. There's nothing about where you buy that determines whether you're "serious" or not. 2. It can be a hassle, depending on what you want, few sellers will have the variety of parts in the quantity that you want. Bricklink helps with that buy making use of "wanted" lists, and after you order you can list what you have on your wanted list with what you just ordered, so you can remove things (or reduce the quantity) of what you still need. It's not that terrible once you get used to it, but it is annoying to deal with sometimes. 3. Bricklink wins over S@H, but S@H annihilates any single seller on bricklink for variety. 4. S@H PAB is quite simply an enormous rip off. The reason BL sellers can sell for less is when the average price per piece in a set is $0.10 or so... but S@H charges WAY more (you're paying, from their perspective, for the convenience... people have to hand pick your order, after all - which is just like BL, but those employees are likely getting paid more per hour and also making benefits, whereas a BL seller is just trying to make some spare cash in their free time). It's also true that, from time to time, you will get a better deal at S@H. Sometimes parts aren't that common in sets, but TLG may have made a run of them... BL sellers often only look at what other sellers are selling for, not S@H... So, especially if you need quantity, even if BL had better prices you might have to buy from multiple sellers, which is a hassle and increases shipping costs, and sometimes the piece is actually cheaper on S@H to begin with. 5. Never had a problem with S@H... don't know why you'd order bricks you didn't want... same thing with bricklink. I've never returned anything. 6. New pieces from BL are just as good as new pieces from S@H. They are from brand new sets. New pieces can have scratches and marks just from shipping... whether you get them from S@H or BL. I've never had an issue with parts labeled "new" on BL (and have well over 100 orders). The reason to buy from BL are, as you mention, pieces and sets that are no longer available from S@H, and cost. Cyberbricker started this thread with a great question, and I'd like to point out that I figured out early on that if I wanted to build a big building or castle, I'd need a LOT of pieces. At that time, I found a seller selling white 1x2s (which I prefer over 2x4 for building) for $0.019 (that's 1.9 cents) each. So I bought several thousand of them. Adding 1x1s for building around doors and windows, and a bunch of black 1x2 and 1x1 for accents, I ended up with about 4000 bricks for like $120. P@B wasn't even close. Right now a quick search at BL shows(*) a seller with over 16k white 1x2 bricks at $0.06 each - while S@H is $0.15 each... 2.5 times more expensive for quantity. If you didn't need that many, smaller quantities can be had for $0.03 each... 1/5 the P@B price. And yes, that's NEW. There's just no comparison. However, like I said... some pieces are rare, and in quantity, can actually be more expensive on BL. Depending on what you're going for, especially high quantities of a brick that seems too expensive on BL, S@H might be better. OK, though, all of that said, the general order of preference is: at the LEGO Store, selection is VERY limited, but if they have something you want you can get a lot of it for relatively great price. If you can't there... and let's face it, you rarely know what they have ahead of time anyway, you said you live far away so it hardly seems worth it (at least I know my store in brickbuildr is terribly out of date... if I was a store manager, I'd make sure that was up to date). The second choice is usually BL to see if you can get the quantities of what you want at a decent price, the last choice is usually S@H... but on most purchases, you generally want to check both BL and S@H. If BL causes you to make too many separate orders, S@H becomes more worthwhile. Oh... and one last thing... shipping from BL sellers is a mixed bag, but you'll often get it faster from BL than you would from S@H, especially in the U.S.... I think they actually pick and ship it from overseas, and shipping can take a while. So the bottom line is BL works, but it has it's pitfalls... first of all, if you are buying a lot of different items, it almost never happens that you find a seller with the best price on everything you want to buy, so you either split orders or decide it's worth it to not have to pay multiple shipping charges. You also don't know how much you're going to pay when you agree to buy! That's the worst part of BL! And it seems scary! But most sellers are upfront about their shipping costs, so when they send you the final bill it's generally not a shock. With over 100 orders, I've only had a few that were annoying... and only one non-shipping seller. I'm definitely generally trusting of buying from BL. (*) My catalog searches are limited to North America.

I have to agree with kibosh, especially on long running sets (like LOTR, perhaps not the exosuit or research institute). Everybody had their chance to get it. What the investor is doing is saying "a year or two from now (or more) someone will come along and realize they missed a great set... and I'll have a brand new one, in the box they can buy... they can experience all the fun and satisfaction of opening a brand new set and building it." That is, if it's important... I'm personally happy enough buying used sets if they're complete, but some people aren't. I also have a lot of sets I bought for me, but I don't have the space to display them. Someday I hope to move to a new house with a dedicated LEGO room for me... I don't want to miss out, I don't want to pay ridiculous prices, so I buy the sets and stick them in a closet. Then you know what happens? Suddenly the set I bought for $140 is selling for over $1000 new in box.... yes, I'm looking at you, Cafe Corner... but when my daughter picked you out from various sets for a family build, I built you anyway! But what happens if I lose interest? What if I decided I'm never going to have space for a Star Wars display? What do I do with my 4504 Millennium Falcon that I got on sale on Black Friday for $80? Am I supposed to feel bad that someone might pay me $300? Well... I don't. I'd also like to add that, personally, I would never buy a set I didn't like. I've often bought a set, thought it was great, and bought another one... maybe I'd sell it in the future, maybe it'd make a great gift... maybe I'll give it to my grand kids someday. Or, you know what? Maybe I see it sitting on the shelf and decide it's time to sell it. I'm glad I bought four Emerald Knight sets... I built one, I converted the second one to a Ruby Knight, I sold one to someone who wasn't into LEGO trains when it was available (and he didn't complain, he thanked me), and I still have one that I don't know what I'll do with it... maybe build it just for the coach, but maybe I'll sell it. I don't feel bad about it... nothing you could possibly say could make me feel bad about it. Now, the people scalping the ideas sets are a different story... bragging about getting dozens of copies when you were only supposed to get five (initially, I think), then reduced to 1 per household? The problem is that THEY caused the shortage... so yes, I really dislike that, when people didn't have a chance at all. However, these sets are not bread and butter, they are not necessities... the only reason a seller can charge so much is because people are willing to pay it. It's really that simple. To solely blame the seller is incredibly short sighted, IMO. I've gladly done without rather than paid outrageous prices for things. I make a pretty decent living, and there are plenty of sets I could lay out the cash for (looking at you, SDCC exclusives!) but it's crazy to pay that much for a little plastic figure... so I don't do it. Therefore I'm not a "victim" of the "evil" seller. If I decided to buy it... well, you can't willingly be a victim in this case. But there's something TLG could do about those cases... why they choose to do nothing is baffling. Why they'd limit an ideas set to a single run when you can still buy the last round's sets just confuses the hell out of me... I mean, I can think of a couple of things, but nothing that makes it make sense to not have another run. But when it comes to sets that are sitting on the shelves for a year or more, blaming the sellers years later is just wrong, IMO... often a case of sour grapes when someone misses out on a set and then "needs" to pay more for it.

Completely agree! I supported this set simply because I liked it, and I bought it for the same reason. My daughter was not interested - she thinks it's cool, but doesn't have a LEGO collection and doesn't want one (although I did get her the architecture Eiffel tower because she's into the Eiffel tower for some reason). She likes the occasional family build of a modular, but wouldn't want it in her room. I bought it for me. Thanks for insulting my gender... but I agree with your point. TLG knows what it's doing. It's busy now trying to reconcile all the whines it's getting from special interests with making sets they can actually sell. I will say this... what I wrote about my daughter aside, when she was younger she was more interested in LEGO. She's moving on into her teens and is not all that enthused about it anymore, although like I said earlier, she does like building things with me that will go on display. But years ago, we'd go to the LEGO Store and I might get a PAB cup or two while she (and my wife and son) would look around. The ONE TIME she wanted to fill a pick a brick cup was when they had pink and purple bricks on the wall. Lest we be accused of gender stereotyping, we'd been trying to convince her to go into martial arts like her brother... but she insisted on gymnastics and dance (and now solely dance). It's what she picked. I'd feel better about her dating years if she picked martial arts. The fact is that, by and large, girls like what they like, and boys like what they like. I think they both like building things and being creative, and if TLG made a mistake, it was moving away from generic sets to action oriented themes... but I think we have the cart following the horse there, as I think they knew that, even when it was just building sets, boys were more often the recipients. That led them to target boys, competing with other toys. It was part of TLG's dark ages... trying to compete with "lesser" toys. As we've seen, they still like licenses, but they've also done a lot of changing in the past decade. In addition to a multitude of other changes, we got things like modulars and architecture. Many of the licenses should have appealed to girls, too... why would only boys be interested in Harry Potter? Toy Story? Discovery? Dora? Spongebob? Not to mention all the just plain brick packs/buckets you could get?

I have a couple of those old ones and... no... they've been packed away for ages and I have no desire to display them or anything else... so... no.

I'd forgotten lately how good some third party part creators were... I just put in an order at altbricks for a bunch of new leaves in colors I didn't have, and some street signs.

I would neither support, nor buy that set if it were made, but I did support and did by the Research Institute because it was a good set. It didn't matter one whit to me that it was designed to feature women - a woman made it, and if a guy made it he'd probably make it with male scientists (probably being the operative word, there). That they made a point to use women didn't really matter to me, although I also do not like the idea that feminists (and their male apologist counterparts) would support such a set solely to push an agenda. I think the fact it sold out so fast is testament to the notion that people just thought it was a good set... I think, even if they planned on buying it, it was LEGO fans that made it sell out on day 1. (there's also the conspiracy theory that TLG made a very restricted number of them just to make it look that way; I wouldn't be surprised either way, but I'm leaning against that theory)

When I look on US S@H right now, as I write this, Exosuit is "temporarily out of stock," the lab just says "Sold Out." I don't know if "Sold Out" is final. I would presume, as I wrote, that it's simply not official that they'll make another run... I still think it would be a bit dumb not to, though. EDIT: In fact, I'm inclined to buy another one to save as a gift.

It's baffling when a profit driven company does not re-release such popular products, however I do not think we're already done with two latest sets. It's only been little more than a week since they've been released, and I'd say responses from some people at LEGO that they are already discontinued stems probably only from upper management not approving it yet - because it all happened so fast. So some phone or email rep will see there's no dates for another wave of sets, and say it's discontinued. I could be wrong... I probably am, but I don't see how a company like LEGO would screw up that badly and not have at least a second run.

Exactly! I agree 100%... it's what we've been saying here and in other threads - people just feel the need to complain about stuff, and who do they complain about? The company that's doing well. First people complained there weren't enough females in sets, so TLG added not just more females to sets, but created an entire new theme. Now the females aren't to somebody's liking because they created a huge variety, one that is fairly representative of real life (which, excuse me, includes some buxom women). And you certainly aren't limited to those "hourglass" figures to represent women... There is NO problem here, just much-ado about nothing. And I'll repeat - every time a company like TLG capitulates to some vocal minority, they show other whiners that they can be easily manipulated.

It's not the greatest, but I'm glad they kept it under $100 (well under). Sure, some things might be disappointing... like brick built reindeer, and a small work shop... but as LEGO builders it gives us the opportunity to use some series 11 elves (and maybe throw a yeti in there, just for fun) and build up Santa's workshop. And having brick built reindeer means we can build our own to add on fairly easily... making it 8 (or 9, if that's your political bent), so you don't have to buy multiple sets to get reindeer (and frankly, we don't need to see $10 reindeer on bricklink so that we can have 8... but that's just my opinion). EDIT: on second look, that's going to take a lot of work... I'd like to have paid $20 to $30 more for a real workshop, and maybe a stable for the reindeer. I'm almost certain to spend more than that bulking this up. I'm planning on adding a second table to my Christmas train layout to accommodate this set (the others barely fit with my train last year).

It's kind of an art form, but I agree by starting with minifigure first, then figuring out price per piece, all the whole keeping in mind how many big pieces that might be more valuable there are.

The sets are new, they sold out. The older ones have had a chance to catch up to demand. Nothing needs to be read into it.

They're on backorder, not completely sold out. If someone can't wait, that's their problem. I ordered this and the exosuit, expecting to not get them until September. It's like the idiots paying twice as much for a new video game console just so they don't have to wait. Don't blame the sellers, blame the idiot buyers.

Amortizing cost of set design over a million copies of the sets makes it barely worth considering, IMO.

I follow TLG's guidelines, generally, and typically only point it out to others when they should know better. I don't understand the big deal about following the company's terminology for their products. One thing that bothers me is when some of these whiney people complain about TLG in some blog or article, and can't be bothered to use the correct way, especially professionals.