10224 - Town Hall

[dcdfan]

Still on bricklink for 348 misb, so the 505 on ebay is just ,well someone not searching enough

Sounds like not a reseller.

[mscheaf]

Still on bricklink for 348 misb, so the 505 on ebay is just ,well someone not searching enough

When I select new sealed exclude incomplete sets and us only, it isn't that cheap.

[Val-E]

He may have been wanting to say in Euros as you can get them for that price mint over here - you guys just got out of the blocks so quickly it

[pickleboy]

Cheapest BIN is 510.

[marcandre]

Cheapest BIN is 510.

 

Are there any under 500 on BC? I can't get on there for some reason.

Edited February 22, 2015 by marcandre

[pickleboy]

Are there any under 500 on BC? I can't get on there for some reason.

There is one for 500.

[marcandre]

There is one for 500.

 

Looks like someone nabbed it. No Town Halls (or HH) on BC, they are moving on there at 500.

[peterjames]

Just a weird thing with the seal codes with this set. It started drying up on LEGO Shop at Home on early Oct 2014 and other retail outlets some weeks after that.

However, in Australia this set was still found in a few smaller chain stores in Dec 2014 where I picked up some sets with seal codes: 23S4, 29S4 and 33S4.

In Australia we get our sets from Denmark it the codes mean that they did 3 production runs in 10 weeks which is very unusual for a set this size and in particular if it was a slow seller. My theory is, TLG knew they were going to EOL by the end of 2014 and put through multiple runs to build stock, unfortunately the hoard (thanks to Ed) got a sniff and soaked it up in Oct (also check the eBay sales graph on BP the numbers go through the roof in Oct/Nov).

The take away here is that if you see a similar pattern in the seal codes in a set that may be on the verge of retirement it could be confirmation of possible EOL.

Anyway, just a theory...

[Ciglione]

Just a weird thing with the seal codes with this set. It started drying up on LEGO Shop at Home on early Oct 2014 and other retail outlets some weeks after that.

However, in Australia this set was still found in a few smaller chain stores in Dec 2014 where I picked up some sets with seal codes: 23S4, 29S4 and 33S4.

In Australia we get our sets from Denmark it the codes mean that they did 3 production runs in 10 weeks which is very unusual for a set this size and in particular if it was a slow seller. My theory is, TLG knew they were going to EOL by the end of 2014 and put through multiple runs to build stock, unfortunately the hoard (thanks to Ed) got a sniff and soaked it up in Oct (also check the eBay sales graph on BP the numbers go through the roof in Oct/Nov).

The take away here is that if you see a similar pattern in the seal codes in a set that may be on the verge of retirement it could be confirmation of possible EOL.

Anyway, just a theory...

 

Interesting. But unfortunately it does not tell us anything about production quantities. 

 

The new sets that came out now and will still come out are already produced. So the question is how many sets can Lego produce in a week or month? I believe sometimes they have to sacrifice sets. Even sets that sell well.  

Edited February 24, 2015 by Ciglione

[Val-E]

Maybe there was an exceptionally slow intern working in the packing plant and it took them a 10 weeks to put 500 TH in a box - who really knows. What is true is that there was a final stock made available some  weeks before supply ran dry. Could the same be happening now with PS?????

[Val-E]

BTW bricklink data has now been skewed by huge inventory adds from some sellers just like GE and FB

 

Either that or Darin is taking positions!

[Ed Mack]

Town Hall up to $396.00 last month or about 22%.  Not growing fast enough.  Time to sell!

[bricketycricket]

Maybe there was an exceptionally slow intern working in the packing plant and it took them a 10 weeks to put 500 TH in a box - who really knows. What is true is that there was a final stock made available some  weeks before supply ran dry. Could the same be happening now with PS?????

Set goes OOS - "OMG it's retiring!"

Set is in stock - "Final stock before supply runs dry! OMG it's retiring"

 

Give it a rest, not every set is retiring.

[MathBuilder]

At the risk of sounding like a captain obvious:

 

I think the key problem we have with seal codes is that we have no idea how big or small a production week can be for a given set. 

 

We can safely assume that a week of production for an average set with low price and low piece count will have huge amounts of sets produced in comparison to a week of an exclusive set with high number of pieces. 

 

But never mind regular sets, lets just focus on exclusives on the $150-$250 range and thus in a similar ballpark of piece count and also one would presume similar logistics or degree of difficulty to produce so to speak. One would expect that a week of PS, a week of PC, a week of Orthanc would yield more or less the same amount of sets, or at least thats what I used to think. 

 

But the experience we have been seen with reported codes says otherwise (or maybe I have been reading it all wrong). Look at amazon, lego stores etc. PS had a  week 3 on january then soon after another week (forgot exact numbers). It has been selling like hot cakes in amazon and yet it keeps popping back, Orthanc has been doing exactly the same yet all orthancs are still from end of 2014. So was that week a huge orthnac batch? and PS, PC are just tiny batches produced every 2-3 weeks?

 

Could it be that the numbers don't actually mean when the set are produced but when the sets are scheduled to be delivered to final destination? Or date to be shipped out of factory or some distribution center? Just think about it didn't somebody report a week 9 set just yesterday or 2 days ago? (We are in week 9 by the way).

 

OK, this explanation turned out more confusing once I wrote it. But the moral of the story is don't put to much decision weight on seal codes unless you really understand them, as it is right now I don't. 

[Ciglione]

Maybe the PS had several production runs but they were small? And ToO had its final run and it was a big one? There should be someone on the forum here that knows how production runs work no matter what is produced.

 

All my common sense tells me is that you produce according to sales. So the more you have sold in the last let's say 3 months, the more you produce? Or the other way around? 

[Val-E]

Sorry for any "unwarranted panic and EOL speculation"

[peterjames]

Maybe the PS had several production runs but they were small? And ToO had its final run and it was a big one? There should be someone on the forum here that knows how production runs work no matter what is produced.

The ToO final run (week 50?) was a special case which was to fix an earlier run in week 30ish. This may have been an unusually large run as it may have been combined with a normal run resulting in double the normal sets being available.

If you go on to YouTube you can find videos showing how they do their packing runs and from that you would get a sense that it would not be economical to do short runs as it would take too long to setup. And like all manufacturing plants they would have set production run counts, which may equate to the number of boxes per pallet and the number of pallets per shipping container.

Pure guess work here but TH had two sets per box and I would say 60 boxes per pallet, or 120 sets per pallet. Guessing as to container size but it may be around 25 pallets per shipping container, or at least 3000 sets per container. So min production run size would be 3000. Whatever the final number is there is no doubt they would have fixed production run sizes based on the number of shipping containers they want to fill.

[jaisonline]

links?

 

If you go on to YouTube you can find videos showing how they do their packing runs ...

 

[biniou]

Smaller boxes, so more on a pallet, ok, but... do you really think it took decades to Lego to realize that ?

[peterjames]

Here are a few videos inside the lego factory:

At the end of the first video it states a packing line can produce "1400 boxes per hour"

 

 

 

 

This last one is the most comprehensive and shows the complete process...but it's in Spanish!

 

 

 

[diablo2112]

I'm 99% sure this is the system used to pack the large, exclusive sets.  

 

[peterjames]

I'm 99% sure this is the system used to pack the large, exclusive sets.  

 

 

That's awesome!  Might produce one DS per day.  No wonder the damn thing isn't retiring they are still trying to fill a shipping container!

[Ciglione]

At least this way we do not have to be affraid it will flood the market any time soon!

[Veegs]

Smaller boxes, so more on a pallet, ok, but... do you really think it took decades to Lego to realize that ?

 

At the same time, a huge box really denotes 'awesome' to some (many?) consumers. I admit I kinda like have a few massive boxes for my biggest sets, and I think the Red-5 box, for example, is a little wimpy for a set that costs $250 CAD. It doesn't look like a $250 set to me. The TH looks like a premium set, so I think perceived value to the consumer must be balanced with shipping/packaging costs.

[bricketycricket]

At the same time, a huge box really denotes 'awesome' to some (many?) consumers. I admit I kinda like have a few massive boxes for my biggest sets, and I think the Red-5 box, for example, is a little wimpy for a set that costs $250 CAD. It doesn't look like a $250 set to me. The TH looks like a premium set, so I think perceived value to the consumer must be balanced with shipping/packaging costs.

This is very true. Bigger is better in many peoples' minds and when you're charging $200+ for a product, you don't want it to look modest.