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Hello LEGO fans, collectors and resellers… Many of you may already know who I am, but for those of you that may have just learned about Brickpicker, my name is Ed Maciorowski and I would like to ask you for a few moments of your time. Over the past five years, my brother Jeff and I have operated the BrickPicker site at no cost to members and fans. All we ever asked from members was to click on affiliate links to help pay for the site expenses, which cost members little or no out of pocket money. Many of you have gained valuable information and insight from our data and forum community that enabled you to make money from LEGO collecting and reselling. Often, people would ask how can we help the BrickPicker site and its creators and we would say thanks for the offer, but no thanks, we felt uncomfortable taking donations. Well, we have a way for all of you to help out not only me, but over 150 children and their families. Let me introduce you to the St. Paul School of Burlington, NJ… My son, Max, is a member of the Kindergarten class in St. Paul School. He has attended the school since September and adores it. My wife, Jane, and I also adore the school. It is everything a school should be. It’s a school where everyone knows your name and there is a sense of pride and respect not found in many other larger schools. I cannot explain it, but there is an ambience of goodness in the building. Sounds corny I know, but as a person who has the word “evil” in his email address, I can tell you that I know when something deserves special recognition as a “good” thing. But it’s not only me who recognizes a great school. St. Paul School was voted the “Best Private School” in Burlington County, NJ and won numerous other awards. St. Paul School’s graduates constantly excel in high schools throughout Central NJ, with a large portion of graduates appearing on the National Honor Society and finishing top in their classes as Valedictorians and Salutatorians. To find out more about the St. Paul School, you can check out their website… So here is the situation. St. Paul School is a Catholic school and as many people know, Catholic schools always have a hard time paying the bills to remain open. While St. Paul School and other Catholic schools welcome all religions and people, they are not funded by state or federal tax dollars and must adhere to many policies of the Catholic church and their Dioceses. Unfortunately, due to the weak economy and other forces outside of their control, enrollment in Catholic schools is down, putting more and more pressure on the school’s and local church’s budgets to remain open. This is an ongoing battle and fundraising has become an annual ritual in every Catholic school in the nation and most likely, the world. Everyone has to do their part to help out and Jeff and I are doing ours. Here is our plan… Jeff and I are going to personally RAFFLE OFF THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS OF RARE AND RETIRED LEGO SETS! These sets are from our personal collections and they include the: 10188 Death Star 10228 Haunted House Sealed Case of 64 Series 10 Collectible Minifigures (MR.GOLD might be in there!) 10224 Town Hall 10225 Ultimate Collector Series R2-D2 MORE SETS HAVE BEEN ADDED!!! That is well over $2000.00 in LEGO sets. All are retired and appreciating in value as we speak. I will personally ship them to anywhere in the world at my cost and in a proper shipping container. There will be one winner for each set and you must buy tickets for each raffle separately. One person can win all the sets if they enter all five raffles. There are discounted tickets available and the raffle will be run on the www.rallyup.com website, which is a very reputable and trustworthy fundraising site. They will automatically pick the winners at 11:59 PM on January 31, 2016 and will notify the winners. I will then ship out the winning LEGO sets to their new owners. The raffle and link to share can be found below: https://rallyup.com/stpaul-2016 Each ticket costs $10.00 and enables you to enter one LEGO set raffle of your choice. $50.00 will cover all five iconic LEGO sets. ALL OF THE PROCEEDS (besides the commission to www.rallyup.com) goes to St. Paul School and to its corresponding church, The Parish of Saint Katharine Drexel, which helps the school operate. Tickets can be paid with any major credit card and the site is secure. Unfortunately, PayPal does not get involved with “raffles,” so PayPal can only be used for direct donations. I know that is a minor inconvenience, but if their is an issue, contact Jeff or I and we can see what we can do about transferring money to our PayPal account and paying for your raffle tickets. If we get a great response from people, we might add a few major sets or collectible and rare items to the raffle contest. On a personal note, I just have to say that I feel awkward asking people to help and for money, but the St. Paul School kids, faculty and community are worth it. They need to raise $200,000 by the end of January in order to keep the doors open and I am pulling all of my strings to help get them to that goal. I need your help. Period. If you value quality education and teaching children morals and respect, then supporting a school like St. Paul is paramount to the future well being of this planet. To the BrickPicker community...Show the LEGO world that we are more than just a bunch of Quick Flipping Low Lifes….that we care and have a heart, even though we buy all of Little Timmy’s LEGO sets up to resell. LOL. Honestly, this is important to Jeff and I and I want to be proud of our community that we have built over the past 5+ years. If you want to repay us for all of the efforts we have made over the past five years, buy a ticket...or two...or five. My son and 150+ other kids and families, faculty and friends of the St. Paul School will thank you… CLICK HERE TO PARTICIPATE IN THE FUNDRAISER PLEASE HELP AND SHARE THIS BLOG POST ON FACEBOOK, TWITTER AND OTHER SOCIAL MEDIA OUTLETS!! If you are interested in just making a donation and want to use Paypal, you can. Just click the purchase link on the right side bar. On the next page you will see a checkbox that will allow you to just make a donation. Check that box and you will then see options for payment. Paypal is not available for buying raffle tickets, it is against their terms.

As a countdown to the Force Awakens, I will be writing reviews on Star Wars LEGO sets this week. I haven't really done an exclusive set before. I kind of wonder if the exclusives are the sets that people would be most excited about getting, or the ones that people wouldn't mind missing. Let's dive into the Hailfire Droid set and see if it's a can't miss, or a swing and a miss. REVIEW: SET DETAILS Set #: 75085 Name: Hailfire Droid Theme: Star Wars Parts: 163 Price: $19.99 Before we get to the build, let’s talk value. At $19.99 the price per piece works out to a bit over $.12 each. This is to be on the high side of pricing for a licensed set. There are 3 minifigures Clone Trooper Lieutenant, and 2 Super Battle Droids. The Clone Lieutenant is exclusive to this set. 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 3 numbered baggies, 2 decorated 10x10 trans clear radar dishes and an instruction book. THE BUILD AND EXECUTION Bag 1: You build your clone trooper and the central body of the Hailfire Droid. There's not really any interesting techniques in this portion of the build. You're basically setting up a solid chunk in the middle that you are later going to pin everything to. Bag 2: This bag combines with the 2 radar dishes to create the fenders and attach the dishes as the wheels. Shown below are the fenders and the new attachment points for them. You also build both of your Super Battle Droids. I have no clue why there's a trailer hitch on this thing. Bag 3: You finish out the build by creating external fenders and the missile racks. I'm usually not a fan of these spring missiles, but for this particular set, I feel like it works. A few greeblies to give a bit more dimension to this thing, and a tilt of the wheels, and off you go. REACTION I like the look of this set. It's a fairly quick build. It needed a small gun emplacement or something for the Clone Trooper. He's massively outclassed in the firepower department, and a small build for him, would have made this seem more like a $19.99 set instead of a $14.99 set. I'd say it fits in well with all of the Geonosis stuff from 2013. Too bad that means it has been out far too long without anything to pair it with. The Super battle Droids are standard. Nothing terribly exciting about them. They're nice to fill out a scene. I like the Clone Lieutenant though. The blue pops, and looks good when mixed in with all of the standard clones. He's got a standard trooper face, not a Clone Wars one, so that's a real plus. FINAL THOUGHTS This set is overpriced. It's a Prequel Trilogy set in a Sequel Trilogy world. There's nothing big to lift it up, and there are no main characters to draw in Timmy's mom. Scene builders, completionists, and impulse buyers are probably the target market for this particular set. It looks cool, but it's not instantly recognizable in the way that an A-Wing, Luke's Landspeeder, or the Droid Escape Pod is. If they had thrown in a main character or a unique Jedi, there would probably be more demand for this set. What I haven't mentioned yet is that this an exclusive set shared by Target and the LEGO Store. In the long run, it will be harder for completionists to get if they want to fill in holes later. I don't know if the demand will ever be huge, but I anticipate the value to climb modestly just due to the fact that it is an exclusive. I would recommend pairing it with the AT-TE or Republic Gunship. Shop for it on Amazon EXTRA PIECES:

I've been wanting to build this set since it was released in June. I never really realized how much I enjoyed stuff from Return of the Jedi until I really looked at my LEGO collecting habits. This particular ship is a beautiful and elegant design in the films, but how does it look when translated in the most recent LEGO iteration? Well the box was pretty, so let's delve into the set. REVIEW: SET DETAILS Set #: 75094 Name: Imperial Shuttle Tydirium Theme: Star Wars Parts: 937 Price: $99.99 Before we get to the build, let’s talk value. At $99.99 the price per piece works out to a bit under $.11 each. This seems to be about average for pricing for a licensed set. There are 5 minifigures 4 of which are currently exclusive to this set. Chewbacca is available in this form in 2 other sets. Han, Leia and the 2 Rebel Troopers are exclusive. 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 6 numbered baggies, and a bag containing the instruction book and a sticker sheet. THE BUILD AND EXECUTION Bag 1: Here you build the basic foundation of the shuttle and the 2 Rebel Troopers. There's a box with 2 Thermal Detonators (although if you want 3, the extra pieces are there), a weapons rack, and a hatch in the floor. Bag 2: you're continuing to expand the structure of the shuttle's body. You also create the attachment points for the moveable wings. They ratchet up and down individually and you fairly successfully disguise the spring missile shooters. If you look in the second image below, you can see the Technic Pin Connector (62462) that is used as the trigger to fire the missile. Bag 3: The first thing I want to make note of is how cool and SNOT the engines of this ship are and how it's a whole panel that's attached to the back. I don't know why they went with the 2 2x4 tiles that will soon be hidden. The landing struts are linked and will move up and down in tandem. The hatch I mentioned before has a piece on a hinge that will prevent it from lowering on its own. You must flip this down in order the lower the ramp. The bag finishes adding some details to the body, including guns. Bag 4: The fin. The fin is awesome. Bow down to the fin. It is solid, it is large and in charge, and take it from me, make sure you attach everything in the right direction so that the pin holes line up, because getting it back apart to fix a minor mistake is a giant pain. The fin just slots right into the top before you pin it in place. Plus, you get Princess Leia and her cookie. Bag 5: This bag is the biggest one in the set because you are making the wings and finishing the body of the shuttle. You make some panels for the body that pivot up and down to reveal the interior of the shuttle. The wings weren't terribly complex, but they were time consuming due to size. Bag 6: Probably the smallest and most disappointing of the bags. I don't know if I was tired by this point, or if the cockpit design just wasn't that inspired, but compared to the rest, it wasn't a terribly exciting finish. The Han is nice, but Chewbacca's a little bit off. Maybe it's the dark brown, or the weird paint details. Maybe I was disenchanted with this portion, because the cockpit canopy cannot stay open. It's too heavy and closes on its own. There were some extra pieces, including a cookie and a Thermal Detonator. I did not take a picture of the brick separator, but rest assured there is one. REACTION I really like this set, a lot. With the wings down, it is a beautiful thing. With the wings up, the bloom sort of comes off the rose. You see the underside of the wings when it is in the parked or resting position. The underside of the wings are ugly, kind of like an inside out sausage. Ok, maybe not that bad, but the most attractive way to display it will take a lof of clear bricks that are not included to make it display prettily. I really do like this set a lot. Despite the wing undersides and the closing canopy, it's a really nice set. The figures, for the most part, are nice. I really wish there was an extra helmet for Leia. I also wish there was a Luke with poncho to go with it too. I'm going to proudly display this set on its own until I build my Ewok village, then it will go with that. This set goes well with Endor scenes, but it would also look great with a bunch of Imperials for an arrival scene. If I could swing the space, and got a good enough discount, I'd have 2 on display. FINAL THOUGHTS This set has the misfortune/fortune of being released 3 months before Force Friday. With the advent of all the Force Awakens sets, this one got relegated to a secondhand status. Fans and parents were more likely to go for TFA sets for the months leading into Christmas. LEGO most likely curtailed production in favor of the newer sets. This is all good news for the future of this set. Original Trilogy sets are always popular. Well designed ones moreso. If the newer movie sets take precedence in production, this set will have greater scarcity that collectors might not notice until after EOL. I think this set will be strong later on. A week before Christmas, Amazon has sold out. If you need something to convince you, check out these beauty shots. Go buy it on Amazon

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?