Leaderboard

A short time ago in a toy store not too far away . . . I was looking at this set on Force Friday and wondering if this set was worth getting. I haven't seen Star Wars the Force Awakens yet, so I don't know if this is Poe's primary fighter, or if he loses it 20 minutes in, like Obi-Wan and Anakin in Revenge of the Sith. It's $20 more than the previous X-Wing 9493, which I felt portrayed the X-Wing adequately. I knew I was likely to get this eventually when it went on sale, but I fear I fell to the dark side. As a countdown to the Force Awakens, I will be writing at least one Star Wars review each week. REVIEW: SET DETAILS Set #: 75102 Name: Poe's X-Wing Fighter Theme: Star Wars Parts: 717 Price: $79.99 Before we get to the build, let’s talk value. At $79.99 the price per piece works out to a bit over $.11 each. This seems to be on the low average side of pricing for a licensed set. There are 4 minifigures, of which 3 are unique. (I am counting the tiny BB-8 as a minifigure. It is the only reused figure) BOX CONTENTS Some people may wind up picking up a set that is open box or, want to verify the box contents before beginning a build. For this set, there are 5 numbered baggies, a sticker sheet, and an instruction book. The instruction book is nice and thick. It's square bound: The stickers are plentiful and in some cases small, which will make some collectors unhappy. THE BUILD AND EXECUTION There are some new elements in this set. I will focus on the most obvious ones. First are the helmets. The new helmets are nice. They've got plenty of decoration and the pilot helmet has an interior piece that is transparent yellow. Now, your pilots don't need a weird orange stripe on their heads to look like they have a visor. The other new piece that I want to focus on is the cockpit canopy. This canopy has been the focus of a lot of discussion, because a production run of this set had a defective canopy. This caused a recall that created a shortage of this set initially. This part is a beautiful piece. It fits the design aesthetic of the X-Wing better than the part 30372 that has been used since set 7140 back in 1999. Bag 1 creates the utility sled, a movable ladder and the base for the X-Wing. The little cart reminds me of the larger cart that was part of the 7140 build. Neither one is integral to the overall build of the X-Wing, but add a little bit of background details for displays or dioramas. The ladder is very simple, and a great element for displays. Until now, X-Wing pilots had to either stand on other people's heads or force jump to get into their craft. Bag 2 continues to elongate the body, filling it out and developing its shape. So far, there's not a lot of difference from what I recall of the 9493 build. Bag 3 has the most pieces so far. the body is fully developed now. Long and sleek and black and orange. The pins sticking out of the back are for later, attachment points for the wings. Bag 4 we create 2 of the 4 wings. Disappointingly, the wings are not front/back like they appear in the trailers for Star Wars, they are slightly offset top/bottom. A lot has been made about the use of blue bands instead of white. For me, white would be just as jarring, red might blend in better, or black. But, honestly, I don't care about the color of that particular element Bag 5, maybe as many pieces as bag 3. You create 2 more wings, engines for all 4 and laser cannons. The interesting thing is that the 4 wings are built in different orders. In order to not seem too cookie cutter, the designers took pretty much the same pieces and had you arrange them in a different sequence to get pretty much the same result. It's amusing that they put that much effort into it. I know that each of the wings is a unique build, in like previous X-Wings that would have had 2 separate builds for offside wings, but the sections of these wings that are the same read differently. There were a lot of small extra parts, nothing really interesting, just the pieces you would probably expect. REACTION Well, it certainly is X-Wing like. I was happy that my set didn't have the defective canopy. It's a nice set, the detailing is good, and the minifigures look great. This is not an entirely successful representation of the X-Wing from the upcoming movie. Those X-Wings appear to have a truncated, snub nose compared to this much longer one. It seems to me that the designers tried to take a shortcut by starting with the 9493 build and trying to alter it. The wings don't meet in the middle and separate front/back. So, while it was an interesting build and looks good, it is not exactly what I wanted it to be. The places where it succeeds, it really hits the mark, smoother lines and better details than the 3 year old 9493. The Stud shooters on the sides of this one were slightly more successful proton torpedo launchers than the things hooked onto the side of 9493. More hidden studs should appeal to those who don't want their models to look like they are built from LEGO. FINAL THOUGHTS I frequently compared this set to previous offerings, 7140 and 9493, because some of the design aspects were direct call outs to the previous ones. Collectors have already been calling out the differences and appraising the value of this one versus the previous one. The disparity in retail price will give some pause to consumers. a 33% price hike from a similar set that was still available 1 year ago may give them pause. The price per piece is fine and shouldn't give pause. Long term value is a very hazy question. We are standing on a precipice when it comes to Star Wars sets. For 16 years sets have been produced, sometimes to coincide with the release of a film. When each new film was released, the initial offerings were fair to poor representations of the new vehicles. The majority of these sets would later be remade with new techniques and new elements and were generally better sets on subsequent offering. Now, for the foreseeable future, there will be a new Star Wars film every year. Each of those films will call for their own new offerings, whether they are remakes of older sets with different minifigures (the speculation for Rogue One is that there will be Death Star and X-Wing and TIE Fighter sets from the original trilogy time frame) or entirely original designs, there is less space to recreate sets for older movies. The Force Awakens features a variety of X-Wing fighters in a variety of colors, so we are likely to see more of the "new design" X-Wings, and if Poe appears in later episodes, he is likely to continue flying an X-Wing, so we'll probably see updates then. Updates/rehashes/re-releases are the death of long term value. The X-Wing set will probably have a huge demand for holiday 2015 with the release of the film only a week before Christmas, and the initial shortages, I can see a run on this set. I cannot see a long term investment value on this set at retail. You have to get discounts, and possibly significant ones if you want to see acceptable returns. With Episode VIII only 2 years away, the turnaround time to realize significant gains could be incredibly slim. If we assume an 18 month life span, it should retire in March 2017. If they have a Force Friday type release in September of that year, you have something like 6 months before I expect to see a new Sequel trilogy X-Wing. It's a nice, fun set. Jimmy and Johnny and even AFOLs will want it this holiday, so QFLLs might have a field day in the weeks before Christmas. It looks good with 9493 and will be more in demand as the Star Wars hype reaches fever pitch. The new characters Poe and BB-8 will be fairly popular for at least the short term. COMPARISON I decided to take some pictures so that you could see what the 75102 and 9493 look like together. You can see the similarities and the differences.

Aha! You likely supposed this thread was going to be about the much-derided but wildly successful (for investors) Delorean Ideas set. You couldn't be more wrong, even if you were wiping out polybag stocks across entire retail shelves. Granted, the example given might fall more under 'moral' wrongs, and doesn't fit this example well, but here we are. We might as well get used to tenuously related metaphors and similes, as I just used my best one above and it goes downhill from here. Wait – I was trying to get to something important there, before you derailed my train of thought with your insistence that you could be more wrong and in so many more appropriate ways. Concerns noted. If you'll allow me, I'd like to introduce yet another potentially recurring feature: Time travel back in time and tell my younger Veegs-self what I've learned about life, love and plastic bricks. In this post I'd like to talk about exclusives, in particular modulars and Ultimate Collector Series Star Wars sets. When I first started investing Fire Brigades were widely available with a limit of 99 at Shop at Home and the thought of being banned for buying too much of an addictive and profitable toy wasn't even a twinkle in eye of the CEO of Banhammers at TLG. My younger self bought Fire Brigades. I also bought some UCS Obi-Wan's Jedi Starfighters at MSRP. (I later got some 50% off from ToysRUs Canada, which was a much wiser investment). I adored the, sometimes hefted them to appreciate their size and weight, but mostly they just sat there. I didn't have enough to start selling them off for small gains (if I had double digits, perhaps I would have let a couple go at every price bump over MSRP) because I'm stubborn and because the forums preach patience and dumping retiring/retired sets to invest in currently available sets which I would then have to hold even longer seemed unpalatable. This is in no way hating on UCS sets or modulars in any way. My issue was, as a new investor, I got caught up in some EOL hype (well, I use the term hype loosely, as the forums were a little quieter back then) and put more than half of my capital in these two sets. True story, I still have one of each. So what was the problem? It turned out that EOL chatter wasn't on point (more seasoned now, I grin every time someone posts about surefire news of retirements from Lego employees or gut feelings or because the set number got burned into their toast that morning) and my capital sat around for quite some time. That is definitely part of whole 'investing' thing, and I get that, but as new investors now should they really be plowing their cash into the Pet Store? I'm here to talk about why that is perhaps not the optimal way to scale up their – or your - enterprise, unless you have a heck of a lot more capital than I did starting out (a few thousand Canadian dollars which could nab you a Chima Speedorz at MSRP on a good day). If that is the case, just do the Emazers and buy double digits of every set over $100 and chill. What I did have success with was buying the biggest set of a couple themes close to retirement and managed to turn those around very quickly (Black Pearls, Queen Anne, Public Transport, etc). I also was able to grab a few of the $20-25 sets (I still love you, Friends Butterfly Beauty Salon!) that looked promising and turned those around, too. Not only that, but I spent quite a bit of time trolling stores looking for clearance sets and Polly. She is a bit plastic-y for some, but when she has a low buy-in it is hard not to make some money off her. It helped me get to Powerseller status on ebay, taught me a heck of a lot about regularly listing, packing and shipping sets as well as getting regular deposits into my paypal account, which really motivated me to keep on keeping on. Bottom line, if I could go back in time I probably would have advised a younger (handsomer, obviously) me to get just one Fire Brigade for the personal stash but put more money/time/effort into sets that could be turned around in 12-18 months, max. I'd also tell him to research polybags a little more, because finding some of the more profitable ones requires luck, true, but also sometimes a little perseverance. I'd also tell him to embrace the style of a QFLL (Quick Flipping Low Life for those new to Brickpicker) on these polybags and buy the good ones en masse. If you get flamed for it from non-investing civilians, consider it a badge of honor....okay, fine, leave a couple on the shelf if it helps you sleep better, but try to find a way to get selling sooner rather than later. Having sold well over a hundred Zombie Coffin Cars, I can honestly tell you I wish I had someone purchased ten thousand of them, or more. I'm that confident they would eventually all find buyers. So where does that leave you, confused reader? If you are new to Brickpicker you will read a lot of threads and witness a lot a people boasting about buying xx amount of set xx, and how much they are loving it (without knowing what 'it' is, sometimes). Ignore those posters and do some research to make some educated guesses (nothing is certain, but educated guesses seem better than throwing darts at the Shop at Home theme screen and buying based on that method). I don't want to come out and tell anyone what to invest in, but I do think a beginner is better served without tying up capital in huge (hoarded?) sets and getting inventory that can move a little faster, on average. Perhaps, like, 88 mph?