deraven

The piano itself is neither- it's just 1x2 white grill tiles over black (you can see it in the review thread for 70812). The sheet music is a sticker on a 2x2 white tile.

Stay safe and warm… and then let us know what you turn up! ;) Always love all your interesting insights into Lego history. Thanks!

Yes, I poked around a bit in '91-'94, but don't have access to all the catalogs. Definitely could have been just an internal reference number for a retailer combo pack as jonwil said. Perhaps Lego Historian or someone else with TLG connections could help. It's a minor mystery, but now I'm definitely wanting it solved. ;)

I can't seem to find that specifically (not entirely sure what year it's from and not in a position to dig out my full catalogs from that era right now), but I think this is basically what it was: http://www.peeron.com/catalogs/1992/medium/11/?id=86 See the Value Pack on the right hand side of the page with its own set number but just 4 distinct, individually-numbered sets included. 9401 might have even been for a holiday promo or something. I am pretty curious now, though! :)

As far as I know, 9401 was a value pack and not a separate set. It contained the small, inexpensive sets 6811 Pulsar Charger and 6833 Beacon Tracer. My bet is that, if anything more than an inventory number for ordering from SaH at the time, it would have just been a cardboard backing sleeve that they were shrinkwrapped to and, of course, wouldn't have had any specific instructions of its own or anything else to survive to help identify it now, 20 years later.

I think that was me, and my only disappointment was that my store didn't really seem to have anything on sale either when the manager had said that "most" things should be. Wasn't expecting the triple VIP points to happen for sure, and I guess that means we get 15% "cash back" on purchases, but still would have bought a lot more if there were some actual sales that, as others have said, at least put them in the same league as other retailers. For the record: Free PAB box for coming in, wristband, Hobbit poster, peel-off card (I got the free 16.99 set - lame that they couldn't apply it to the cost of another set, but clearly a strategy there as I had to settle for a $12 set for free rather than paying the $3 difference for a $20 set... but free is still free!), access to the 2nd holiday set with purchase, and the triple VIP points. They had a couple of the new Hobbit sets out, but not the Parisian Cafe or anything else early (but they had said they thought they weren't likely going to have things on-hand in time so I wasn't really surprised there). Still worth going and seeing some other local AFOLs (was fun seeing the kids table full of AFOLs feeling up CMF bags to help quickly find a specific minifig for someone), but at this point I don't think I'd be particularly disappointed if I didn't get an invite again next year (especially if they make some of the bonuses available to VIPs online again as well).

I'm seeing some of the (decent) TRU sales items appearing online, but it looks like not all that are available in-store are online and vice-versa. I stopped by my local TRU (Glendale, AZ) today and picked up some copies of these: 9496 - Star Wars Desert Skiff - $16.49 79108 - Lone Ranger Stagecoach Escape - $19.99 75014 - Star Wars Battle of Hoth - $29.99 60024 - City Advent Calendar - $25 41015 - Friends Dolphin Cruiser - $52.49 79111 - Lone Ranger Constitution Train Chase - $64.99 Certainly not 50% off *actual* retail price, but still some good deals in there even coming down from TRU's inflated pricing.

That reminds me- i think my +1 may not be able to make it. Anyone in AZ that didn't get an invite want to join me at the Arrowhead mall location if she indeed can't be there? Just let me know if so and maybe that'll work out! :)

Agreed. I understand that those have a pretty reasonable value on piece count for price already, but they're also some of the most expensive sets and I'd hope that at least once a year we'd get a break. I couldn't use the last 10% off coupon on any of the larger sets I wanted (none of the modulars, Creator Expert, Ewok Village, etc.) so I ended up buying nothing at all and letting the coupon expire. A silly psychological thing to be sure, as 10% off of a $40 set is still better than nothing, but still! I of course don't have access to TLG's marketing numbers, but you'd think the additional sales with discount would offset the lowered profit margin nicely. *shrug* I'll keep my fingers crossed!

Same in the US- $5,000 limit per person, limit 1 holiday promo per person, etc.. I guess that does mean that your +1 can help you double all that if you bring along a ringer that's buying for you as well, but I wonder if you could both use the same VIP account? I don't know that I'd spend $10,000, but it would be nice to get 2 of the holiday promo sets that way...

I RSVPed a few days ago and chatted with my local store manager about it for a couple minutes when I was there yesterday. I didn't ask him about the criteria for getting an invite this year, but from what I've heard elsewhere it's still the XX biggest spenders, plus a few more invites at the manager's discretion. Hopefully that means it indeed won't be too crowded. As for what to expect this year: He said that we should get early access to new sets (but noted that for their store specifically they hadn't received shipments for some new stuff that he'd expected them to already have so we'll have to see what happens in the next week on that front) and that the 2nd Christmas promo set (the tree delivery pickup truck) will be available with purchase then as well so we don't have to wait until Brick Friday to pick it up. He mentioned that they wouldn't be the doing percent-off scratcher-type cards this year, but would instead have them for things like "Get a $20 set free," free keychains, dollar amount vouchers (up to a $200 "shopping spree" - guess they don't know what a "spree" would really constitute for the folks there for this event! ), and that sort of thing. For sales, he said that they'd be discounting sets from 20-50% and that there would be some things that would be excluded but "pretty much the whole store will be on sale." Take that for what it's worth, but sounds like it's at least worth going to check it out!