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You must be too new to remember Hxckid.

Most important purchase of the day, even more important than going to the LEGO store, was swinging by the Coach handbag store. I double stacked my VIP coupon with the in-store promo to pick the wife up 2 new purses and a wallet. Total RRP of the items $975. I paid $287, good for a 70% off discount. All paid for with proceeds from two LEGO set sales this week. For the newer members, purchases like this are key to keeping the spouse happy, and go a long way in reducing any friction over my LEGO expenditures.

While we were getting pounded with the white stuff, my wife and I decided to put together this magnificent set. We really didn't have much of a choice because Target had sent us this one with a nice little rip/hole on the side. It was weighed, so we were confident that everything was right here. Bag one was opened and I immediately went to put together the Joker. Legs. Check. Body. Check. Hair. Check. Head....... NOTHING!!! We looked everywhere and couldn't find it. As pissed as we were, we finished the set. Luckily nothing else was missing. I immediately went to the site and ordered a replacement part. And of course, it was OUT OF STOCK!!!!! After digging out, I decided to call Lego. I couldn't accept the OOS notice and an email stating they MAY have found one. I spoke to Mike at Lego and he located one immediately. The piece will be in mailbox in 5-7 days. On top of that, I was able to get 300 Lego points because the Tumblers SAH sent me were not all mint. WIN/WIN!!

I almost want to see Dinosaur suit guy, gorilla suit guy and wolfman climbing and smashing a skyscraper. RAMPAGE!

Today I built my first architecture set ever: Imperial Hotel. The amount of pieces (almost 1200) in unnumbered bags was overwhelming at first, especially given that I only encountered sets with numbered bags since my return to Lego. The build itself was nice despite being fiddly at times. It's this high amount of small pieces though that allows for amazing detail for a model of this scale. The manual with additional information was informative, too. All in all a highly recommended set I wouldn't want to miss in my collection.

Is giant batman menacing the UN or protecting it?

Built the UN HQ today and it looks great. Think I might build Brandenburg gate tomorrow...

Merry Christmas 2016, everybody! http://brickset.com/sets/40223-1/Christmas-Ornament

For decades, the problem with collectible toys has been degradation of the materials. For most toys made in the past 40 years or more the main component is ABS plastic. ABS plastic breaks down and changes color as it ages. This process can be accelerated via exposure to UV rays (sunlight or fluorescent bulbs), Heat, and chemical reaction to other plastics. Most collectors have fought a losing fight to prevent their lighter colored plastics from turning yellow (or green if there is a blue coloration to the piece.) For many years various solutions had been proposed to roll back the scourge of time. Solutions included (but were not limited to) a good scrub, bleach, Denture cleaner, fine grit sandpaper and oxy-clean. I personally tried many of these solutions to debunk their effectiveness. While a good scrub can clean away surface dirt or even yellowing caused by smoking, it is only a surface approach, and the Denture cleaner makes the item minty. I found bleach to be ineffective and potentially harmful to the plastic if left on for too long. I was experimenting with action figures, so sanding them was impractical for many reasons, not just the amount of time and effort involved. Oxy-clean appeared to have no greater effect than a good scrub until I came back to the figures months later and found that it had promoted yellowing making them worse than ever before. I also tried coating them in Baking Soda to no change. So far, I felt that I had done a good job disproving the myths about bringing toys back to their original brilliance. One day, someone posted about a Transformers collector in Britain using Hydrogen Peroxide and sunlight to de-yellow their toys. This sounded crazy to me, considering that the sun was the major enemy of this plastic. Common Hydrogen Peroxide, found in any health and beauty section of any grocery store in the world, was used inside a sealed glass container with the affected items. Hydrogen Peroxide can also be found at beauty supply stores in more concentrated formulation, and I even ordered a much stronger version from the internet one time. (I believe that they have since limited the potency that can be bought due to some terrorist bombings.) I attempted to test the theory first by leaving my figures inside in a jar full of H2o2 without direct exposure to light. After a couple days, I could see no difference. So, I followed the procedure of setting the jar outside on a sunny day. After 12 hours the whites were whiter. Stronger potency Peroxide is more effective in both time and brightening. I am not a chemist, so I cannot explain how the plastic breaks down or how the H2O2 breaks down, or why that would leach the bad chemicals out of the plastic. What I can tell you is that the experiment did not end there. Was this a permanent solution to the problem? Literally, only time would tell. So, I took my experimental figures and threw them into a closed box and stashed that in a temperature controlled room for several years. Every once in a while I would revisit them. What I found didn't necessarily shock me, but it did sadden me. The pieces had begun to yellow again. Not to their previous levels, but noticeably yellower than after their initial treatment. This treatment was a stop gap, not a solution. Why is this a topic for a reselling forum? Well, for people who resell LEGO pieces, they may have heard of the Peroxide solution previously. They may have even used it to make older pieces presentable. A yellowed piece is much less desirable than a clean white piece. What will happen though is that piece will continue degrading under the surface. That degradation will start to show again. Instead of decades of displayability for a new piece, you are going to give the end user only a few years. I guess it comes down to the morality of attempting to use this solution to gain an extra little bit vs providing your customers with a happy long term buying experience. One might liken it to a used car salesman putting something into the engine to deaden the sound of knocking. Others might think of it purely as restoration To view my original experiment and the subsequent discussion from 2008 You can look here. In short here are the pictures from my initial test with 3% H2o2: Before: During: After: 6 years after: (Note: If you are going to try this, watch out for it spilling on your skin. Especially if you get a stronger solution) View full blog article

Before everyone in my house got up today...

looks like santa is on display for a sacrifice, or throw wheels on it and it's like the popemobile.

You can disagree all you want.........there will Always be MORE people who want/can afford the cheaper remake.

The Rancor Pit has retired, a check on eBay sold listings will show that its performing nicely. I'd say it's a solid investment at the buy in price. The best advice I can offer is look through the forum, there's lots of great information which will help you to choose an investment strategy that will work for you. No one knows for sure which sets are retiring next but do your research and you'll make money.

My son's first question upon seeing Kanan take down the AT-AT was "why didn't Luke just do that?" I had to explain that, uh, maybe these AT-AT are smaller or something. This is probably already in the thread, but given Leia's age, if these are canon then it seems like pretty much everyone will die by the end, at least the Jedi will.

Lego 21010 Robie House. What an amazing and challenging build! I really like the fact that the instruction pages really make you work to build it correctly. You are scrutinizing placement based on the studs around it. Tons and tons of tiny red pieces and can be somewhat repetitive, but that is because the design emulates the brickwork beautifully. Catch this thing in the right light and just soak in the great details. The book is also awesome covering the history and sections of build. A great experience. This set does not really fit my normal display models, so if anybody is interested in owning a Robie, shoot me a PM and we'll chat.

As a 20 year target "employee"....TRU Dat. And auto correct still comes up with TRU, awesome.

How about some set names to make it easier for us to offer our opinions that you seek?

Queen Anne's Revenge and Black Pearl - $240 combined on CL. They are keepers. My husband and son are ecstatic. I saw the post an hour after it was posted originally for $155. People sent in higher offers. I told them I could not match the higher than $240 offers but could pick-up in 30 minutes. SOLD! My husband picked up. Young man wanted money for Star Wars Legos and was getting rid of his ships (keeping his Imperial Flagship). Wish I had known that and could have executed a good trade. Oh well...happy here. Picked up a 4842 HP Castle on eBay for $200 with ship. No box but manuals and all figures. Listing indicated a low completion % but the pic told a different story. Think it was a typo on the seller's part.

7962 Podracers $149.99 AMZ I swear I thought these would be stuck in my inventory for years. Good riddance.

My almost 4 year old son was dying to build something so we grabbed 30278 Poe's XWing polybag. I really liked it! So did he. I was pretty impressed that he built it pretty much with minimal help from me.

I only go 2 to 4 deep on exclusives. I'm only buying 2 EV and sticking with that. I'll more than likely invest in 3 slave 1s and probably 3 Sandcrawlers but won't go deeper than that. I only do those purchases during 2xVIP, so in march i'll buy a round of them, and more than likely another round in October. My hoarding for 2016 is set on 2 Poe's X-wings, Tydiriums and Jedi Duels. Basically over the last month, i've been hitting Poe's X-wings and Tydiriums (discount prices are decent at the moment). But this is nothing like 2015 when I was hitting many sets from 2014/2013. This year is just light, thanks to the lack of decent sets last year (force awakens excluded)..

I'm wishing that Dimensions is an epic failure. The Toys to Life genre is out of control. My boys have dozens and dozens of Skylanders and Disney Infinity figures that sit in baskets virtually un-played with. Even heavily discounted I don't want anything to do with Dimensions. We picked up a Wii U for Christmas and it was incredibly refreshing to play Smash Bros. and have access to all the characters without having to buy a separate figure.

This lot for $40 I saw a little bit of DC, SW, atlantis

Been wating all day for this and YEAH!!!!!!!! 42053 Volvo EW – £69.99 Pneumatic digger 42054 Class Xerion 5000 Trac – £119.99 Looks like it comes with new huge tires. 42055 Bucket Wheel Excavator – £179.99 Largest ever technic set at over 3000 pieces 42056 Confidential Technic Ultramotive – £249.99 Some front-engined confidential sportscar build similar to the mclaren (might be a Mclaren?)

Not even in the same ballpark.

Nice buy, i love set restoration.. thats my weakness.

I just found out today my membership gave me 10% off lego. I thought it only worked for books. I saved $20 off a temple of airjitzu with it today

Check at this link the current value for this set - or any other set, just type the set number on the box top of the screen: http://www.brickpicker.com/bpms/set.cfm?set=75005-1 With this information you can assess what is and what isn't a good investment. The value for a set indicated there is composed with the values from recent sold listings on ebay. For instance, try checking the value for this set: http://www.babymarket.lt/lt/parduotuve/zaislai-ir-mokymosi-priemones/konstruktoriai-kaladeles/lego-star-wars-konstruktorius-millennium-falcon-75030-5702015121019/p31168 Important: don't buy if you don't have a way of selling - what is your plan for that? Each selling market has its price ceilings - even a great promotion can be a loss if you can't sell it through the right channels.

Small Square by Vincent Kessels

Picked up a Creator Ferrari F40 at the LEGO store with bonus 500 VIP points because the corner of the box flap was bent. It straightened out just find but left maybe a 1.5-2" crease. Front and back of box are flawless. For a personal build, I'll take that all day long. Also picked up seven different Bionicles sets at half price from the same store. My youngest has an obsession with the Bionicles sets, so these make nice low price rewards for good behavior weeks at school. FYI if you're in the Atlanta area, this was the Northpoint Mall LEGO store. I spoke to the manager and he wants to start putting out "damaged" exclusives with bonus VIP points every Tuesday or Wednesday. I guess currently they're identifying them as the damage happens and keeping them in the back.

I will give you $20 for everything pictured.

If I spend X amount of hard earned money on any item, I expect said item to be deliver in a new and gift quality condition .

I saw TFA in the cinema this week, a big smile when the anthem started! Despite a high Disney level I really enjoyed this movie. Kylo Ren's shuttle looks good in this movie and MF is great to watch. And Han Solo....just epic and Rey the eye-catcher. Will watch it again soon!

Put together some more classics: 918 and 6872

You know, seeing a guy ecstatically giving the "thumbs up" in front of a sinking ship can send mixed messages.

Love this!

Incredible LEGO model of the Titanic breaking in half Ryan says the model uses around 120,000 pieces, and took over 250 hours to construct with the help of fellow builders Mitchell Kruik and Clay Mellington. It even lights up. For a sense of just how big this model is, here’s Ryan posing with it.

Castle-themed AT-AT build by Adam Dodge

I broke open the seals of this yesterday and built book 1 and today we built the rest of the set but I had to build the wings twice. It has been a long time since I opened a Lego set without numbered bags and it brought back fond memories. So beautiful!

I just did an in-depth analysis of the new Venice Cityscape model. I hope that it helps you decide if this is a model you want to add to your collection!In summary: It's a nice model if you can look past some of the artistic liberties. Unfortunately, the 29.99$ price is pretty outrageous for just 212 bricks. (By contrast, the Berlin model is also 29.99$ but 289 bricks.) It's odd to me how inconsistent their pricing can be for similar sets.212 bricks included in the setThe part selection is pretty good despite the high price tag. I enjoyed the printed lion brick, as well as the white microfigures. (This is the first time they have appeared in this color.)One of the quirks of the Cityscapes series is that landmarks from around the city are compressed into a single scene even when the buildings aren't that close together in real life. I prepared a map showing the locations of these buildings in Venice, numbered as they appear from left to right in the LEGO model.Map showing landmarks featured in Venice model.I enjoyed the build and the completed model a lot. It's a simple model, but it captures the essence of Venice well.Breakdown of the model into layers of base, street level, and buildings.For more analysis and additional photos, read the whole review at http://brickarchitect.com/2016/venice-cityscape-21026-review/Sincerely,---Tom Alphin

Some more details on contents of the sets incl. minifigs: http://brickset.com/article/18853/london-toy-fair-report-star-wars The LEGO IP sets are obviously a pass, same for me with clone tank but I have to say that the TFA and Rebels sets look dope. That encounter on Jaku set is really interesting. But also makes Rey's speeder dip in value/uniqueness - we will be probably getting that same Rey and Unkar thug figs in this one. Also, seems that soon any collector will be able to make an army of BB-8s. Hopefully they will improve Sabine's look in the Vader TIE set... kinda bummed to see no Ahsoka anywhere but I have little doubt that she will be making an appearance somewhere throughout the year.

Yeah... I have my target already... but seeing how so many here are saying this is a "can't lose" purchase, makes me nervous. It seems almost anytime I've seen this much agreement here about a set that will be a "guaranteed winner", it rarely pans out. Don't get me wrong. I like the set, and think it should do well in retirement... but I'm already dialing down my expectations, mostly because so many investors seem to be jumping on it right now.

Depends how long the line is. The last ever MISB one in the world could get that or more because at that stage money is really just a number - the person that wants it won´t care about the cost.

I would completely disagree. I have a few unopened first edition 10179 and I actually think a new UCS will bring more attention to the USC millenium Falcon and draw in new people and actually see an increase in the value of these sets. There will always be people who want the original first edition, regardless of price I agree. 10179 is something that has been already granted the mark of "Lego history" and most iconic set of all time. I don't think prices of MFs will be affected that much in a re-release hypothesis. On top of this, we recently had 7965, 75105...there are so many MFs out there that I hardly think another UCS one will join the family shortly. Also because there are the new DS to be released and probably the UCS Hoth...all this clues lead me thinking that the time for another UCS MF will be long to come.

You can disagree all you want.........there will Always be MORE people who want/can afford the cheaper remake. These are not the people dishing out $5000.00 anyway. There is a ceiling for this set and we might have reached it. It's been hovering around the current values for awhile now. Unless they release an inferior UCS set, I really don't see much movement either way. The new movie has not really helped values, so we might have seen its high for awhile. If a new UCS is released that is better than the old version, then values could be hurt, but there will still be your high end collectors that want them all, so values shouldn't drop that much in my opinion. This set in MISB condition is becoming rarer by the day.

I didn't buy 60080 Spaceport nor 75094 Tydirium at Walmart today because I live in SoCal and Walmart refuses to mark anything down here. I'm not paying full price for either of those.

I remember it as 10% off in store only. Has something changed? There was kid club where you could get an additional $20 if you spent so much. When it got more difficult to use coupons with architecture sets I cancelled my membership. I saw an epic dragon battle yesterday still marked at $119.95???

Nice to hear, so what you think , is it worth to buy it ? :). Can you list few of lego's that is profotible to buy

Love the Grand Emporium. It makes me want to go shopping.

They don't appear to have as many unique elements as Chima, so these should do great for the parts bins. That's one thing that turned me off about Chima. I'd see a set for 50% - 75% off and think, "What am I going to do with the leftovers?" They are usually more leftovers than useful parts too. Too many claws, horns, wings, and crap. They go in the bulk bin that is sold by the pound