Leaderboard

Is your collection of brick separators becoming unbearable? Are you tired with getting yet another in just about every set you build? Has every effort to give them away ended in failure? Well then this Flickr group can offer some interesting alternatives in what to do with those ever-growing collections of usually useful utensils! Be inspired to make your own bizarre builds! Be amazed with the uniqueness in concepts! Be dazzled by the orange!

I was going to have the my latest build review be for the 75902 Scooby Doo Mystery Machine set. After watching my son building the set with some help from me, I decided against it (for now). Don't get me wrong, it's a GREAT little set and decent build. The only "Con" if I were to nitpick would be the inability to fit everyone (Fred, Shaggy, Velma, Daphine and Scooby) in front just like in the cartoon. After looking online, I was able to locate someone who slightly modified the van to allow more interior room for Scooby. I further enlarged the interior for more width. This was helpful and gave me ideas to further enhance the van to fit the entire gang. I estimated the length needed to be increased by only 2 studs. Here is the outcome without stickers applied and some comparison pics to the regular set. I just wonder why Lego didn't increase the length by two studs before releasing the set. I need to make a list of the parts used but estimate only about 20 total elements were either replaced or added. I do want to modify the "B" pillar from two 1x1 bricks to 2 2x2 bricks and two 2x2 studded plates. I had to borrow two Medium Azure Slope Curved 2 x 2 No Studs elements from the original roof. Borrowed two Medium Azure Slope Curved 2 x 2 No Studs elements from the original roof. Here are the build steps. I did try to use light and dark bley (blueish gray) bricks for the modified and substituted bricks. . After some pics, i included snap shots of the manual so you can see the differences. In other pics, I included both the van and manual. Starting the sides. Adding the wheels, tires and making the undercarriage sturdy.

Where do you send her? ;)

Today has been an amazing building day: started with the Minecraft Desert Outpost as noted above and caught the building bug and decided to break open the Tumbler I had ordered as well. What a magnificent set. As other reviewers have mentioned it is extremely fragile in some areas but it will be no issues once displayed on my shelf. Build time took me 4.5 hours and the repetition of building mirror sides was never boring. Having never seen the set in person before today I was also surprised at home large to tires are but of course once built the proportions all looked right, etc. Fun stuff.

Yeah, me too. It's Exciter's fault for posting in the wrong forum. Where's a mod when you need one.

One does not easily Bricklink anything... <insert Borimir meme here>

10190 is easily bricklinked and it sells for $1500 new, $700-900 used. 10182 is easily bricklinked, except for a couple of parts, and it sells for almost $2000 new, 800-1100used. Used R2-D2 values do not worry about the 1/1000 of 1% percent of people that will bricklink this set. New R2-D2 is $$.

My first post of the forum! I Built the Tumbler as well today. It's an awesome set and I think it will be a winner after EOL. On the other note, what do you guys think of this "Hulk" Liberty? Built this a while back with Bricklink + PAB wall using lime green bricks. My friends been making fun of it but I think it's pretty neat.

It's nice to flip half to pay for what you're holding for the long run.

If you don't like it or don't feel good about it as an investment then don't buy it. Easy as that. Put your money into something that you do like or are more confident about. This is the same reasoning why I don't own a single Death Star for investment purposes. You don't have to have every single exclusive as part of your portfolio.

When you love what you do, you never work a day in your life!

Here, let me save you the hassle. Here is how it works in a nutshell. You buy 2 of these for 88.00 (after sales tax, unless you live in one of the two tax free states left in the country). Ok, you list them on amazon thinking "i'm going to double my money and pay for the other one. So, you jump into the pool with 80 other people at the moment, some of which have 30 to 40 of these in stock. So, you are sitting on two. Current price is 85 in the "prime box", and about 65 on the lower end. Unless you fight with the primies, forget it.. you're stuck competing with the bottom feeders. SOooooo ..you wait a while, and it never rises, but lots of people are shifting in and out at the bottom. After a while, you are like "well, i'll just wait it out, surely it will go up". 2 months later there is another restock, making it the 5th one in the last 2 weeks. So, you give up, and list yours for 54.25 by undercutting the lowest guy by a few cents to hopefully get yours to sell quickly. 10 minutes later it didn't sell, but one of the 150 other new resellers that just came on board, decide they are in your boat too, so they undercut you by .20 taking the lowest price point. Well shoot! Now you are in a dilemma, because 3 other posters just undercut that guy over the last hour, and in that same time frame 10 new resellers came onto the scene. And when you crunch the math on the fees/shipping, you realize you're just making a 1.00 more than what you paid for them if you undercut those guys, and you just spent weeks monitoring and looking at the inventory listings to make a buck!! So you clench your fists, and let out a darth vader sized "nooooooooo" So, to really undercut the competition, you end up donating it to the childrens hospital as a christmas gift and take the tax write-off.. Welcome to the club!

Got 2 more 10225 - R2D2 delivered today... poped up on TRU.ca a few days ago, snagged them quick

Two websites have confirmed the name of this years seasonal Winter Village Set. Both websites say set 10249 is a Winter Toy Shop. One is Barnes and Noble. Their coupon exclusion list for toys and games has lego set 10249 Winter Toy Shop on it. Also shop.lego.com has confirmed the name also. The way you see on shop.lego.com is first open a new tab then type http://shop.lego.com/product/?p=10249 or just click the direct link here. Then finally after the page loads click the URL at the top of page and the URL has the set name in it. That trick works with any upcoming sets as long as you have the set number. I got that trick from someone off Eurobricks. So this years winter village set is a Winter Toy Shop.

Let us all hope he is not just visiting his old colleagues at the set with a vip backstage pass.

Love the middle two. Middle left looks like the bad guy from inner space Excellent retro vibe of this. I would love to put it on display in my little boys room

still in my stockroom.... grrr

Another 4433 Dirt Bike Transporter for $38

35 lbs of Lego bulk for $225 from Goodwill. Bonus points if you can tell me why, based on this photo, I was so anxious to get this lot. (California 92563 is ineligible to give a reason).

Don't blame resellers for prices while in the quick-flipping game. Price volatility is something you have to accept and collusion Isn't going to work. Too many different strategies and agendas from all the resellers.

I originally wanted to have 2... Eventually got 2 more so I flipped half for $30 total profit. Definitely not a lot of money, but it pays for a few beers over the weekend hahaha

THE BATCAVE

Damn right!

That's what I do. I resell to fund me and my kids building hobbies and the wife can't complain because she's gets a nice vacation out of it. Anything more than that goes to long term investing

Cool... C3PO with a new red arm? That's going to need a new minifig. R2 looks pretty much unchanged. 10225 =

Good to see a picture of our favorite droid in the just released photos from the Force Awakens.

Does it mean now it is easy to find there ?

Newer sets like 3221 will have the more durable sticker. I usually do it one of 3 ways in this order. 1. Scotch tape a larger portion of the sticker. Press down on it. Slowly pull the tape (with sticker attached to it) starting with a corner of the sticker. Then adjust the sticker while still connected to the tape. Press down on the tape and slowerly pull the tape away while the sticker is still connected to the brick. 2. Use the edge of an existing sticker sheet (from any newer set) . I like using the back side of the sticker sheet. Slowly slide the sheet in-between the sticker and brick to remove it. Start at a corner of the sticker. 3. Use a knife to separate to the sticker and brick. regardless which option you use, always wash your hands first to remove dirt and dust.

Clan Grey Wolf by David Steeves

Apple Store

Good August so far. Some highlights: Mines of Moria - $100 Craggers Command Ship - $77 Ninjago Glden Drgn - $60 Batwing over Gotham - $50 Olivia's House - $95

Do you remember the seal codes of the other sets? This is the strategy I like most... sell enough where the profit can allow you to hold on to the "freebies"

I've flipped and I've sold retired sets and I generally prefer the later for this reason. Retired sets usually go up, not down. Yes, there are "market corrections," but they are easier to forecast (new releases, etc.).

Market Street?

little NIN reference.

I just wanted to share a thought i had, and see if you all agree / disagree, what-have-you. Hasbro has raised the price of the classic 3.75" star wars figure from 9.99 to 12.99 The fact that they're already 9.99 may surprise the casual action figure fan as they were 1.99 in the olden days, 4.99-5.99 in the POTF2 days, and now moving from 9.99 to 12.99 as we transition to Episode 7. That's a HUGE increase. 30%. If there's ONE figure i'm dying to get, sure i'll pay the 13 bucks (plus tax), but if you want to buy say, all 20-50 new figures that come out in a wave / year,,,,,that's a HUGE increase. Many are openly saying 'they're done'. They'll never pay 13 bucks for ONE star wars action figure. I said the same thing a few years back when they were simply impossible to find at retail. The Vintage collection was plagued by poor retail availability (understatement) due to the fact that they derailed the line with a huge glut of Episode 1 figures that nobody wanted. Those sat on pegs for 2-4 years without moving and prevented the line from ever seeing wide distribution. Where did i go when i quit Hasbro? I came to Lego. Granted, action figure collectors can be the type to quibble over the poorly sculpted WRIST of a figure and call it a monstrosity, and how could i EVER consider such a piece of garbage as part of my collection......Those guys might not like the limited realism, and limited articulation of lego figures.......But there's something........pure about lego star wars. The confines of the medium make it perfectly OK for scale and detail to be non-realistic. It's charming instead of 'film innacurate'. Anyway, i say all that to say, if the remaining Star Wars toy collecting fan boys don't like a 30% increase in cost for their collecting dollars,,,,,they might be headed our way. Welcome Nerds, we've been waiting for you. And we have 4 stormtroopers for 12.99. They're available on every shelf of every store you could possibly stumble into. Enjoy.

completely agree

Now you make me have to go back to the shop and feel the flimsiness of the Double Decker Couch and compare it with other sets.

I remember when the Episode 1 figures with Commtech chips came out and I think were $8 which was somewhat expensive in 1999. They sold just fine for a while until everyone went to see Episode 1 in theaters and realized these were going to be sitting on shelves for a long time. I also remember Episode 3 figures being $4.88 at Walmart for a while in 2005. Even with the new MSRP of $12.99 I expect some retailers are going to offer them at lower prices than that and wouldn't be surprised to see them readily available at $10. The action figure market isn't what it once was though and I can see more kids buying the Episode 7 LEGO sets and roleplay items instead.

Don't ship the item if the customer wants to return. Customer can return for any reason they want on Amazon. Don't waste your time shipping the item to have them ship it back. Go into manage order tab>edit shipments>refund purchased shipping label...to get your refund

There is no cap for a retired set for a AFOL. That said; $129 within easy reach once smaller sellers run out.

Those prices.... only clearance for me.

The zombies are all an obvious given (Zombie Businessman seems the most versatile regarding army building) while the rest depends more on peoples personal tastes I think. I will say the Skeleton Guy is a good one just for his pumpkin pail which is a real necessity for anyone hoping to create a trick-or-trick diorama on Halloween. Plus his outfit alone is a classic costume. The Monster Scientist is quite good and easy to modify if you don't mind having a bunch of cone heads. The Gargoyle poses many opportunities between an ornament upon classic castles, a horde of enemies in a D&D setting, or you can remove the wings and headgear then replace the short legs with regular ones for a sort of rock golem. Get three of Tigerwoman, switch out the head, hands, and legs with some flesh tone equivalents and you have Josie & the Pussycats. The Plant Monster is real simple to make into a mandragora instead of looking like a freaked out guy in a suit by switching the head with one that is green or black perhaps. I know for myself I would like to gather an army of Monster Flies and some Square Foots on the side (they'll go with my Yetis).

If you find it in store, 10% off should work and coupons. Folks have used the 25%/20% on Ecto-1, Birds, Big Bang, among others.

Well, I can't find a better one but how about starting a new one where we can post new interesting submissions that are still in the voting phase.

Ask the folks in the Grand Emporium, Haunted House, or Super Star Destroyer thread if they regret returning sets when it was in and out of stock around this time last year. I have a couple DS that are in similar shape, if not much worse. I am holding onto them. You never know when "last call" at the bar will be.

Built the Minecraft Desert Outpost: the set is larger than I expected and I like the layout of the brick walls around the structures. I have built every Minecraft set except for the Nether and this set would be my 3rd favorite, the Cave being #1, the Mine #2, and this third. The Alex figure looks great and so does the wolf and the overall colors look more vibrant in person than they do on the box art and Lego website photos.

Pardon if this has already been posted: 40% off $50 purchase of regular priced shipping supplies from Staples (expires 08/15).

Penang Heritage Shop by WingYew

Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight. Anywho...how bout that AA?