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No, this is very poorly described. Investing is the act of putting money into something for a potential profitable return. There are many ways to invest. Long-term holding and short-term flipping are both forms of investing. Whether or not something qualifies as investing has nothing to do with the time-frame. The presence or absence of dividends does not make something an investment. What is actually done by members here is called arbitrage. Arbitrage is buying something in one market, or at one time, and selling in another market or at another time for a profit. Arbitrage is a form of investing, and it's irrelevant whether it's a long-term hold or a short-term flip, other than doing the short-term flip for a profit means you get your investment and your profit more quickly. Whether long or short-term is more of a mentality or approach that each individual decides, hopefully based on the situation. As a community we need to get away from saying that one approach is absolutely better than any other. There are as many approaches to investing as there are people. Some approaches are better in some situations than others. It's always situational. Posts like the one I've quoted smack of there being an overall quality difference between flipping and holding things long-term. There's not...it's a preference and both can work in different conditions and different situations. Personally my approach is best described as neither of these, rather my approach is all about hitting a target return, regardless of how long that takes. Practically though given that my target return is 30% profit, I trend towards the flipping end of the discussion. Also, I think comparing what is done by members here to stock trading is a really bad comparison. It's really nowhere near the same thing for many reasons. Part of the reason we're able to do what we can do with LEGO and generate profits is due to limited limited production, limited distribution, and limited knowledge in the market. A better comparison is a commodities market, but one where you have to take actual physical delivery of the commodity. As far as the original topic of the thread, I have no idea what you're talking about. That might mean nothing, but it's probably significant given that I've spent most of my career working in IT for financial services firms (~25 years), and I currently own a consulting and training company that specifically consults on technology and training issues for large financial services companies, so generally topics in that space are something I'm fairly familiar with.

Someone sent it to me today...

I'm 36 and I like stuff. Hope I didn't reveal too much.

Wit, I think I'm starting to notice a trend in your posts... seems you might be going out of your way to poop on things. Just a friendly observation. Besides, it's an anonymous poll :)

I have an alternate name for this award.Necroposter

(Apologies if this is in the wrong place or inappropriate. Feel free to delete if it is.) Since this site seems to be about making money, I thought I'd raise the subject of another income-generator I have looked into, which requires zero storage space, but can use similar bargain-finding skills: the stock market! Or, more specifically, financial spread betting which doesn't involve buying shares but is effectively the same, except no capital gains tax to pay and you can leverage your money to "buy" more stock than you otherwise could have, and shorting is easier too (although not really recommended because of the huge risk involved). Anyway, I'm not sure if I would recommend it, but I wanted to see if anyone wanted to talk about their experiences with it. The main trouble I see with it is that you are never really out unless you walk away. So you could be

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hm6hU3k6qpA Make sure you have the volume on when you watch it. I found it pretty funny.

What's really awkward is when she gets mixed up, too, and says she remebers that. Then later you realize you were mistaken, so now you're thinking, well who was SHE making out with? it's fun, try it :)

I'm glad you teenagers are busy with Lego instead of whatever nonsense the rest of your generation is up to. I work with several teenagers, and most of them probably couldn't stack two bricks together to save their lives. #WeAreDoomed

There is no question he belongs to my daughter and she will make the decision of when to sell. I was just trying to get some feedback so I could give her some ideas of what others think. Thank you all for your comments.

5 More Orc Forges

I've followed Exo's model in the past with investments made on things like action figures and other collectibles, before I paid any attention to Lego. It helped me save up enough money to make a couple extra house payments, as I was very disciplined with separating the money aside from the rest of my income and fees. I think the problem in a lot of cases though is that people probably don't manage their money diligently enough, and we tend to over-invest or overspend as a result, not able to remember how much we spent on something or where the money was used. I would recommend carrying multiple bank or savings accounts, or at the least being able to separate and track your numbers, so things don't get lost in the mix.

Honestly if you plan to sell it, I would sell it now while he's still relevant and fresh in the mind of collectors. I also agree that the price will go down as the hype is really what's driving the prices for this at the moment. There have been other minifigs that were produced in much smaller quantities (the Comic-Con exclusives come to mind) and they don't fetch anywhere near what Mr. Gold does currently, so you can't say the low supply will simply increase the demand. I have a feeling when Series 10 is out of stores, and the excitement of smooshing for him leaves with it, Mr. Gold's price will tank.

I hardly ever go to a movie theater these days. About the only benefit is that I get to see the movie sooner, but I'm not eight years old, so I can wait a few months to see a movie cheaper. The theater is usually too cold, the movie too loud. And there is inevitably some fat duck sitting behind me coughing and loudly chomping food. And I'll usually miss a bit of the movie because I can't pause when I go to the bathroom. I also liked Prometheus quite a bit. The Christianity nonsense was annoying, though.

There is no way to maintain discipline when you are playing with other people's money. Especially when there is little to no personal consequenses to any actions

For myself, when I sell an unopened set for a profit, I take that profit and put it straight into the bank. I then take the amount of money I used to buy the set (amount needed to break even) and use that capital to reinvest. If investors use all of the capital that they receive from a sale to reinvest with, gains are effectively never realized.

I think emes is right on this. If you purchase anything with the intent of selling it at a higher price later, that's an investment. Your chocolate bar can be an investment if your intent is to resell it for more money. People on eBay sell their food "investments" all the time. I think emes' larger point is that the term "investment" has changed over the years so that it now has a more sophisticated connotation that doesn't match its actual meaning. The Investopedia definition is a perfect illustration of the finance world's venacular: "traders" swap stocks daily whereas "investors" buy and hold commodities in a portfolio. Yet, when you boil it down there's no difference between the guy at JP Morgan that purchases SPDRs to add to his book of investments and anyone on this board that is trying to turnover Lego sets for profit. The vehicle is different, the concept is the same.

If describing something as "actual investing" isn't implying a quality difference, then I don't know what is.... Which approach you prefer is really irrelevant to me, but the reason I responded to this thread has little to do with you, and more to do with a discussions like this that come up all the time on this site. That discussion is basically, "which is better, short-term flipping or long-term "investing"", which missed the point that both are investing, and further misses the point that someone who is successful at this is not limiting their toolbox to a single approach.

Another way that you might look at what is done here, and I challenge you all to consider things this way, is that what we're really doing is agreeing to put up cash for a product now, that we will then sell to someone for a profit at a future point in time. In this sense what you're really doing is providing future buyers with a high-interest loan. You have the cash now that you're willing to invest, and you "agree" to sell something to someone at a future date for a premium over the purchase price.

Well, I guess the point here is that what most of you guys seem to be doing here isn't investing, but trading. You buy something cheap to sell later for profit. You then build up realised gains over time, after your sales, which you use to do more trading with. You can see your profits in your bank account from making the money on each item. Actual investing is a long-term thing, where you buy something and hold it, to get dividends and usually only sell when you think it's become overpriced, so you can pick some other bargains. I am sure there are some actual Lego investors here, who buy and hold/hoard, but I keep seeing people talking about "flipping" which is pure trading and not investing. Maybe a new thread asking people about whether they are mostly trader or investor would be in order, since the two are quite different, with the latter generally being "in" most of the time and therefore not really getting the profits until they walk away (i.e. sell their stash). In terms of Lego, I will likely just be an investor, holding onto my collection for years and years.

In my experience, some walmarts have a cap on price of Lego/product returned without receipt...$50, $70 or $80, before the manager has to step in and autherize. And not all walmarts carry the same items...meaning one time I tried returning a set back at a different Walmart (without reciept) they say it's not in our system we they can't offer store credit. When I went back to the original store they scanned it and accepted it no problem.

It all depends on whether you are a minifig collector (and how serious) or not. If you are, you would probably keep it since more than likely you will never find it again and that way you will complete Series 10 100%. But if you're not, I would just sell him and use the money to buy something you really like or to invest By the way, did they have anything interesting in the LEGOLAND store?

If LEGO makes a Steampunk line in earnest, I will likely go broke.

youtube is blocked at work so can't see if these have been mentioned but here are my fav cartoons: Voltron Danger Mouse TMNT He Man Transformers

You really have to put together a customs article. You know so much about them!!

I will be able to type a more lengthy reply later since typing on my iPod is worse than on a computer. Some people use waterslide decals. (I got a sampler pack at WWB and got to go to a session on how to apply them. I will post a picture of the decals and explain them more in deph in a later post.) I also went to a minifigure customization workshop where they explained lots about it. Most amateurs use acrylic paint to customize their minifigures, but bigger companies use printing. An example of this printing is called pad-printing and a company called Citizen Brick does that on their minifigures. I have two Marines and 3 U.S. Rangers for completing five 10 by 10 baseplates for a Iwo Jima mosaic. I will upload some pictures of the pad-printed minifigures later so you can see the great detail/printing on them. Here is a quick link if you want to look at them now. U.S. Ranger: http://www.brickmania.com/world-war-ii-u-s-army-ranger-minifig/ U.S. Marine: http://www.brickmania.com/world-war-ii-u-s-marine/

It's not that you'll actually do these things or that anyone will actually listen. It's the threat alone that's often enough to discourage bad behavior. We had a seller recently that was trying to scam an eyeshadow palette, and all it took was making her ware that I could make her life difficult, then she was nice as pie. That's how I take what theegypt is saying....

Lone Ranger ... its going to be a hit ... period

That and it has a train with a Gatling gun. Also, a bowler hat. A train. A Gatling gun. A Bowler hat. Any true gentleman's dream has these in it.

I searched the sets and found that the sets all seem to have less then 999. Maybe they will get more, hopefully they won't. The Swamp Creature - 534 left Crazy Scientist - 264 left Vampyre Castle - 663 left Ghost Train - 398 left Haunted House - 176 left The Mummy - 274 left Also, Fire Brigade still has 999+ left Grand Emporium - 999+ left Helm's Deep - 672 left B-Wing - 398 left Catcycle (which many think will make the retiring soon list soon) - 335 left

The stand owner kinda looks like a tool with that "soul patch", give him a backwards cap and you've got a Fred Durst minifig.

There is a form of arbitrage called "temporal arbitrage". Arbitrage is taking advantage of differences in price between markets. Markets can exist at different times. If you were buying something, then adding value to it, and selling it 2 months later, I'd say that's not arbitrage. That's called "value added reselling". I'm assuming that most members here aren't adding value or changing their sets, they are simply selling the set as-is in the future market.

just looked more at the site they have some pretty sweet deals. no tax or shipping as well

I knew better than to respond to Alcarin..forgive me.

Yeh but by that logic everything is investment.... either wholesale or whatever else... So if i buy chocholate bar today and prices go up 2 cents tommorow I did investment... my entire fridge is an investment... its a dumb definition ... if you'll go out on the street and ask 10000000000 people not even 1% would call either an investment.