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LEGO can correct this situation by either producing boxes with a see through flap like was done in the 70s/80s(...as mentioned above) or a completely sealed box that must be ripped open to gain access to the contents. MISB is a term that will be useless very soon. CVIB will be the new acronym of choice... Contents Verified In Box

That's an Amish Sandcrawler.

Nothing worse than having an auction with a massive amount of watchers and then the item ends up selling well below market price.

I had a pretty good week last week, and that was with fewer items for sale than I usually have. Likely just an anomoly for one week. Keep your eye on it though, and like Pacific said maybe lower a price or two here or there. Also...many buyers sort with "ending soonest" or "newly listed" so you might be in that dead zone of like 18-25 days listed, where you aren't really on those peoples radars.

Looks like it is time to invest in a portable x-ray screen Ideal for use in security, military, police and LEGO Brickpickers Suspect bag and package inspection EOD evaluation Vehicle inspection Customs searches including petrol tanks, airbags, wheels and dashboards Counter surveillance sweeps and through-wall scanning LEGO Investing

Yeah, you know the rest. When I read the story of the BPer here who opened up a box of puzzle pieces instead of LEGO I thoroughly enjoyed freaking out and waving my arms around and generally joining the discussion. I really didn't ever expect, though, that I'd have my own story to tell! Bought a Daily Bugle on clearance at a local Kmart a few weeks ago. Got to parting out our pile of Daily Bugles tonight, opened this one and... yeah, LEGO bags containing a lot of random junk toys. Some of them are actually either reglued or heat sealed. Pretty amazing, going to return it tommorow. In my defense, when you see the photo of the seal, it doesn't look obvious at all to the naked eye, the camera just picks up the tampering really well. If I strain my eyes I can just barely see the slightest scratch at the seal area. Pretty freaky. There's also a Walmart bar code sticker stuck to the back making me wonder if they were pulling the old barcode scam at Walmart and then returned it to Kmart after extracting the contents, or ???

Ebay does not always fee on shipping, that all comes down to how you sell, when you sell, how much you sell, whether you have a store, etc. The only fee I pay on ebay is a final value fee on BIN items, and those fees are roughly 8% of whatever I sell the item for. Now keep in mind I do pay a flat rate monthly fee for my store. I think there are a lot of resellers getting in the game. However, many of them are just buying and hoarding, they have no idea what it's like to sell. Once they start trying to sell things too quick they will realize how much time and money they are losing. Also, they will not like dealing with negative customers, returns, overhead expenses such as shipping labels, boxes, tape, bubble wrap, etc. So while there are many newbies to the game, many of them will be weeded out or quit before they're ever able to make a significant difference.

Helms Deep not going anywhere??? Not sure what you mean. Helms Deep was available multiple times between $90-110. Right now the cheapest one on ebay is $170 and the set just retired a few months ago. As far as the VC, well it's still available at TRU and some other smaller retail stores. You have to give these sets time!! Just wait a couple years and you'll see, both Helms Deep and VC should give decent returns, even if a lot of people are hoarding them.

Post Christmas credit card bills and Summer holiday bookings I think is the main reason for the downturn. Competition is fierce of course (we compete with each other!) so buy the right sets as cheap as possible. Last year I saw nobody browsing the Lego aisles in supermarkets but, now I see other blokes during every visit checking eBay prices before loading their trolleys. I'm changing strategy now and the first theme I'm dropping is CITY as current sold prices are poor, FRIENDS may be headed the same way due to massive increases in supply. So bad that I've returned over 200 sets (even at -40/50%) in the last month alone! By the end of this year, I'll be holding large

So...give it to me straight. Are you infering that there might be too many resellers?

THE BUBBLE IS HERE ! JUMP SHIP ! WOMEN AND BRICKPICKERS FIRST !

There are 5 major reasons for this: 1 Too many resellers 2 Too many resellers 3 Too many resellers 4 Too many resellers 5 Gee, I told you so. Nobody wanted to listen. Its only going to get worse.

I'm about 4 episodes in now. I really only watched off and on over the last 5 episodes, but did get the season 5 finale. I'm looking forward to finishing up this season, mostly to see how it ties into the greater whole.

How you sort depends on what you are looking for. If looking for something specific 'lowest price + shipping' is your friend. If you are just looking for 'a good deal', people probably chose a broad search topic (like 'lego') and either look for auctions that end soon or BIN items that are just listed. In the last two cases you would be out - but your buyer pool is probably the former - looking for something specific. I would simply try and list everything as before for a week and see how that goes. Or even better, do this for half of your (identical) items and see which sell and which don't. For the same price.

Agreed on the decreased demand, but perhaps it is because it is an online only item, and so far limited to LEGO Shop at Home and TRU at MSRP. The average consumer is not seeing this item in store and I do not think many people even know it exists. I think this will help it fly under the radar and if combined with a lower production run will make this set a big winner in the long run.

" Lego investing is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you gonna get ".

This is a revolution

The only change under the new update is now ebay requires tracking numbers to be verified. You will get credit for 1 day handling if you upload your tracking within 1 day AND that tracking number is verified at some stage. Verification means a scan somewhere along the way (could be acceptance, sorting facility or even just delivery). As long as it is scanned somewhere you will get credit going back to when the tracking number was entered into ebay. They did this as alot of sellers would simply type in a random number for tracking to get credit for items that are not trackable (baseball cards in envelopes etc). This allowed alot of sellers to recoup the FVF 2% credit for TRS and where taking money out of ebay coffers. They go by when the tracking is uploaded, not when it is scanned for handling time. Again as long as it is scanned somewhere along the way that counts as verification. You can still print a label and not mail it for 3-4 days and get credit for 1 day handling as long as it scans somewhere. This was to rectify the fake tracking number issue, not the lazy seller issue.

Those aren't junk! That's a premium selection of classic Goodwill merchandise!

Sorry to read and see you got one of these tampered sets justafrog. Really sucks. Can't believe people actually do stuff like this...it's almost worse than just stealing a set because in this scenario the lost may not be accounted for until much later and affects more than one person if you were to sell it as brand new/sealed. People who do this should be made to walk bare feet on lego in their cell for a few yrs or be force to collect and sort bricks. Usually I try to check the seals really well...if something is kinda loose I just don't buy it. But sometimes it can be hard to tell. Sucks but instead of opening sets...try weighing it? Would these scammers actually go to the length of making it weight the same as a regular set? Probably not. Too bad, not every store will want to spend the time/resources to check video and their system to try and see who actually returned this.

Most of the sets you will find on the market and are not retired so far tend to have a negative CAGR (due to being on sale during holidays, near christmas, ...), especially when it is their first year on the market (have a look at the 2014 released sets when it comes near christmas). So it depends on the theme and then on the set you are going to purchase.

Buy it. I will own one the moment it comes out. About to pass a certification test for work - I get a $500 bonus that after taxes... comes to about $300. Cha-ching! Can't wait for this set. I finally built my SSD and I just stare at it sometimes. I think Im in love.

God I hope this is a true. Hoth vehicles were the best for sure. thats really what I hope doesn't get messed up in the new movies. I want some good vehicles. Name a Hoth vehicle people didn't like. You can't... because there isn't one! (if you have one you don't like... just let me have this one. lol)

I was going to ask if a complete Hogwarts castle 4842 and The Burrows 4840 including box and manual was worth it for $75 but I think Brickpickers would send me to remedial school again like and ban me from the forum. I picked it up during lunchtime. http://losangeles.craigslist.org/sgv/tag/4389786754.html

I think that there are many new resellers that are starting off on smaller sets that are flodding the market because they are not patient and do not want to sit on some of the sets for a couple of years.

That was one of my original avatars...until I had an actual portrait taken.

This is a deal breaker for me. I'd go crazy putting all these stickers on. Love the ship though.

I think you need a new avatar I thought this post was from Ed just by glancing at my phone, but when I read the question I realized that Ed would not be asking this.

I think that we should give up trying to figure out the logic of Lego's next move.

Watchers csn be so misleading. Some people watch items just to gauge what to price theirs or just to see when a retailer will stop selling item. Funhouse and some halo megabloks sets have been on my such list forever. I plan on buying none. I recently sold an item in an auction thst had 27 watchers. I was so stoked and thought their woukd be a crazy bidding war. Their were zero bids within last two days of auction.

You got to win the best match results if you want to sell lego against all the competitors.

I have noticed a decrease in sales. substantial enough that I notice. I did some investigation and its simply more sellers with same item offering it for prices that are too low for me to go to.

I had the last 4 episodes of Season 5 to finish up, since we had our DVR replaced and I lost those episodes. I finished Season 5 & 6 over the past couple weeks. I really enjoyed the Ahsoka story at the end of Season 5. Season 6 was great. There was one slow Jar-Jar arc of about 3 eps, but the rest of the season was stellar. I do like how they threw in some mythos surrounding Darth Bane, Qui-Gon, Sidious, order 66, and Yoda's future tied into visions of end of the Jedi Order and galactic democracy. All of these arcs were tied to the movies and I think they added value to the continuity of Star Wars and the Expanded Universe. Great stuff!

I actually do not think vet and stable would ever reach $100 because of similar newer sets. Seriously TLG, enough with horses already.

It makes me sad when I hit my "like" limit for the day. :-D

Perhaps I should have said perforated thumb tab Basically what you see on smaller boxes (Riddle for the Ring, etc). A perforated half circle on one end of the box where you would push it with your thumb to open the box. Since the flaps are sealed shut, it would be harder to open and reseal this type of box

Did you think about charging 20% for returns like I do? This % does make people think twice about whether they truly like it. It's available in the ebay settings.

Don't forget ball in a cup!

This might be the most ridiculous thing I've ever read. Lego does NOT fill their product boxes with crap from Goodwill.

Sucks but this won't be the first or the last time. No way Lego would stabage their own product/brand to leave a customer unhappy (major conspiracy lol). Why would they waste their time. I don't think Lego has a full time department devoted to coming up with schemes to frustrate or mess up investors haha. It's probably someone really desperate or a low life who's doing this locally. Hope we hear less and less news of this happening.

For the US market it looks at the moment as if the Super Heroes (as well as the DC ones) are the better joice in terms of selling them earlier than the Star Wars sets (these you have to hold back for a much longer time). But, of course, you cannot generalize that. So if there is a Star Wars UCS set you can buy for more than 30% off, that could be a better joice than Super Heroes, but also here, only time will tell. (Or you will just quick flip them, but I have not that much experience with that) I think best would be to choose certain sets you like and ask for them seperately here in the forums.

Levimahan44, what Ensche said was fabulous advice. Normal fluxuation in price is normal. It goes up and down as sales and clearances come and go. I believe that CAGR is based on end value (current eBay price) and beginning value (MSRP price) as seen in the picture below: In fact, I'd say most unretired sets have negative CAGR merely because it is not rare at all for someone to be able to find and sell as set for lower than market price. Of course, 30% below is a little higher than most sets (pardon the oxymoron), but it definitely isn't rare, and shouldn't impede you from buying the set if you think it is a good investment. EDIT: LOL, I was typing my response when you replied. In my opinion, Super Heroes sets are excellent investments, in particular some of the larger ones. Star Wars ones aren't as great as they were before, but they are still great investments. Ones I'd look to buy in the future are the new battle packs that LEGO has released. BrickPicker Co-Founder Ed Mack did a great article on them if you are interested: http://blog.brickpicker.com/do-lego-battle-packs-offer-any-bang-for-your-investment-buck/

I have never had any luck using that coupon on an R2 or a DS.

clearly you have never searched ebay for used panties or used socks.

Finally built the Mini Modulars that I've been Bricklinking over the last two months. I *love* the build. It was fantastic. The imagination and engineering that went into it, to replicate the full-sized modulars at micro scale is amazing. Bricklinking, though...ugh! It's not for the faint of heart. I should have just bought it (even with eBay prices now), and built it from there.

I don't understand why everyone is waiting for double VIP. By my math, after double VIP points and tax for me, my net price is $146 (assuming I can use the points towards the same order, which we can't). If I pick this set up at Target with a gift card at 5% off face value and the 5% red card discount, it works out to about a dollar cheaper. AND, no possible red flag at LEGO. Am I missing something?

I built this from a large Pick A Brick cup parts and a few loose odds ****** ends. I was going for a space police look No directions - fun stuff !! Sent from my iPhone using Brickpicker

I had no idea the Grand Emporium was such a popular hangout in the sat wars universe.

I'd buy anything at 70-75% off. Hell, I'd buy Duplo at that high of a discount. ;)

Some of you read my light box article. I just recently discovered a new use for it! This is my three-legged, blind in one eye, cat named Tom. I am sure that everyone here with cats knows that if you leave a box on the floor, the cat will eventually end up inside the box. When I saw this, I grabbed the camera. My cat was very cooperative and looked up for most of the pictures. When I created my light box, I planned to photograph minifigures with it, but I guess it works pretty well with pets, too!