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While I agree there's no guarantee, how is this speculation? http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/04/01/did-lego-really-cave-to-muslim-demands-amid-anti-islamic-toy-controversy-the-company-responds/ Here's an excerpt from the article (italics by me):

You have to be smart, but I am definitely here. I needed capital to start my Ebay store up (about 5-6K). Rather than take it out of savings, I opened a CC with a 0% offer for 12 months. BAM - initial investment. I have paid it off within 3 months.

It's not ill advised at all. It is in fact quite common to get investment loans from banks to invest in stocks. As long as the interest rate you pay is lower than your return it is a great strategy, to be applied prudently. In that vein, consider lego. Unlike stocks, lego sets generally do not fall in value. At worst, you should always be able to sell a set at retail price after EOL. So your potential loss is quite limited while your upside is fairly safe compared to stocks since most sets do not have volatile price swings. Here's an example of something I could do today. My credit card just sent me a balance transfer offer with a 1% interest rate for a year. If I buy a boatload of lego sets at any of the semi regular 50% off deals I see, one could look at it as I really got 49% off to account for the interest. In my experience, you can usually sell any 50% off set for regular retail price after EOL. That's a 100% return, at a cost of 1%. When you consider that your average stock return is 6-8% in a year, I'll take the lego appreciation any day of the week.

If I were you all I would ell them FBA on Amazon right now - 39.99. Just can't picture this one going up. Crap I would just open them all and have a landspeeder battle! I would call it ATTACK OF THE CLONEs!!! You know because there are a bunch of Lukes and Obi Wans and ... C3POs... and R2-D2. And because thats also a Star Wars movie... It was funny to me.

No one said they did that for death stars.

Does this advice come from that same S@H employee that told you WVC wasn't retiring, or is this strictly speculation?

or just pay your bills/get a better interest rate and dont charge what you cannot afford

Picked up another City Passenger Train at TRU today. Talked to the girl as I walked in, and told her I was price matching from the website since it said they had no stock but I knew they did, she says that's fine. I mill around and bring it up, also picking up my Train Stations that I ordered. She rings it up at normal retail like the website says, but then wants to refuse the $25 off $100 promotion saying I'm already getting it on sale.(they let you do it online) I tell her I'll buy it online from my phone in front of her and have her go back and pick it up off the shelf at the online price if it's that much hassle. She takes off the $25. In short, Passenger Train for $112 tax included.

I agree...but....Parents need to pay attention and shop for hard to find items a month before Christmas, not a week.

Or if we didn't buy up all the stock, online and off....they could have got then at retail.

I'll list out the steps. 1. Log in, click on the 'wanted tab' 2. In the lower tab section 3rd one in it's labeled 'part set'. click that 3. type in the set number of what you want parted out 4. type in a new wanted list name for it (you can uncheck the notify by email if you don't want to get spammed by a million different vendors) 5. click the box that says 'set minimum desired qty' 6. click submit for edit 7. Now you have the entire set parted out with the minimum required parts needed. You can delete and change quantities as desired/need.

It's amazing the things you can do with enough LEGO bricks. http://www.superawesomemicroproject.com/

Welcome to the club. I forget if you were in the Ghost Train buying club...

Gotta trust the guy with the Wolverine Avatar. lol

Dude, you really don't know what you're talking about. There is every indication that JP is done. First, it's sold out at LEGO Shop at Home. Second, it was heavily clearanced over the past month. Third, this is its second holiday season and most SW sets don't last past the second holiday season. Fourth, it is a white box, four digit SW set and those are all on their way out. Fifth, TLG basically said that it would be retired around now back in the spring when that controversy arose. So, while it may lack a "Retiring Soon" label on LEGO Shop at Home, every other indicator I can think of indicates that it's done, but if you don't think that it is, you should absolutely wait to stock up on them until sometime next year.

I sold one of my four for $45. I just keep numbing the price $5 when I sell one.

No, this is leverage.

Rubbish. Businesses use debt all the time to fund their operation. It's called leverage. Not many businesses have a 0% debt to equity ratio, and if they do their owners are often not using their position to leverage for expansion properly. I run my Lego operation like a business. Some of it is funded through debt. As long as returns outstrip the cost of that debt then there is no problem doing so.

How about a package delivered by Fedex then stolen by UPS?

My father-in-law knows I love Lego and was cruising the Target at Westmount Mall in London, ON. He came across 50% off Attack of the Wargs and Shelob Attacks, which is basically what TRU.ca had as their Black Friday sale (although they backordered me and never delivered the actual sets). Anyway, I was at the Windsor location yesterday and they didn't have these on the shelves at all, and my father-in-law bought the three Wargs in London, but for those of you not in these cities, might be worth a stop at Target on the way home from work. I also think one of the bigger Creator Sets was 50% off, but he couldn't recall the name of it. Happy hunting!

I just ordered 50.

Lego has finally revealed official box art for their next CUUSOO set coming out January 1st, 2014. It contains 295 pieces and will retail for $29.99. The Brick Fan The original designer, Stephen Pakbaz, reviewed the set himself.

The real question is why the package wasn't already a sig confirmation. I had it happen a bunch at my old apartment even though I put up a sign and called the offices asking them not to leave them on my doorstep since I lived next to Ghettosville, but they wouldn't do anything. I then put a note on my front door saying "If you leave the package on the doorstep instead of taking it to the apartment front office or leaving a notice, you therefor are taking responsibility for any loss incurred". It also had a few choice words inserted in there. never had one left on my porch again.

Doritos and Cheerios! They are everywhere and my 1-year old is like a little sweeper that picks up all the crumbs.

Like Solomon once said, cut the baby in half - sell seven now and sit on the other 8.

I do concur he would be good. As long as it isn't Shia LeBouf or something.

as a buyer oftentimes i don't leave feedback because the transaction wasn't bad, but it wasn't good either. i don't want to leave negative or give a low DSR so i just do nothing.

Occasionally. For the most part, I use eBay's GSP program. But, when we do send our own packages, if they're over $100 or for some reason my spidey senses are tingling, $50, I use the 3rd party insurance.

I like the idea of a Han Solo origin movie, that could be good. I really really want them to do the Thrawn Trilogy someday. I'm holding out hope...

The better the deal, the more sense it makes to charge now and pay later. The Cyber Monday sales were an example of buying now and figuring out how to pay later.

I'm the same way but unfortunately there are people who are just "to busy" to take the 20 seconds to leave feedback. They want to sit back and collect all the money but have no interest beyond that.

I finally did - for about 5 hours. Good to go. lol

buying something for investment on borrowed money/credit card is ill advised. Would you take a loan from the bank to invest in stocks? No you use what money you are willing to/able to lose when you invest in toys/stocks/anything

That's precisely why I showed the opportunity cost of not using the funds elsewhere as an alternative for those of us who do. Whether your investment dollar is funded via CC, savings account, or cash under your mattress, it's probably costing you a good 5-20% not to be using it elsewhere

Yes, when the difference in price is greater than 5%, they will take off another 10%. I had actually called TRU customer service the day before when I first noticed LSH sale price. I wanted them to price match for me over the phone for an online order. The customer service rep said they don't price match with the manufacturer. I insisted that the Lego Store is a store, but she said their policy doesn't include price matching with LSH. I didn't believe her so thought I'd try my luck in person, and the results worked rather nicely. (Though it didn't come with VIP points... )

Winter Vill Cottages. Need more! LR Trains. Worth the risk because it comes with ample track. Straight track alone sells for $2.50-4 each. It's prob too late for Monster Fighters deals. Jabba's Palace. Everyone should try to buy at least 10. Then pair 1/2 of them up with the Skiff and Rancor Pit sets. Might be hard to do now since Rancors and Jabba's aren't on-sale anymore.

Agreed, speculation is just that. But there are clear signs this one will be done soon - for one, it's not listed on S@H Australia any more, a typical precursor to US and Canada retirement. Two, there are none left in Lego Stores anywhere in North America. I wouldn't wait on this much longer, but that's just me speculating :)

It has already been confirmed all MF have ended production EXCEPT for the Haunted House. Whatever is left in the wild is it for 9468. As for Haunted House we all know it is going to get the FB/DS treatment.

The Vampyre castle is done. How many are you seeing at your local Lego stores? How long has it been since Walmart, Target, etc has had them in store, or online? Lego sent TRU the remaining inventory. LEGO Shop at Home's sale price is placed to clear out any remaining inventory that could be in a few stores around the Nation. If this set was going to be around for a while you would see Vampyre Castles still at major retailers. Also the sale price wouldn't be in place.

For anyone still thinking this is a sleeper set, I have a hundred Fire Brigades to sell you.

How about a bookstore?

How much official Lotr merch has there been over the years? For one, I think up until now it has been pretty scarce? Infact, I would say old merch selling for thousands should be an indicator of what possible hot Lotr items being produced now might be worth in the future. Consider this, is there any POTC merch selling in the thousands? I honestly don't know but I would wager POTC barely scratches the surface of popularity when compared with LOTR. Another factor going for LOTR over POTC is that LOTR is a huge part of nerd culture. While we may not like that word, nerds or whatever you call them are essentially who are going to be buying an EOL lego set years from now. They are the ones doing so with Star Wars sets right? I don't think POTC is that big among nerds. I as a nerd myself definitely don't care that much about POTC. To me, it was just a disney movie that was ok. I know a girl who loves POTC because she thinks Depp is hot, but other than her, I don't know anyone who cares about them beyond the movies. But I do know that nerds love fantasy( magic the gathering, dungeons and dragons, world of warcraft), and they love Lotr, they love Star Wars, they love Superheroes and they are the ones who will be the big collectors with high paying jobs who can afford a $400 Lego Set. And if there are nerds willing to pay thousands for old Lotr merch right now, there will probably be many more in future willing to thanks to the movies giving it just a little bit more nudge from huge cult following to actual popular culture (that which doesn't consist of just nerds alone). I say that because I honestly didn't know it existed till the movie came out. Of course I never played D&D either, which likely would have led me to read the books. That or larping which would also probably had also led to discovering Lotr. Basically I see it this way. Was there a huge amount of people dressing up as Jack Sparrow for the premiere of Pirates movies? not that I know of. Some people probably did but was it alot? Was there a huge amount of people dressing up as Gandalf for the Lotr movies? Yes. Just like for Star Wars and Superhero movies, people love to cosplay to these, because it is nerds having fun with other nerds. Thus Lotr crosses the scope of what makes Star Wars and Superhero sets have great gains. I mean, we already know Star Wars sets can have huge gains. We already know Batman and Spiderman sets can have huge gains. What do they have in common? Nerds It should also be mentioned about Lego Castle themes. Why do people like them? Is it because Castles are just really cool? I argue the reason is because the fact that Castles are a part of Fantasy. People who love D&D and Legos will want to make a Castle because they are related. This then has a hint of things to come for Lotr.

I bought the crap out of these after last Christmas for $12 each and only have a couple left. 5 figs and a ship. Can't go wrong with that.

Fire sale now, buy 3 and $25 off. They're pulling a "Barrel Escape" from last night. Get your trigger and credit card ready to rock.

yeah, resellers can never ever ever ever be a good thing ever

What else is there?

IMHO LOTR is nowhere close to being as influential on pop culture as Star Wars.

Because Lotr is actually older than Star Wars thanks to the books and likewise has a huge fanbase. Infact, pretty sure Lotr inspired most other fantasy franchises like Dungeons and Dragons making it just as influential if not even more than Star Wars.

Today I got the Orc Forge 9476 for