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The one without a piece count is the European version

Here is a guy on CL wanting to pay $20 for someone to build his Tower Bridge https://raleigh.craigslist.org/tag/5453741859.html Maybe there is an untapped market for lego subcontractors

All done . Need a cigarette and I don't even smoke. build was the most challenging that I have encountered . Parts 1 & 2 get things going with things getting really interesting in parts 3 ( gear box/back ) and definitely 4 (arm) and 5 (front) . Part 6 is a breeze and a good cool down . It does get frustrating at some points as is the case with most advanced Technic sets . There always seems to be the inevitable mess up where a gear doesn't click into place or something is not aligned correctly. Atleast for me anyways. The end product is amazing as display piece and everything works as advertised. Front of the truck is sure to start a conversation or two. Highlight being watching the arm come to life and maneuvering it . Drawbacks : -I would have gladly paid a little extra to have a small engine added - power function doesn't include the tires . 9/10

the next UCS Star Wars set! They've outdone themselves this time!

I feel you may not know how this whole LEGO investing thing we do here works...........if I were you I would spend a few weeks reading this forum and then start posting. Just a friendly suggestion.

New March sets at 35% off thanks to Kmart coupons and SYW points! Next day shipping and all shipped in boxes to boot.

picked up the 1960s Batcave set - just built the bat mobile, pretty incredible so far....

I just wanted to thank Alpine and all the other mods for making this an amazing forum. Your work is not unnoticed, and it IS appreciated. Also to the newbs, its' amazing how many questions you might have already exist as a forum topic or a great blog. Be sure to SEARCH FIRST, then ask your questions. You'll be amazed and get much better answers in existing topics when the questions were first asked then if someone has to remember the points and counterpoints and summarize them. Thanks to everyone for making this a great place.

Mytoys.de: -20% off Lego City till 19.02.02016. Disocunt is being automatically applied during checkout process (Dont forget to check the 2E discount box at the end). 15% NewCustomer Coupon does not stack with any of these. And for all the Payback Users there's still the 10x Points Coupon. Example: 60097 City Square 139,99E - 20% - 2E = 112,94E (-10% in PaybackPoints) = 101,65E Not the best deal ever but maybe you'll find some other stuff out there P.s.: Minimun buy is 35E to get the discount.

There's quite a bit of debate in the Poe's Xwing topic in the Star Wars forum topic. Some of the reasons to think there's smoke (and thus fire): 1) there was some sort of windshield issue early on (September 2015) that made it hard to find 2) there were continued shortages throughout it's life so far. 3) It is out of stock at most online retailers and only available for backorder at Lego right now while the rest of the wave 1 is available just about everywhere. 4) it is out of stock in Retail locations in MANY (not all) parts of the US currently. If you check store trackers for Walmart & Target it's nowhere to be found in many places i've travelled like North Carolina, South Carolina, Florida, and others. 5) The new wave of 2016 summer sets has a new x-wing with Poe Some reasons to think there is no fire, just smoke. 1) It still has shelf stickers in stores even though it's sold out, just like Jurassic did. They don't reserve shelf space for product that isn't going to arrive. Shelf space is golden and good stores don't waste it. 2) You CAN still back order it at lego.com 3) it's only been out for 5 months so far. Even if it retired when the new sets come out, would it really last for LESS than a calendar year? Lots of folks took some of the signs above as reasons that Jurassic Park was gone, but it is clearly back in full force (minus one store exclusive set. Jurassic Park clearly isn't Star Wars, but could Poe's Xwing be a set that retires sooner than the rest of the wave? Who knows. I think its' an outstanding set, but perhaps only worth stockpiling at a discount. I wouldn't want to be caught without my target quantity, so place your bets accordingly.

Can't help. I've got to clean up DD. In all seriousness, what you are describing is stock manipulation and it's something we frown upon heavily here at Brickpicker. If you'd like to discuss the ethics of buying like that, we have an ethics thread to discuss these things. Will link to it later.

Sounds like a clear case of extortion. I would fight it with eBay. They need to offer some proof if they want to file a case... at least make them work for it!

Not to derail further off-topic, but can someone point me in the direction of a thread explaining why pricing errors like this occur on Amazon? Does it have something to do with automatic pricing algorithms used by vendors? If Bob Barker taught me anything, it's that buying something for one dollar is ethical as long as it's close to the actual retail price--without going over.

Here we go again. I hope by now the mods have a stored procedure to move chunks of the DD thread to the Ethics thread.

Cashing out the 401k, it's go time

FWIW. My approach to AWD would be for one purpose. To build. Because you are dealing with returns you need to treat them as just that. You don't know what the previous buyer did. So by buying to build you will have no problems cutting the seals (if they are intact) and verifying the contents. So by taking this approach there is no risk at all with AWD.

Kmart Haul from the new releases and a plethora of SYW coupons: Started off with about $20 in SYW points - Order #1 total $53.35 - Airport Battle #76051 Order #2 total $43.45 - Crossbones' Hazard Heist #76050, Iron Man Vs. Loki #10721, & Black Panther Pursuit #76047 Order #3 total $48.86 - Droid Escape #75136 & Carbon-Freezing #75137 Order #4 total $54.31 - Imperial Shuttle Tydirium #75094 Still have around $24.00 in SYW left and earned a total combined discount of around 37% on the 4 orders. Thanks Kmart!

I don't honestly have doubts that it will appreciate in value. Only because of the UCS label, completionists will want to own it. I see it around $350-$400 for a while. That's where laggers tend to hover anyways, not too much above MSRP, but enough for some people to make a little profit of. Will it be a quick burner? I highly doubt that IMO, especially in it's EOL stages. On to the last sentence: ROTLMFAO at finding this for 50% off. That will be pretty damn hard to near impossible if this stays an exclusive. And because of the UCS label, I highly doubt there will ever be discounts on it. Short of this turning out like the B-wing, which let's face it, the way Lego is going right now, this will be a decent seller, and have no justification for a discount to move on to another set. I honestly feel you on this, even though I don't play with my sets. But, even I have beef with this set. At least with the EV and Sandcrawler, you get a great cohesive set, that looks good just sitting there on a desk, and actual play value. With this Hoth set, you get nothing. 2 baddies, hardly allows for much play anything without having to add on other sets. This defeats the entire purpose of what I believe to be a good decent set. When you say you need to add on tons of stuff to make it better, than it just further goes to show what a terrible job they did in releasing this set. I know everyone has their own opinion and I respect yours, but they honestly could've done better meshing the two. IMO, (some won't like it,) but I think in order to do this a true UCS Assault on Hoth, they should've made it a $400, add an AT-AT, AT-ST, get rid of all of superfluous crap, and just focus on the base and main shield generator. I really feel if something like this was done, then you could honestly really recreate the assault without having to do too much, and I think it would be worthy of the UCS tag at that point.

You rock!

This set is so hated, I have to have it. [George Costanza reference]

Congratulations! You just UCS-Assault-on-Hoth'ed all contents of this thread into one large reply.

There are 100s of ways to pluck this chicken.

No. If you don't have them in your area that makes sense. I see them on the racks all the time and they weren't on sale, so I was just curious why he purchased so many.

So they just want to make things difficult on you so you let them keep it and refund their money? I'd be difficult right back. I understand returns are a part of doing business, but scam returning gets me riled up.

Think this set is bad, wait til this one hits stores...

X1 75908 Ferrari 458 Italia GT2 (to complete my Speed Champions wave 1 collection) and x1 75872 Audi R18 to start my Speed Champions wave 2 collection!

In general I agree but if you know what the contents of the set are supposed to be, it can make sense to buy for resale. I bought a Sea Cow in January for $205 on AWD, verified the contents were complete and flipped it two weeks later for $380. Obviously this isn't the norm and that particular sale was just a matter of the timing being right, but the point is there are times when buying from AWD for resale can work, again, assuming you know what the bag count, minifigs, rare parts, ect are supposed to be. IMO, pros to buying on AWD for resale: 1) Easy way to save 18% on exclusives 2) You know the box is going to be damaged and so will your future customer. This means no dealing with box snobs and most likely no returns due to box damage during shipping. 3) You personally verified the contents and in most cases likely have pictures of everything. Seems to me to be less of a target for scammers. cons: 1) Save ~18% today, sell for ~18% less tomorrow. The math works fine so in general this isn't a con. However the box will take up the same amount of space in your storage area. So you need more square feet of storage space to invest the same amount of capital. 2) Potential to get open bags or missing pieces as others have stated. Amazon support is great but it's one more thing to deal with. 3) Verifying the set contents takes a bit of time and when selling you'll probably need unique pictures of each damaged item. So a more time invested per set. 4) Mental health, lol. A storage room full of these beat up boxes can start to look depressing When I first started investing I bought a number of sets on AWD for investment because of the savings, however as I started to realize the cons I've now almost completely stopped (Mainly reason #1 and #4). Now I mainly buy builders like you said but occasionally I'll still buy for resale. Certainly if I ran a parts store it would be a no-brainer for getting exclusives.

No new progress on the cage itself, but i finally got around to building the Explorer! And i have to say it is gorgeous. Again though this is not my design, it was some kind of custom kit my GF bought for me from Japan i believe. At first i thought they were probably fake pieces, but they look and feel real, either way the car is awesome. It's obviously quite massive and not entirely minifig scale (however Han and co do look pretty cool in there), but i think it just looks so good that i'll include it for now. It almost becomes the centerpiece of the display which i'm ok with. If the T-Rex were bigger (or brickbuilt) he'd be the center of attention, but as it stands the LEGO version of Mr.Rex is a bit on the wimpy side which is no fault of theirs really. If down the road the scale bugs me i'll make smaller cars. I also really like the open window/no window design. This allows the figures to be viewed a bit easier which will be crucial when my minifig parts arrive to make Grant/Ian/Lex/Tim. I did do a couple modifications to try and increase the integrity, added the famous cup to the front dash and added exposed studs to the back seats so the figures stayed seated. The back seat even has a place for Revan to store his lightsaber! (or the goggles/flares from the movie). The car is very fragile, designed to %100 be a display model and not touched, hell it even has issues just rolling on it's wheels (they get caught on pieces when pressure applied. The doors do open and close, but are quite fragile. Lots of illegal building techniques in this model to say the least haha. I think once all the fences are up and the inside paddock raised; the car won't look as big compared to everything else. Raising the paddock is my next goal. I plan to use the old Duplo trick to cut down on hundreds of bricks. Overall though i love this thing no matter what it's used for. As you can see in the last photo i have all 4 foundations ready and awaiting the slope pieces. Each foundation needs about 24 of them, and the Bricklinkers in Canada have very few of these pieces so it's a slow process getting them all. I expect my next update will be a very rainbow-y Duplo mess

So is the look in parent's eyes when their kids destroy them.

Thanks guys, I'll make sure to pretend I lack knowledge of the secondary market lol

Very true. I purchased an Emerald Night train 2 years ago from AWH listed as good / used. Was very surprised to find out it was a semi-crushed box with 2 of the 4 tape seals barely holding. I decided to open it and verify the contents just to be saw. everything inside was sealed. Wow my lone sea cow was a $200 AWH deal. The box is totally crushed but inner contents were sealed and complete. Other sets have been the direct opposite. Missing stuff. Boxes ruined. Every now and again, you'll find a gem using AWD.

Arctic Base Camp for €52 isn't bad either.

Never knew this song was performed by Lando Calrissian.

Obviously depends on what it costs for you to insure it. It costs me an extra €5 to send registered post which means I'm insured. If I did that on every €50 item, then effectively I'm insuring against a 10% defect rate or on €100 items a 5% defect rate. Obviously I'm not expecting a 10% defect rate so I don't take out insurance, meaning I'm effectively self insuring. The point is to work out the cost, find a risk factor where you think beyond that it's too much risk and then that's the level where you take out the insurance.

If I understand this right, LEGO thinks your home (residential) address is a freight forwarding service? If that is the case, I would call back and ask to speak to the review team. Ask them what kind of proof you can supply that shows your home is a home. Also, I suggest punching your address into google to see what comes up... How did the review team decide the address is a freight forwarding service? (because yes, they will sometimes miss it but usually they will refuse to ship to those services)

I assume he is referring to the New York Toy Fair.

This arrived today. I'm ready to form Voltron! Oh how I wish this was a real thing.

Some rumors over on brickset that this could be an April promo.

This set is an EPIC fail from an investment standpoint. The main market for a UCS set in in which someone who will pay 600-700 for a set is an AFOL with a large amount of disposable income and typically has minimal shelf space in which display sets. This AFOL is very picky as to which UCS or Large Lego sets he/she buys. This set has absolutely ZERO displayability as it is so disjointed it would look like garbage on a shelf. In 3-4 years, an AFOL who came out of the dark ages and missed this set will have 50 other sets they would rather allocate cash to WELL before this one. Various portions of this set will also likely be remade in various smaller set forms 2-3 times in the next 5-6 years, further shooting the value through the floor. EV is super risky to buy and I can barely see that appreciating enough to make a return. Buying this set for investing is just insanity. You might as well just flush money down the toilet on this one. For this to sell for 400 dollars to make it worth your time, it would take Lego burying nearly every set in the Arizona desert to increase the rarity (Atari ET Reference) to make this even remotely worthwhile. Maybe not that bad, but you get my point. This was truly TLG mailing it in. Utter laziness. It has some value if you are a parent looking for a one stop shop, but absolutely ZERO from a resale standpoint. AVOID AT ALL COSTS if you are investing unless you get a 50% or more discount. You have been warned.

January 23, 2017

Couple more parts arrived last night, however i can't really get any further without more of the foundation slope pieces. I guess i stumbled upon a bricklinker that takes a little extra time to get stuff out. However i had enough pieces to make 1 fence! (will need 3-4 more i think). With this 1 fence as my guideline; i was able to confirm that A: i do need to raise the inside of the paddock to be foundation-level, and B: i need to take a level off the fence. Otherwise any dino put behind is sort of dwarfed (as are the trees). So i've put a large order in for some extra green plates and some basic 2x4 bricks to go underneath and raise it up. Still waiting on some 2x4 white tiles to replace the caution 1x4 strips so i can put the "10,000 Volts" decals ontop of them. I wanted to put the fences on smaller plate pieces, however with the fence... posts? so close together it obstructed too much of the view inside. As such i will go with larger plates under the foundation. Each fence should ideally connect with each other with technic connectors to look as seamless as possible. I tested out some ways of connecting each fence at the bottom with hinges, but couldn't get it just right. So i'll likely keep the bottoms a bit loose (at least on the fence pieces that have to curve). Tonight i think i will finally tackle the Explorer. As i said before i don't actually have to design this myself or purchase the pieces as my SO purchased a custom kit for me a few months ago. However i think the scale might be too large for my build (543 pieces or something), if so i will see about building a smaller one. Even though the fences are not %100 movie accurate since i opted to go with black; i think it looks pretty good. I did test out dark grey/light grey and it didn't look as menacing. The black makes it look a bit creepier and imposing. More to come!

It would be utterly hilarious if inside the box was just the boxed sets that have already been released........I'm hoping for this so we can see people's heads explode!

This is the one set that box condition might actually be the most important factor since the contents suck.

You guys should know from being on this site that the customer is not always right. The envelope rate is intended for a stack of papers. The machinery that processes envelopes will chew up anything that has a piece of ABS plastic inside it. The only way to safely ship Lego is parcel rate in a bubble mailer or box. Some sellers may be willing to take the risk that your parcel makes it through without getting destroyed. We ship ~1000 orders a month, and we've got a standard process. if you were to ask us to ship via envelope we'd say no.