I'm going to stay in between on this subject. I grew up with the 1989 sets and Still think that the structures that they had back then are much superior to the ones in 2009s sets, however the newer minifigs are much better than the 1989 ones and minifigs to me make up 50% of the sets.
As was mentioned in this thread the best in my opinion are the ones made of cloth, but if its just between the hard ones and the soft plastic ones I will choose the Old flags.
One of my favorite things about Classic Pirates is the fact that every faction starts as neutral and the buyer gets to decide for themselves which is good and evil. I myself Love the Imperial Red Coats, while many view them as the bad guys, I see them as the good ones. With POTC, anyone who has seen the movies will see Jack sparrow and his crew as the good guys so that to me is a negative.
I much prefer the Classic Pirate sets so I probably would not buy any Pirates of the Caribbean ones. Also I have heard that there is a 4th Pirates of the Caribbean movie coming out within 3 years so I would not be surprised if they released it that year.
Well its been a long time since I have even seen lego but After cleaning out my basement I came across the last remaining box of my vast lego collection that survived 4 moves. Covered in dust and Spiders these brave warriors fought on so that one day they could see their kingdoms again.
I just want to thank the creator of this Topic quickly for making this thread. I recently found the tiny remains of my once massive Lego collection and I found one of my old Imperial Soldiers and then on youtube found a video about this ship with the link to this thread and after reading this entire thread I can safely say I will be getting back into Lego and purchasing this ship.