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Can we please set up a place to meet. I'll bring you 25 Haunted Houses and 25 Tower Bridges, you bring me 50 Crawlers? - Grolim P.S. it's 10225 R2-D2 and it is a SSD not an SSDS (unless it's something other than the 10221 Super Star Destroyer you were meaning)

emazers, I think I will definitely side with Grolim on this one. While I do think these other two sets will do fine after they go EOL, you have told so many people to buy as much as you can of them, there will probably be as many of these out there are Fire Brigades These crawlers are limited, but who knows, maybe they will fall flat after the initial excitement wears off. Maybe Lego will release more? But at this moment, as more and more Crawlers are bought and built, the MISB/NISB crawlers should continue to go up in value. I am not sure if I can see Tower Bridge hitting $1000 for a long time if ever. Haunted House is a crap shoot too. It will be interesting to watch.

The crawler is far from done.......as time goes on more will be opened and built making sealed ones more and more valuable. But all y'all keep stockpiling HHs and TBs. People with huge $$ signs in their eyes might be disappointed.

Let me get situated here at work. I'm going to post you a direct quote from a LEGO representative in a new thread. There is an article being written about the site and the author interviewed LEGO directly. It is good news for some and bad for others...

Sure. I started this very recently, around Jan of this year and have learnt quite a bit in that period. My first months focused into the traditional buy and hold strategy most of us follow here, hoping to sell in 2-4 years. The need for investment capital pushed me more towards quick flips to fund my long term purchases. Suddenly, the quick flips were producing a lot more money than I thought it could in a very short period of time (say 2 months or so), so I have since shifted most of my attention towards doing that while still purchasing the occasional set for the long term. Basically, diversification.

I am short sighted...I would easily take 80 crawlers too. Easy money so far.

The crawlers reached 450-500 in a matter of days, it will take the HH and TB quite a while to reach that level. So I think it would be silly to choose 50 HHs and 30 TBs over 80 crawlers but to each his own. Nobody has that dillema anyway so I'm not worried about it.

This is a great illustration of how there are many facets to the Lego investment game, and one of the primary reasons I feel good about reselling for the foreseeable future. There are so many ways to get into this game, and even more ways to tailor a strategy to match both your interests, goals and advantages. Quick flipping new sets, used sets, minifigures, and buying/holding all of these can all bring returns.

Jeeze, I haven't seen those stickers since my childhood. They were on sticker sheets from the LEGOLAND Idea Book in 1980. You can browse the entire book here at Peeron. Sticker sheet 1 Sticker sheet 2

I'm going to be completely honest, I hate Ben Affleck. Well, I mostly hate Affleck the director, not Affleck the actor. I was at the Boston Academy Member screening for Argo, and he did a Q&A. He's quite pompous. I'll be seeing this movie because it's Superman, not because Ben Affleck is Batman.

Coming into this having no idea who she really is and no real concept of what happened, I would say the video felt like a "woe is me" attempt at gathering attention to her cause through pity. I'm sure there's more to it than that, but that's just my outside looking in perspective.

No Meijer near me to take advantage of the free shipping to store, but may work for others. Looks like an awesome build. http://www.meijer.com/s/lego-creator-aviation-adventures/_/R-270474

I think those are some great choices, hepcatpunk. OH and DC seem like no-brainers to me, and the residual haterade for the Friends theme will only be a boon to those who believe and invest. I can see Friends performing similar to Ninjago, and possibly even better.

Brand new 9574 LLOYD ZX ..... for retail ($9.99) ..... at TRU !!! I can't decide which of those 3 lines is more shocking :D I asked if they had more than 1, but no dice.

Be careful, LEGO has doubled production on the Friends line. Go to your local WM and see what I mean. They are EVERYWHERE.

Ummmm

I was enticed by a buy and hold strategy but with a slightly different angle. My goal was to build inventory throughout the year on buying below MSRP, then unloading it in during the holidays. This will be my first season for doing it, so we will see how it goes. But if these Lego clearance opportunities happen several times a year at the big box stores, then I will likely be flipping throughout the year starting in 2014. With slowly building the inventory for Christmas 2014.

Exactly! Its a market just like any other. TLG just happens to be "The Fed". There are so many ways to invest. But first one must have a goal, without that, floundering will commence.

I just finished building 10190 Market street about a week ago. To aquire all of the pieces i had to buy from 17 different bricklink stores! On average i would say it took around an hour to order from each store if you take the time it spent to search for, find the right one, add pieces, place the order, pay the order, check the tracking, dealing with messed up orders, give feedback, etc... Also i had several stores mess up the order, missing peices, one send black pieces instead of dark blue, you name it, it went wrong. With that being said i was able to build a 99% accurate 10190 Market street for $300 which would have easily cost $600+ on ebay or bricklink. That was a 1200 piece set, so the larger it is the more time it would take to order the pieces. So for these popular, low supply, high demand, high dollar sets like Market street, corder cafe, etc... it is worth building piece by piece. I wouldnt however bother on cheaper retired sets, for example medieval market, emerald night, etc... you would end up spending way more building it than you would buying it used. In the end youre really just trading your time for savings. if you have a lot of free time by all means build your sets peice by piece if it saves you money. I personally dont think ill ever do that again, i work to many hours and my time is very valuable to me! Not trying to start an argument, i promise! I feel its still important to make the most of your time. For example i run and ebay store selling items other than lego, at one point i was selling items and was only making about $2-3 per hour, instead of going home early to fill ebay orders i could have just stayed at work for an extra hour and make 10x that. In the end i just focus on higher dollar items. I think that applies for building sets piece by pieces, as long as you focus on the high dollar sets items worth your time, for the smaller, cheaper, more recently retired items, just pay the extra couple bucks and be done. Also as someone mentioned the dark blue arches will be coming out soon in the winter market set, i purposely build by market street with black arches and figured i would just wait 6 months and buy them for $0.50 a piece instead of $5.00 a piece!

As Ed reveals he is the head of the evil empire Lego and issues Order 66

Please. Do you even need to ask? You're one of those capitalist swine who think it's okay to make money... even on :::sob::: toys that are FOR THE CHILDREN. I am quite eager to hear what Ed has for us tomorrow, but in the meantime in these wee hours of the night here on the left coast, let me just say: I wish TLG good luck and good hunting. Catch me if you can, boys, catch me if you can. Your sister in capital swineliness...

Talk about your all-time cliff hanger...

Okay, here you go. Kevin Conroy, ladies and gentlemen.

I do not know about Batman, but he would be a great Riddler (ie. super smart with touches of mental imbalance)

Why don't we just make Steve Buscemi Batman

I just don't think it matters....

If I could buy 600 Haunted Houses, I'd build an actual one and scare the bejeezes out of kids around Halloween! Honestly though, I would take a Limited Edition Crawler before anything else considering everything right going for it. Technic (the theme) keeps showing great gains so why all the downplaying?

I haven't seen Argo so can't comment. My problems are: 1. Don't see him as an action hero - see Daredevil 2. I can't respect anyone who does movies like Pearl Harbor and surviving Christmas 3. He just looks like a D-bag

Batman go screw yourself. That doesn't flow as nicely...

I do think it is important to know its about how much your time is worth to you - and if you enjoy it. Some people really do. I hate when people start going on about - I could do this but it will take 3 hours and I'll make $50 and I make $50 an hour, blah blah blah. That literally means nothing. Can you work every hour of the day at your job? No - this is why I do many things like tihs after work. Do I make tons of money? no - but it is extra money I could not make the other way, so I can't compare it to my salary. Same thing in this situation, you will save some money you couldn't save another way. especially if you have fun, this will allow you to possibly have more sets in the future.

The same can be said about both the HH and TB. How much and how.fast do you think it can gain if everyone was to take emazers advice and buy 600 of each?

Why all the hate on affleck. I thought he did great directing and acting in Argo. Who else would you rather have play batman.

We're all doomed. Is it too late to re-sign Michael Keaton?

just started instructions for an apple store today. Got all the 4,000 some pieces and cant wait to finish it. Not a actual retail set, but still items i bought today!

Seriously emazers I will buy you a TB for a crawler.

If we're truly talking about Cafe Corner, the biggest obstacles are the retired, windows/door/dark blue arches. Fortunately, the dark blue arches are coming back in the new Winter Village set, so that will save builders of CC and Market Street lots of money. As for your normal run of the mill set, I always try to do some cost analysis. Am I looking for 5 parts? 50 parts? How expensive is the set? $10? $100? Usually, if I'm having to replace more that 10-20% of the set, I don't bother, unless we're talking about a $200 set where my 10% of pieces is only going to run me $10, then it's worth my time. Lots of variables, and you have to account for what your time is worth.

I do have 8 of these Crawlers, but I still would rather have 25 Haunted Houses and 25 Tower Bidges instead of 50 Crawlers, or if that guy has 80 Crawlers, I will have 50 haunted Houses and 30 Tower Bridges. If the Exclusive would of been a $200 limited edition 20,000 Batmobile or ECTO-1 from Ghostbusters those 2 would be and always be Pure Gold. And alot more people would want them, so anybody here thinks they missed the Boat on the Crawler well you have your chance not to miss it on the Tower Bridge, Haunted House, Batman Arkham, 10225 Droid, SSDS, Death Star and you know the rest of them. Ed

I bought my cases of series 10 and I'm over it. Not gonna smoosh at all for Mr. Gold, it's not worth the time and frustration. I'll sell my cases later and hopefully a buyer gets lucky. But I personally don't feel like I need this figure. For those that are extremely upset with the employees, I would suggest putting things into perspective - look at where they work and think about how much money they make. Not saying that every TRU or Lego employee is unethical or dishonorable, but these establishments don't pay all that well and there isn't alot of honor or code associated with them. You are going to find more people in desparate situations when you are around people working at sub-par or near-sub living wages. They're going to be alot more likely to act on a chance to make some money, even if morally dubious.

This is definitely a tough thing. So I will go through several different things first: 1. I only buy used sets off Ebay primarily because I have buyer protection - if they say complete it has to be complete. So this is going to be a big time help. 2. Buying off craigslist, unless it is assembled where I can see that it is pretty much complete, I want to get it for low enough that it makes sense me purchasing it. For example, I bought a UCS batmobile the other day for $45 - it is missing about 100 pieces or so. Used price here is $140ish. As far as bricklinking pieces - it is time consuming, but not too crazy. Where you run into problems is if pieces are not available, minimum buys, etc. You will pay less for the set, but all that time really makes it rough. I think it is only really worth it on huge retired sets that are crazy expensive. As for Cafe Corner - you can go to the page and lick the "rebrickable" link under the price area. It found all but about 60 of the parts - looks like it would be about $542 for those. Assuming you find the other 60 on Bricklink, you might pay a guestimate of $20. So you are looking at about a $300 savings or so. But it will take time - you have to get all these in, open them individually, etc.

I have a few and didn't want to buy them out. If everyone went into the stores when they saw deals or hard to find sets and bought them out many people would be missing out. Figured I would post it here to see if someone else wants it or maybe some kid who really wants this set grabs it. I am in this game to buy and enjoy Lego's and hopefully cover my costs (which can be significant). I really think people need to think about clearing a store out every time they see a good deal. Leave some sets on the shelves to keep people interested in this hobby.

Don't worry if I think the haunted House and Tower Bridge are done this year, I will spend about 5 grand each on both. But we got plenty of time, so be ready just is case. "But like I said my friend showed me 2 phone picture messages from lego's catalog showing the Haunted House and Tower Bridge say retiring Dec 2014. So I don't believe anything anymore, no let me change that if I can get a hold of the 2014 Wholesale catalog, which will be in january then I do believe that catalog. So Sept get a few Volkswagen Campers for the free mini, these 2 will make a great ebay combo auction. Ed

I should have started my first reply to this thread with this: (better late than never ) Mos_Eisley, thank you for starting the topic. What I gathered from your posts was a savvy businessman who recognized the changing marketplace, assessed his financial goals, and adjusted his strategy accordingly. This kind of reality check is something I need to develop a habit of in my own business. So thanks again for the insights.

Haha! Comedy!

The main issue that I see with this is that ability to buy something does not mean everyone has an equal ability to manage inventory, market items, sell items, and process orders. The buying part is really the easy part in all of this. In no way is this a level playing field, and it never will be because of incompetence, laziness, differing skill levels, etc... This is not a slam on anyone specifically, but I would say that based on the listings we see and based on many of the things posted here in the forums and some of the blog articles that a large percentage of would-be investors are somewhat incompetent when it comes to effectively doing all of the activities required to operate profitably in a secondary market. This could be because they just haven't learned how to do it yet, or it could be that they just don't care. As you mentioned quick-flipping, it often gets a bad rap here because people say the time involved isn't worth the return. This is at best short-sighted. While I have no definitive proof, this is evidence to me that the people attempting it haven't really thought through what they're doing. Whenever you have a process that is inconsistent or inefficient, results will be impacted. The only reason I can quick-flip things profitably is because we're following a very well-defined, predictable process that produces predictable results. For example, I don't print shipping labels the way many of you do, I use standard box sizes, I buy boxes in bulk at really low prices, I use automation to manage inventory and create listings, etc... People also have issues with how long it takes to list things, which is yet another indication that people are using ineffective or no automation techniques to speed all of this up. This results in low-quality listings that take people a ton of time to create. Just wait until close to Christmas when we see people whining about hitting item and selling limits on eBay that they don't know exist, or all of the complaints we will see about negative feedback because they didn't take the time to properly package and ship things. You'll see some people drop out of the market after that.

This is random question but what is the little green arrow on the right side of people's posts? I tried to hit that to reply to a comment, which didn't work, but it did something else that I'm not exactly sure of.

I get these kinds of messages on eBay too. Do these people think they will guilt-trip me into lowering the price? They won't. I'm not selling necessities like food, water, shelter, medicine. I'm selling luxury items (toys, electronics). If a person doesn't like the price of an item, don't f**king buy it.