I think that - for anyone who is not from the US - the Lego investing could be extremely challenging. This is something I often think about, but after reading Gondorian's posts, I thought to share my feelings with you all.
As a foreword, I am a sales executive (I am in the wine business), and I travel abroad a lot. USA is one of my most frequent destinations. This to say that I have a deep knowledge of selling techniques (and I deal with Americans a lot ).
Said so, whilst I think I am an experienced "seller", I still did not figure out how to make decent and constant profits with Lego in my country (Italy). Our market is infinitesimally smaller than US market in general, and for Lego in particular.
We have a plethora of unsuccesful Ebay auctions, because the lack of demand is not driving prices down to more reasonable levels. Sellers are just asking A LOT of money for sets nobody is going to buy at that price. I am not talking about the iconic sets we all know, but even smaller or more recent sets are just too expensive.
Furthermore, the only and unique source of reasonable discounts (30% or more) is Amazon.it. We are missing the "crazy" (for our standards) discounts the US fellows are having almost daily. We are missing Target, Walmart, and the other big and aggressive retailers. B&M clearances do happen, but it is totally random, so, the chances of getting profit from smart buys are fairly limited.
The other point is that Lego Movie in Italy was not as succesful as in other countries, and we all know this helped US sales a lot.
Finally, I think that European investors should look at US investors profits, resources, storage rooms and inventories in a detached way, otherwise we would just buy too much, and sell too little. We are not selling in the US, and we have to deal with it with no regrets...just a little bit of envy
I know that there are other Italians and EU members here, and I would like to hearing their opinion too.
Ciao!