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  1. Alright, I'm selling likes! I've already bought some raffle tickets, but just for fun, for every "like" this post gets from members who joined before the time of this posting, I'll spend an equal amount on more tickets, up to $250. If it gets beyond that, I'll figure out how much more I'll spend. Let's set a like record!
    172 points
  2. I am stealing Jaisonline's idea from last year! For each LIKE $***THIS***$ post gets I will donate 1 dollar! 1 like=1 dollar towards the schools raffle!
    140 points
  3. @Mos_Eisley "imitation is the sincerest form of flattery". i would like to totally rip-off Mos' great idea of likes. This is a good cause so I don't think Mos will mind plus he's far more original than me when it comes to ideas like this. In addition to already donating 2 SW TFA sets along with a small donation, my wife and i will like to give even more by engaging other Brickpicker members. *** For each LIKE this post gets, we will donate $1 per by purchasing fundraiser tickets. No limit of likes. *** The cutoff time for my likes is Sunday @ 12:00 PM EST. note: I think we can get 500 likes with this post alone! Lets work together make it happen. Mos' post can be found below. More info = https://rallyup.com/stpaul-2016/ ----- @Ed Mack @Jeff Mack
    105 points
  4. I wanted to create a new thread in order to give progress on my site updates. I want explain a bit on what happened and what I am doing. What happened with the site? Honestly nothing really exciting or dramatic, overall in the end, I did not want to support the host I was with for the past four years after not really offering too much help with managed servers. They would spend 30 seconds looking, say they can ping the server so its up and then just say, "hey not my problem". I was on aging hardware, paying the same amount of money, so I took the opportunity to move to a new host with better/faster hardware and a staff that does help to support you when run into an issue that you can't handle on your own. I have been doing this a long time and pretty good monitoring and handling 99% of what comes my way, but there are issues that you need the next level up to help figure out what to do. I wasn't getting anything like that, but paying for it. Not anymore. What my goal is... I know more than anyone that the site needed some TLC. It's been a while since I have done any drastic updates, the site looked tired and I know the site can be so much better than what it's current state was. LEGO investing has changed since Ed and I launched the site and it's time to remove the dead content and bring more of what people are looking for. Below is the short term list of items planned for updating. I have been working on the nightly, just like the early days and enjoying seeing parts of it coming to life. Fix the login. This has been messed up and quirky for a while. This has been resolved and working well. It's a simple thing overall, but nice that it actually works how it's supposed to Overall price guide site design update. The site was tired and disjointed. I hated it and pained me to look at it. Time to start over. Brickfolio update. All the Brickfolio data is safe. I have close to three million rows of data for Brickfolio entries. Time to bring this thing to 2020. I will probably create another thread at some point to solicit some feedback on some new requests for the brickfolio Fix the data syncing with Brickset. A lot of people used this feature, but it's time to make it work the way it should. Later I will work on the content portions. The news and blogs. I have some good ideas for this, but want to get the price guide and brickfolio to you sooner than later. What I am asking for if possible... If you can, please stop asking where the brickfolio is. Again, the data is safe and I am working as fast as I can to bring it all back to you. It won't be a few days, but more like a few weeks, but it will be worth it. I setup my dev environment to push releases quick and easy. I want to create a true changelog so that you can follow updates to see what was done/fixed/new/removed, you know like what real software companies do. I really do appreciate your patience with this. It wasn't planned, but if there was going to be a time to do it, it was going to be now.
    86 points
  5. March 30, 2018. This is a date that will forever be remembered. I can get a little emotional at times. As an adult, there are a few instances when I've shed a tear. I cried when my son was born. I cried again a year later when my daughter was born. I cried tears of joy when my beloved Green Bay Packers won Super Bowl 31 after three decades of mediocrity, and again when they won Super Bowl 45. The last time I cried was two years ago this April when my Mom passed away. March 30, 2018. Today is another day that I've sobbed like a baby. Upon waking up for work, I checked my phone like I always do. Waiting for me was a PayPal notification. A large one. I checked my Bricklink account, and it appears that some blessed soul has decided that they needed some Steam Rollers in their life. Yes, some Steam Rollers. All of them. 27 to be exact. Gone. Purchased by an unknown person. A risk taker. A gambler. A guardian angel, perhaps? I began this saga with over 50 of those Steam Rollers. I'd sell one here, one there through multiple platforms, slowly chipping away at that number. I whittled it down to 27. Now I have 0. They are gone. The purchase price was just a shade over $1k. I'll make a few bucks on each one after the usual fees and shipping, but that's not the point in this circumstance. The nightmare is finally over. March 30, 2018 is my Independance Day.
    81 points
  6. This month (November 2016) marks my first complete year as a LEGO reseller and active BrickPicker, as well as the second anniversary of coming out of my Dark Ages. Okay, I was reading catalogs and buying a few cool sets for my kids every year before 2014, but nothing like the full-on assault of having to catch up with all that LEGO has offered in the past. To celebrate these milestones I thought it would be a nice idea to contribute some of my key lessons from the past year back to this community. First of all, a little background. What really got me out of my Dark Ages was LEGO Trains, actually, it was a Fleischmann N-scale model train set that I used to have when I was a kid and which my dad brought over from Europe to the US 2 years ago. Enthusiasm over introducing my son and daughter to model railroading quickly turned into disillusion because I realized that none of the US manufacturers made tracks compatible with my N-scale track, and that just buying extra rolling stock was going to set me back hundreds of dollars for single-purpose items, which break irreparably when played with by (young) kids. Then a little light-bulb went off in my head: What if I bought LEGO trains instead – we could build our own trains, cars etc., and whenever we wanted something different, we just take it all apart. So with my wife’s blessing, Santa brought the Blue Cargo Train set (60057) and two Horizon Express sets for Christmas 2014. Unbeknownst to her, I had also managed to get an (already retired) Maersk Train, a few My Own Train carriages and some other random train-related bulk lots. I participated in a RailBricks contest (the last one they did before unfortunately shuttering the magazine) and started my decent into the delightful madness that is the world of AFOLs. Since I’m a train guy, you won’t hear stories from me about having to have this or that Star Wars ship, or those exclusive SuperHeroes minifigs. Sure, my son has a Millenium Falcon and Poe’s X-Wing, and the key SW characters as buildables, but our LEGO buying was first focused on Chima (my son loved it), then shifted to Bionicle, and now my kids’ playing revolves around Harry Potter – we don’t own any of the sets, but have a few minifigures and a lot of imagination. My daughter has a lot of Friends sets which she loves, but is slowly growing out of her interest for these (my kids are 10 year old twins at the time of this writing). Then November 2015 hit, and I started investigating the value of some sets, and joined the BrickPicker forums. My first purchases started rolling in ….. Pirate Chess Sets from LEGO Shop-at-Home, and a few handfuls of 10697 Brick Boxes from WalMart. As I really love the brick, I had determined I was going to start my own BrickLink store (having designed several train cars and placing tens of BL orders I had gotten familiar with how this worked). And I read and read and read on BrickPicker, and participated in the discussions, and grew wiser and smarter and, I must say, warier as time went by. Here are the key lessons I’ve learned from my first year: The buying part is easy. The buying part is fun. Great adrenaline rush. But for many of us, there’s too much to buy. Just because it’s 50% off doesn’t mean you NEED to buy it. Case in point: I picked up a 31033 Vehicle Transport at Target in January 2016 for $10 (RRP: $25, so 60% off). Not a particularly nice set, it had just been released, available everywhere, and who will buy from you as a beginning Ebay seller? Needless to say, this set still sits unsold on my shelf. It’s all about buy-in. Where previous strategies mainly revolved around getting your hands on as many of the expensive sets as possible before they quickly but inevitably retired without much fanfare, the LEGO reselling game is undergoing a massive change. Buy-in price seems to be the key factor now. As a beginning buyer I was excited when I saw 20% off. A year later, 40-50% is where my heartbeat starts increasing. Selling takes time. It’s not difficult, it just takes time. Time to establish yourself as a trustworthy seller. Time to wait for prices to rise to a level you’re comfortable with. Unless you stumbled upon something truly desirable and unavailable, or if you are able to price significantly below others, don’t count on things selling within the first 30-day listing period. Darth Revans, Iron Patriots and Silver Centurions are obvious exceptions, but those don’t come by often. For other items it is a slow, slow game – listing and relisting. The game changes continuously. What works one month might no longer work the next month. Every Bob and Sally has LEGO items in their Ebay store. More and more people join and try to eke out an ever smaller amount of profit. Amazon throws up a gate. Ebay and Target stop a lucrative giftcard cycle. You need to stay in touch or your investments become much harder to sell, or your profit evaporates. Making a decent profit is not easy. At least, not for big(ger) sets. Just look at Ebay: You bought a set for $100 and want to make good profit. If you sell for $150 (shipping included), you will pay ~$18 to Ebay/Paypal in fees, and ~$10-$20 in shipping (in the US, depending on where you live). That’s $30-$40 off of your selling price, so you end up making $10-$20. A small profit is also profit, but you’ve spent time on this set, buying it, storing it, packing it, listing it, checking comparables etc. Unless you’re shifting hundreds of these sets a month, this will not be worth your while. Your time is valuable. Even if you consider this “only a hobby”, before you know you’re in your car driving from one Target to another. I have 6 or 7 Targets in a 15 mile radius from my house, and a similar amount of Walmarts. Popping into one is a quick affair. But when those clearance rumors swirly, and stock checkers are unreliable, your “quick check what they have” becomes a 3hrs+ road-trip. Plus, with 800+ LEGO sets on the market, you’re quickly spending 20-30 mins per store checking resale values, BL part-out costs etc. Then you need to list. Take a picture or two. Research what others are listing for. Do your administration (which for a detailed oriented person like me means adding a row for each set in a 30+ column spreadsheet tracking all sorts of aspects of your purchases). And for those of us who do the part-out route, there’s time in sorting out the set contents, setting up an organizational system, updating BL inventories etc. Choose your game plan. There is too much going on (what with LEGO producing 800+ sets a year as mentioned before) to play all fields. Unless you’re sitting on vast amounts of spare capital, you cannot AND go deep on expensive sets, and cover all themes (Modulars, SW UCS, GBHQ, SHIELD Helicarrier, Advanced Technic models etc) and part out, and BrickLink …. Pick one strategy that best fits your lifestyle. Your options are: Good old-fashioned investing – buy expensive sets for true investment purposes, i.e. stash them away for 3-5 years post retirement and see if that magical 3xMSRP has appeared. Clearance hunting for quick flip – grab those 50-75% off sets, and list them within a year to see if you can get >MSRP to get 75-100% ROI. Diamonds in the rough – take a punt on a few sets that you believe are “iconic” and not soon remade. Remember: First rule of fight club is that nobody talks about fight club. Sit back and watch others scramble over the “common” sets, and rake in the profits when the sets are retired and people realize they “need” them. Or at least, that’s the theory. Buy for part-out. Split your sets into minifigs, buildings and vehicles, and sell them separately for more than the original sets’ cost. I’ve had some luck with this strategy, though it was never my game plan – especially with Dimensions (minifigure and video-game discs sold separately, with the minibuilds as parts for my BL store inventory). Buy for parts. Look at which sets have good BL value, but be careful: unique/niche parts can drive up the value but see very little sales. Be selective. Don’t be a sheep. Tied to the previous point. It is so easy to get carried away. “Great deal on this SW UCS – now 30% off!”. Sure, but if you have a budget (and I recommend you have one from the get-go), plonking down a few hundred bucks on a set that you’ll likely have on a shelf for the next 2-3 years might not be the wisest decision. Plus, there are many others who jump in on this, so you need to battle your competitors in a game that is not your strength. Net, stick to your own plan. Document. Document. Document. Keep track of what you spend and how much you earn. A spreadsheet is good enough. Don’t count on profit until you have it in your PayPal account. Account for all expenses – boxes, shelving, tape, you name it. Find the right marketplace. Depending on your location, you have multiple options. Each marketplace has its plusses and minusses. The key ones are: Ebay. First choice for many. Used by bargain hunters, savvy shoppers and has generally a good, sizeable audience. To really have a good experience, you need to be honest in listing (duh), take lots of pictures, price right, ship fast, and have a return policy (and ideally, a generous one). Also, you need to use PayPal, and unless you work yourself up to Top Rated Seller, count on 12% of your total sale price (including shipping!) to be taken as fees. Amazon. Until very recently the absolute best place to start selling. Everybody shops at Amazon. Unfortunately, unless you pay $1k and provide proof of purchase (and potentially a letter from TLG proving you are an authorized reseller), you cannot list LEGO anymore. I was lucky to get grandfathered in based on a few sales I had in the spring and summer. FBA (Fulfilled by Amazon) is the best one of the lot – limited effort (buy, add to inventory, pack and ship to Amazon – they take care of the rest) and a lot of eyeballs. This comes at a price: up to 20% of the sale price goes to uncle Jeff, but the “Prime” label makes up for that by commanding a premium price from buyers, and people happily click away. Plus, you get a chance to be featured in the Buy Box. Just be aware of returns – you might have to swallow the occasional destroyed item. Craigslist. Flea-market audience. Has the hassle of having to meet with people (and finding a place where to do this can sometimes take a lot of back-and-forth with your buyer), but once the sale is made you have no risk and no obligations. Also: no fees. BrickLink (and BrickOwl, its key competitor). AFOLs only. Limited eyes, but limited fees (1-2%). Your buyers know what they want. Shipping is extra, so no need to accounting for shipping costs in calculating your price. The only downside is that setting up shop properly is not easy – adding shipment methods, figuring out how to price those methods correctly etc. all needs some research. Of course you can do without, but you get more sales if you do it right. Facebook selling groups. No real experience here on my end. I’m part of my local Buying/Selling group, but what I see is not instilling much confidence: used cars, pitbull pups and phones. I doubt anyone will want to buy a LEGO set at a reseller premium there. Others have reported more success. There are other apps and marketplaces: Offerup, Kijiji in Canada, Gumtree in the UK, Marktplaats in the Netherlands and Belgium …. I have no experience with these but from what I’ve heard, they fit in with Craigslist/Facebook above. Conventions, flea-markets, garage sales. Very interesting venues, each with their own dynamic. You could get away with charging a premium at conventions (and potentially at flea-markets), but often your participation comes with a fee, so you need to account for that. Again, not an area I have dabbled in so far. Read up on key threads. Check what happened to 41999 to understand how the horde can get carried away sometimes. Read the Amazon/Ebay/CL threads for tips on how to get started, and for answers to commonly experienced questions. Check out the Ethics forum to understand what is being frowned upon – if we don’t keep certain practices and standards, retailers will counteract and remove things like the ability to stack coupons, or the acceptance of printed coupons, or even the privilege of a hassle-free return. And before you make your first purchase, check the speculative bubble thread – if you are still convinced you want to do this after reading that thread, you’re probably strong enough to handle what’s coming (or rozy-eyed enough to not care). Master the art of stacking. There are published deals (50% off at Target!) and there are “make your own deals”. The latter have the benefit that they are YMMV (your mileage may vary) – others likely won’t be able to replicate them. Several retailers (Toys’r’us, Kmart/Sears, Meijer, BAM, Ebay, Galeria-kaufhof and mytoys in Germany to name a few) have coupon and discount policies that allow for the stacking of offers. Combine sale pricing with credit card discounts, with reduced-price Gift Cards, with 20% off coupons, with Buy-one-get-one-free (BOGOF) offers, with points/rewards program certificates, until your buy-in price approaches $0. Then rub it in other’s faces on the "What LEGO set did you buy today" thread. Get in on those loyalty programs. For the price of a small piece of your soul, join as many rewards programs as you can. Ebay Bucks, TRU Rewards, Shop-Your-Way, Meijer mPerks, BAM club membership, Barnes & Noble membership, you name it. Carry the card. And if you don’t mind carrying multiple credit cards, use store-specific CC’s for your purchases, and earn discounts and cashback. Just pay them off every month, please. Be truthful in accounting. This goes two ways: Don’t get into trouble with the IRS. If you sell for profit, you are generating income. Better report it (plus in the US you can deduct the expenses incurred in making the sale, such as car mileage, shipping materials, storage materials etc.). Officially you should also register yourself as a reseller in your state/county (unless you block people in your state from buying from you). For my state (Ohio) this was really not a big deal – a small fee, some paperwork, and a twice-a-year reporting duty (so far always $0). Also, configure your selling accounts (Ebay, BrickLink) to automatically charge sales tax on purchases made by local buyers. You can only do this on Amazon if you have a professional selling account – when you sell as an individual you’ll just have to pay the sales tax out of the sales price. As a benefit: I get to buy tax-free in the few places that haven’t banned resellers (Amazon, Walmart) as long as it is for store inventory. Think about how you account for points, freebies etc. There are many ways to skin the cat, but I prefer this approach: Points never count as a discount on the purchase made to earn them, only as a discount on the purchase where they are used. Freebies count as a $0 purchase, and everything I earn on them is (gross) profit. So, those sets I bought at LEGO S@H for $75 to get the free Gingerbread House really cost me $75, even though I sold the GBH for $50 and made $40 profit after fees and shipping, and got 150 points as part of double VIP. Get approval from your S.O. (Significant Other). Some of us are blessed with AFOL partners. Some of us have bargaining partners – if you want to do this, then let me do my thing. Some of us have eye-rolling partners. And even some of us have to pretend and work undercover. Oh, and some don’t have partners, but I’m giving them a break and will not tap into my arsenal of AFOL bachelor puns. At least come to some sort of an arrangement. LEGO should never be the reason a relationship ends, and should never be more important than your S.O. I had big plans (and still have big plans) regarding my BL shop as well as regarding my LEGO Train building hobby. They’ve been slowed down – my wife protested against the amount of time I was spending on this and she was right. <Insert doormat pun here> Practice self-constraint. No you don’t have to buy it all. Often I go all the way through the checkout process and then take a breather. A quick comparison with other sites. Read some reviews. Think "yes it is x% off, but you still pay $y". And after amassing a closet full of LEGO: “First sell enough until you have more funds and more space, then buy again”. What also helps me is that I have a (very short) list of sets I really want to have for my personal collection. If there ever is a good deal on those, I’ll jump on it (ideally using Ebay Bucks or Credit Card reward dollars). For the other deals: there will be more deals in the future. Be helpful and you’ll be better off for it. Just like you need to build up a reputation of trustworthyness on Ebay or Amazon, I advise everyone to do the same on BrickPicker. Look out for your fellow BP-ers. Help them score a deal when needed. Post those deals when you see them (even if they don’t interest you), or at least, post them after you had your fill. Because all the goodwill you’re building up will help you get better deals yourself – via member-to-member private messages, or just by being "in-tune" with what is happening on the marketplace. And unlike many other platforms on the vast World Wide Web, Brickpicker is a very civilized, high-intelligence online forum. Conversations are kind, well articulated and insightful. Moderators intervene at the right time, and with clear principles. And everyone likes a giggle. Unless you are a professional reseller (and I know there are several that frequent BP), remember that this is supposed to be a hobby. You’ll enjoy it more when you keep your love of LEGO alive. Scale back when you don’t have time. Sell if you need cash. Pop seals and build if there’s something you’ve now taken a fancy to, or if the market for the set has cratered. But please, please don’t get in over your head. To conclude my story: I have spent considerable time over the first half of 2016 on building inventory, writing software to manage my BL store’s sales and pricing analytics, and sorted through about half of my sets and parted them out. I listed ~20k parts on BL, and have seen some nice sales coming through. However, as this is my hobby, I’ve had to take a break from adding to my BL store and it has been in hibernation mode over the past months as other priorities took over. I have continued to list sets on Ebay and Amazon to keep some sales going. I bought well – some initial purchases were not as good as some later ones when I got clearer on what I needed to look for in sets, however, those were offset by some lucky finds (Ghosts for half price, anyone?). I resigned myself to contributing to reporting sales and delightful banter to BP, and with ~3.5k posts to my name in just a year, I think I’ve been quite successful at that strategy at least. To round it all up, some statistics from my first year: Total resale purchases including supplies, shipping costs and fees: $7.3k Average discount over MSRP: 44% Total sales revenue: $3.0k ROI on those sales: >175% (But I sold quite a lot of freebies which drive ROI up) Average fee paid (Ebay, Amazon, BrickLink/BrickOwl): 11.2% Parts amassed for my BL store: ~110k Here’s to a great second year! View full blog article
    73 points
  7. Hi Folks. I'll do the same as last year (copying Mos' original idea) to support the children of NJ's St. Paul School. For each "LIKE" THIS SPECIFIC post gets, I'll put $1 toward the raffle. Thanks, JA Is Online
    63 points
  8. That's a great link right above, lets revive this forum a little BPs! if you got your money on bundle #5, you may just be getting my bricks too anyway, as cheap as I am, as lazy, as....as NOT-participating-in-SH.T as I am, I'm going to make a little version of Mos_Eisley $-4-likes idea, give this post 10 likes and I'll spend $10 on raffle ticket, up to 50 likes/$50! Let's go. (I'll pay on last day of the raffle Ed) And on the side, buy some tix too! Plus like Mos_Eisley post that I provided...
    62 points
  9. Materials guide for LEGO selling & shipping Many members have asked for a centralized place where they can go for shipping box information. I'm going to pin this post and update it as new information is provided. I just want to take a few minutes and thank those who wrote the following articles. They are still very good reference materials for the LEGO storage and shipping process. I may develop this into a blog article eventually. Fcbarcelona101's : Selling LEGO : Basic Materials Guide Mos Eisley 's : LEGO Storage Wars Incompetech's Catalog of Amazon.com Box Sizes - (thanks No More Monkeys) Amazon Boxes Sorted list by length - courtesy of pstebbing I've scoured the forums and here is a list of box sizes with basic set information: Boxes: 24x20x8 : Super Star Destroyer; Death Star, Roller Coaster, UCS Sandcrawler, Assembly Square 24x20x6 : Thicker sets like Town Hall, Tower Bridge 24x16x6 - 60052 Cargo Train, R2-D2, Maersk Line Triple-E, 7939 Cargo Train 24x16x4 - Helm's Deep, Vampyre Castle, Black Pearl, Friends Riding Camp, Parisian Restaurant, High Speed Passenger Train, Jabba's Palace, Downtown Diner 24x20x4 : Grand Emporium, Pet Shop, Imperial Shuttle, Haunted House, Palace Cinema, Fire Brigade 24x14x4 : Dolphin Cruiser, Coast Guard Patrol 24x4x12 - Dolphin Cruiser, Coast Guard Patrol 20x16x4 - Volkswagen Camper Van, Olivia's House, Sonic Raider, Sopwith, Creator Bike Shop, Batcave, Quinjet, Moria &amp; Ambush 20x16x6 : Thicker sets like the Republic Gunship; City Cargo Plane 20x14x4 : Attack on Weathertop, Hulk 's Helicarrier Breakout, X-Wing 9493, Black Gate 16x16x4 : Gungan Sub, Pre Viszla, Tie Fighter 16x10x4 : Council of Elrond, Desert Skiff, City Grand Prix Truck 16x10x6 : Thicker sets like Creator Family House, Hillside House 15x12x4 : Funhouse, Orc Forge, Tumbler Chase, Daily Bugle Showdown, Hulk Lab Smash 12x12x4 : Uruk Hai Army, City Cargo Truck, Creator Treehouse, City Fire Emergency 11-3/4x8-3/4x4-3/4 : Wolverine Chopper, Arctic Batman, Power Armor Lex, Droid Escape, Cloud Cuckoo Palace 12x8x3 - Battle Packs, CA Avenging Cycle, Catwoman, Gandalf Arrives, Holiday sets 10x8x4 : Battle Packs, CA Avenging Cycle, Catwoman, Gandalf Arrives, Holiday sets Envelopes: 4x8 : Minifigs & small polybags 6x9 : Polybags small & larger 10.5 x 16 : Larger shipments of 3 x polybags or more Packing Tape : buy in bulk or on sale : you can throw some in during a Staples coupon promotion to get up to free shipping Walmart.com Duck Brand Packaging Tape http://www.staples.com/Staples-Standard-Grade-Packaging-Tape-Clear-189-x-110-yds-6-Rolls/product_380107 Retailers: Uline.com : holiday sale starts first part of November (usually 30% off) Staples.com : use coupon promotions - $10 off $30, $20 off $75, free shipping over $60 Walmart.com USPS Priority Mail (free boxes at USPS.com) Michigan Box Company: Flat Boxes 18"-23" L (thanks pstebbing) GBE Packaging (thanks pstebbing) PackingSupplies.com http://www.packaging...ated_boxes.html (thanks pstebbing) Bubble Wrap: 3/16" thick x 350' ft x 12" wide - eBay Sams Club 3/16" - 12"x240' $12.98 (In store) ($.05/LF) (thanks pstebbing) I like to use large and small retailer plastic bags to wrap items in, even after I bubble wrap it. For battle packs and even small sets, I sometimes use Wal-Mart, Target, or plastic bags from any store. Additional packing isn 't really needed. Usually like 2 bags on bottom, one to wrap the item, and two bags on top. Make sure to cover the corners of the item real nice to provide extra padding. Rule of thumb : ship & pack all of your items the same way you 'd like to receive items you've purchased. Shipping Paper: Collect it when you receive shipments. http://www.amazon.com/Pratt-Multipurpose-Packaging-KPR30241200R-Length/dp/B00AI652CM/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1408061459&sr=8-1&keywords=pratt+kraft+paper+1200? Shipping Labels & Printers: Dymo 450 & Dymo 400 Brother QL-700 DoNotInsertIntoMouth's : How to setup your label printer for shipping on eBay Feel free to post a follow-up or point out anything I missed. I 'll update it with what everyone wants added. I hope this is helpful.
    57 points
  10. Well, I’ve been quite busy for the past 6 months or so…but I have been slowly piecing together and building a train terminal that I purchased the instructions from on eBay (https://www.ebay.com/itm/Lego-Station-PDF-instructions-MOC-Building-City-Modular-/152374747648?hash=item237a3e2200). I also did some modifications and customized it a little bit by adding a comic shop and a small convenience store (with stickers from Brick Builders Pro (http://www.brickbuilderspro.com/). It was quite the project and I just finished it, so I thought I would show some pictures to you all. I had some help sourcing some of the parts from my local Bricks and Minifigs store. There are around 12,000-13,000 parts to the building. Eventually I plan on adding a 60051 High Speed Passenger train or two and doing some more changes/modifications to it….but I am going to save that for a later date.
    57 points
  11. This one is for you LEGO, inspired by @BrickLegacy and brought to you by Brickpickers everywhere.
    55 points
  12. I've been searching for a nice community and stumbled in here. I am 40 now, but grew up with Legos into my teen years. After that, well, I didn't have much time for the hobby and it faded away mostly. Fast forward to the now. I didn't really fall back into the exciting hobby I once knew as a kid. It was all by "happenstance". Let's rewind a few years. 2012, I had been a cop for 13 years. One night, I was outside of my patrol car with some kids that were out at 2am without permission. While I was talking with them, I was struck by a passing car. I suffered a lot of injuries, but the worst was the brain injury. Let's skip through the past 4 years. I saw the Ghostbusters firehouse through an advertisement for the new movie. I LOVED the franchise and figured I'd give it a go. It really put my recovery to the test. I had to use a lot of strategies to be able to build that monster. My wife and I saw that I used my notes that I have to keep every day, lists of different strategies I use daily to solve problems. So, I've been getting different sets to try and learn new ways to do things that others take for granted each day. That's the short version. So, I'm really happy to be here, and look forward to reading and contributing the best I can to the community.
    51 points
  13. Wow. This might be one of the craziest deals I ever found. I just left Savers (a goodwill type store). Found a big bag of Legos marked $9.99. I had a 30% off coupon, so I paid $7. I wasn't sure what was in the bag, but it was big enough to be worth it to me. Looked like a lot of white and blue so I was assuming some kind of city police stuff. Didn't see any minifigures so I was a little disappointed, but I saw a some numbered bags so that's cool. I got in the truck and open it up. Start pulling out all sealed bags. Lots of white and blue. Oh look, an instruction manual. Woah. It's a freaking UCS R2D2! All bags present and sealed. Instructions never opened.
    48 points
  14. This month (November 2016) marks my first complete year as a LEGO reseller and active BrickPicker, as well as the second anniversary of coming out of my Dark Ages. Okay, I was reading catalogs and buying a few cool sets for my kids every year before 2014, but nothing like the full-on assault of having to catch up with all that LEGO has offered in the past. To celebrate these milestones I thought it would be a nice idea to contribute some of my key lessons from the past year back to this community. First of all, a little background. What really got me out of my Dark Ages was LEGO Trains, actually, it was a Fleischmann N-scale model train set that I used to have when I was a kid and which my dad brought over from Europe to the US 2 years ago. Enthusiasm over introducing my son and daughter to model railroading quickly turned into disillusion because I realized that none of the US manufacturers made tracks compatible with my N-scale track, and that just buying extra rolling stock was going to set me back hundreds of dollars for single-purpose items, which break irreparably when played with by (young) kids. Then a little light-bulb went off in my head: What if I bought LEGO trains instead – we could build our own trains, cars etc., and whenever we wanted something different, we just take it all apart. So with my wife’s blessing, Santa brought the Blue Cargo Train set (60057) and two Horizon Express sets for Christmas 2014. Unbeknownst to her, I had also managed to get an (already retired) Maersk Train, a few My Own Train carriages and some other random train-related bulk lots. I participated in a RailBricks contest (the last one they did before unfortunately shuttering the magazine) and started my decent into the delightful madness that is the world of AFOLs. Since I’m a train guy, you won’t hear stories from me about having to have this or that Star Wars ship, or those exclusive SuperHeroes minifigs. Sure, my son has a Millenium Falcon and Poe’s X-Wing, and the key SW characters as buildables, but our LEGO buying was first focused on Chima (my son loved it), then shifted to Bionicle, and now my kids’ playing revolves around Harry Potter – we don’t own any of the sets, but have a few minifigures and a lot of imagination. My daughter has a lot of Friends sets which she loves, but is slowly growing out of her interest for these (my kids are 10 year old twins at the time of this writing). Then November 2015 hit, and I started investigating the value of some sets, and joined the BrickPicker forums. My first purchases started rolling in ….. Pirate Chess Sets from LEGO Shop-at-Home, and a few handfuls of 10697 Brick Boxes from WalMart. As I really love the brick, I had determined I was going to start my own BrickLink store (having designed several train cars and placing tens of BL orders I had gotten familiar with how this worked). And I read and read and read on BrickPicker, and participated in the discussions, and grew wiser and smarter and, I must say, warier as time went by. Here are the key lessons I’ve learned from my first year: The buying part is easy. The buying part is fun. Great adrenaline rush. But for many of us, there’s too much to buy. Just because it’s 50% off doesn’t mean you NEED to buy it. Case in point: I picked up a 31033 Vehicle Transport at Target in January 2016 for $10 (RRP: $25, so 60% off). Not a particularly nice set, it had just been released, available everywhere, and who will buy from you as a beginning Ebay seller? Needless to say, this set still sits unsold on my shelf. It’s all about buy-in. Where previous strategies mainly revolved around getting your hands on as many of the expensive sets as possible before they quickly but inevitably retired without much fanfare, the LEGO reselling game is undergoing a massive change. Buy-in price seems to be the key factor now. As a beginning buyer I was excited when I saw 20% off. A year later, 40-50% is where my heartbeat starts increasing. Selling takes time. It’s not difficult, it just takes time. Time to establish yourself as a trustworthy seller. Time to wait for prices to rise to a level you’re comfortable with. Unless you stumbled upon something truly desirable and unavailable, or if you are able to price significantly below others, don’t count on things selling within the first 30-day listing period. Darth Revans, Iron Patriots and Silver Centurions are obvious exceptions, but those don’t come by often. For other items it is a slow, slow game – listing and relisting. The game changes continuously. What works one month might no longer work the next month. Every Bob and Sally has LEGO items in their Ebay store. More and more people join and try to eke out an ever smaller amount of profit. Amazon throws up a gate. Ebay and Target stop a lucrative giftcard cycle. You need to stay in touch or your investments become much harder to sell, or your profit evaporates. Making a decent profit is not easy. At least, not for big(ger) sets. Just look at Ebay: You bought a set for $100 and want to make good profit. If you sell for $150 (shipping included), you will pay ~$18 to Ebay/Paypal in fees, and ~$10-$20 in shipping (in the US, depending on where you live). That’s $30-$40 off of your selling price, so you end up making $10-$20. A small profit is also profit, but you’ve spent time on this set, buying it, storing it, packing it, listing it, checking comparables etc. Unless you’re shifting hundreds of these sets a month, this will not be worth your while. Your time is valuable. Even if you consider this “only a hobby”, before you know you’re in your car driving from one Target to another. I have 6 or 7 Targets in a 15 mile radius from my house, and a similar amount of Walmarts. Popping into one is a quick affair. But when those clearance rumors swirly, and stock checkers are unreliable, your “quick check what they have” becomes a 3hrs+ road-trip. Plus, with 800+ LEGO sets on the market, you’re quickly spending 20-30 mins per store checking resale values, BL part-out costs etc. Then you need to list. Take a picture or two. Research what others are listing for. Do your administration (which for a detailed oriented person like me means adding a row for each set in a 30+ column spreadsheet tracking all sorts of aspects of your purchases). And for those of us who do the part-out route, there’s time in sorting out the set contents, setting up an organizational system, updating BL inventories etc. Choose your game plan. There is too much going on (what with LEGO producing 800+ sets a year as mentioned before) to play all fields. Unless you’re sitting on vast amounts of spare capital, you cannot AND go deep on expensive sets, and cover all themes (Modulars, SW UCS, GBHQ, SHIELD Helicarrier, Advanced Technic models etc) and part out, and BrickLink …. Pick one strategy that best fits your lifestyle. Your options are: Good old-fashioned investing – buy expensive sets for true investment purposes, i.e. stash them away for 3-5 years post retirement and see if that magical 3xMSRP has appeared. Clearance hunting for quick flip – grab those 50-75% off sets, and list them within a year to see if you can get >MSRP to get 75-100% ROI. Diamonds in the rough – take a punt on a few sets that you believe are “iconic” and not soon remade. Remember: First rule of fight club is that nobody talks about fight club. Sit back and watch others scramble over the “common” sets, and rake in the profits when the sets are retired and people realize they “need” them. Or at least, that’s the theory. Buy for part-out. Split your sets into minifigs, buildings and vehicles, and sell them separately for more than the original sets’ cost. I’ve had some luck with this strategy, though it was never my game plan – especially with Dimensions (minifigure and video-game discs sold separately, with the minibuilds as parts for my BL store inventory). Buy for parts. Look at which sets have good BL value, but be careful: unique/niche parts can drive up the value but see very little sales. Be selective. Don’t be a sheep. Tied to the previous point. It is so easy to get carried away. “Great deal on this SW UCS – now 30% off!”. Sure, but if you have a budget (and I recommend you have one from the get-go), plonking down a few hundred bucks on a set that you’ll likely have on a shelf for the next 2-3 years might not be the wisest decision. Plus, there are many others who jump in on this, so you need to battle your competitors in a game that is not your strength. Net, stick to your own plan. Document. Document. Document. Keep track of what you spend and how much you earn. A spreadsheet is good enough. Don’t count on profit until you have it in your PayPal account. Account for all expenses – boxes, shelving, tape, you name it. Find the right marketplace. Depending on your location, you have multiple options. Each marketplace has its plusses and minusses. The key ones are: Ebay. First choice for many. Used by bargain hunters, savvy shoppers and has generally a good, sizeable audience. To really have a good experience, you need to be honest in listing (duh), take lots of pictures, price right, ship fast, and have a return policy (and ideally, a generous one). Also, you need to use PayPal, and unless you work yourself up to Top Rated Seller, count on 12% of your total sale price (including shipping!) to be taken as fees. Amazon. Until very recently the absolute best place to start selling. Everybody shops at Amazon. Unfortunately, unless you pay $1k and provide proof of purchase (and potentially a letter from TLG proving you are an authorized reseller), you cannot list LEGO anymore. I was lucky to get grandfathered in based on a few sales I had in the spring and summer. FBA (Fulfilled by Amazon) is the best one of the lot – limited effort (buy, add to inventory, pack and ship to Amazon – they take care of the rest) and a lot of eyeballs. This comes at a price: up to 20% of the sale price goes to uncle Jeff, but the “Prime” label makes up for that by commanding a premium price from buyers, and people happily click away. Plus, you get a chance to be featured in the Buy Box. Just be aware of returns – you might have to swallow the occasional destroyed item. Craigslist. Flea-market audience. Has the hassle of having to meet with people (and finding a place where to do this can sometimes take a lot of back-and-forth with your buyer), but once the sale is made you have no risk and no obligations. Also: no fees. BrickLink (and BrickOwl, its key competitor). AFOLs only. Limited eyes, but limited fees (1-2%). Your buyers know what they want. Shipping is extra, so no need to accounting for shipping costs in calculating your price. The only downside is that setting up shop properly is not easy – adding shipment methods, figuring out how to price those methods correctly etc. all needs some research. Of course you can do without, but you get more sales if you do it right. Facebook selling groups. No real experience here on my end. I’m part of my local Buying/Selling group, but what I see is not instilling much confidence: used cars, pitbull pups and phones. I doubt anyone will want to buy a LEGO set at a reseller premium there. Others have reported more success. There are other apps and marketplaces: Offerup, Kijiji in Canada, Gumtree in the UK, Marktplaats in the Netherlands and Belgium …. I have no experience with these but from what I’ve heard, they fit in with Craigslist/Facebook above. Conventions, flea-markets, garage sales. Very interesting venues, each with their own dynamic. You could get away with charging a premium at conventions (and potentially at flea-markets), but often your participation comes with a fee, so you need to account for that. Again, not an area I have dabbled in so far. Read up on key threads. Check what happened to 41999 to understand how the horde can get carried away sometimes. Read the Amazon/Ebay/CL threads for tips on how to get started, and for answers to commonly experienced questions. Check out the Ethics forum to understand what is being frowned upon – if we don’t keep certain practices and standards, retailers will counteract and remove things like the ability to stack coupons, or the acceptance of printed coupons, or even the privilege of a hassle-free return. And before you make your first purchase, check the speculative bubble thread – if you are still convinced you want to do this after reading that thread, you’re probably strong enough to handle what’s coming (or rozy-eyed enough to not care). Master the art of stacking. There are published deals (50% off at Target!) and there are “make your own deals”. The latter have the benefit that they are YMMV (your mileage may vary) – others likely won’t be able to replicate them. Several retailers (Toys’r’us, Kmart/Sears, Meijer, BAM, Ebay, Galeria-kaufhof and mytoys in Germany to name a few) have coupon and discount policies that allow for the stacking of offers. Combine sale pricing with credit card discounts, with reduced-price Gift Cards, with 20% off coupons, with Buy-one-get-one-free (BOGOF) offers, with points/rewards program certificates, until your buy-in price approaches $0. Then rub it in other’s faces on the "What LEGO set did you buy today" thread. Get in on those loyalty programs. For the price of a small piece of your soul, join as many rewards programs as you can. Ebay Bucks, TRU Rewards, Shop-Your-Way, Meijer mPerks, BAM club membership, Barnes & Noble membership, you name it. Carry the card. And if you don’t mind carrying multiple credit cards, use store-specific CC’s for your purchases, and earn discounts and cashback. Just pay them off every month, please. Be truthful in accounting. This goes two ways: Don’t get into trouble with the IRS. If you sell for profit, you are generating income. Better report it (plus in the US you can deduct the expenses incurred in making the sale, such as car mileage, shipping materials, storage materials etc.). Officially you should also register yourself as a reseller in your state/county (unless you block people in your state from buying from you). For my state (Ohio) this was really not a big deal – a small fee, some paperwork, and a twice-a-year reporting duty (so far always $0). Also, configure your selling accounts (Ebay, BrickLink) to automatically charge sales tax on purchases made by local buyers. You can only do this on Amazon if you have a professional selling account – when you sell as an individual you’ll just have to pay the sales tax out of the sales price. As a benefit: I get to buy tax-free in the few places that haven’t banned resellers (Amazon, Walmart) as long as it is for store inventory. Think about how you account for points, freebies etc. There are many ways to skin the cat, but I prefer this approach: Points never count as a discount on the purchase made to earn them, only as a discount on the purchase where they are used. Freebies count as a $0 purchase, and everything I earn on them is (gross) profit. So, those sets I bought at LEGO S@H for $75 to get the free Gingerbread House really cost me $75, even though I sold the GBH for $50 and made $40 profit after fees and shipping, and got 150 points as part of double VIP. Get approval from your S.O. (Significant Other). Some of us are blessed with AFOL partners. Some of us have bargaining partners – if you want to do this, then let me do my thing. Some of us have eye-rolling partners. And even some of us have to pretend and work undercover. Oh, and some don’t have partners, but I’m giving them a break and will not tap into my arsenal of AFOL bachelor puns. At least come to some sort of an arrangement. LEGO should never be the reason a relationship ends, and should never be more important than your S.O. I had big plans (and still have big plans) regarding my BL shop as well as regarding my LEGO Train building hobby. They’ve been slowed down – my wife protested against the amount of time I was spending on this and she was right. <Insert doormat pun here> Practice self-constraint. No you don’t have to buy it all. Often I go all the way through the checkout process and then take a breather. A quick comparison with other sites. Read some reviews. Think "yes it is x% off, but you still pay $y". And after amassing a closet full of LEGO: “First sell enough until you have more funds and more space, then buy again”. What also helps me is that I have a (very short) list of sets I really want to have for my personal collection. If there ever is a good deal on those, I’ll jump on it (ideally using Ebay Bucks or Credit Card reward dollars). For the other deals: there will be more deals in the future. Be helpful and you’ll be better off for it. Just like you need to build up a reputation of trustworthyness on Ebay or Amazon, I advise everyone to do the same on BrickPicker. Look out for your fellow BP-ers. Help them score a deal when needed. Post those deals when you see them (even if they don’t interest you), or at least, post them after you had your fill. Because all the goodwill you’re building up will help you get better deals yourself – via member-to-member private messages, or just by being "in-tune" with what is happening on the marketplace. And unlike many other platforms on the vast World Wide Web, Brickpicker is a very civilized, high-intelligence online forum. Conversations are kind, well articulated and insightful. Moderators intervene at the right time, and with clear principles. And everyone likes a giggle. Unless you are a professional reseller (and I know there are several that frequent BP), remember that this is supposed to be a hobby. You’ll enjoy it more when you keep your love of LEGO alive. Scale back when you don’t have time. Sell if you need cash. Pop seals and build if there’s something you’ve now taken a fancy to, or if the market for the set has cratered. But please, please don’t get in over your head. To conclude my story: I have spent considerable time over the first half of 2016 on building inventory, writing software to manage my BL store’s sales and pricing analytics, and sorted through about half of my sets and parted them out. I listed ~20k parts on BL, and have seen some nice sales coming through. However, as this is my hobby, I’ve had to take a break from adding to my BL store and it has been in hibernation mode over the past months as other priorities took over. I have continued to list sets on Ebay and Amazon to keep some sales going. I bought well – some initial purchases were not as good as some later ones when I got clearer on what I needed to look for in sets, however, those were offset by some lucky finds (Ghosts for half price, anyone?). I resigned myself to contributing to reporting sales and delightful banter to BP, and with ~3.5k posts to my name in just a year, I think I’ve been quite successful at that strategy at least. To round it all up, some statistics from my first year: Total resale purchases including supplies, shipping costs and fees: $7.3k Average discount over MSRP: 44% Total sales revenue: $3.0k ROI on those sales: >175% (But I sold quite a lot of freebies which drive ROI up) Average fee paid (Ebay, Amazon, BrickLink/BrickOwl): 11.2% Parts amassed for my BL store: ~110k Here’s to a great second year!
    46 points
  15. Ask Tabby, he's claimed to have sold off his entire inventory 4 or 5 times since Halloween
    44 points
  16. UPDATE! So I received a call from my insurance company the other day. The police arrested a guy for breaking & entering, and when they searched his property, they found "a lot of Lego sets". One detective was having lunch with my detective and casually mentioned the find, and he remembered my case from 2016 and they interrogated the suspect. He totally admitted meeting me on Craigslist, bought a few sets from me, and then came back to my warehouse to commit the robbery. He was able to back a cargo truck up to the loading door and spend several hours loading up. The replacement value at the time was $39k. I am so relieved they caught the guy, and now I'm waiting to hear from the police so I can go see what is left from the theft (they say there is A LOT). Next step will be to strike a deal with the insurance company to purchase everything back (at a salvage rate of course). They are willing to give me the right of refusal so I can recover all or some of it. I'll update once I see what is left and what we can work out. Just a reminder to everyone who can learn from my ignorance & innocence: never let anyone into the inner sanctum. Since the theft, we treat the warehouse like Willy Wonka's factory : no comes in, no one goes out. We even have a visual barrier separating the storeroom area from being seen by UPS and FedEx drivers. As far as Craigslist goes, I've only tried to sell a handful of larger items (new MF for example) with the stipulation that the transaction takes place at the local police department, and I haven't had a taker yet.
    43 points
  17. With everyone posting their collections earlier this week, I decided to post how mine currently looks. I am likely building the Porsche with within a few weeks so will have to move things around. Enjoy!
    42 points
  18. After spending most of the year bricklinking the Barad Dur, it's finally done with a few modifications, it stands 45 inches tall. Thanks to Kevin at BrickStruct for creating the instructions. The model still needs a couple of mods that I will do when I have room to display it.
    40 points
  19. Here is Version 1.0 of the Brickpicker LEGO Stock Tracker. There will be a few different pages and trackers released over the coming days. This one here will be one that is updated very frequently. This list here will not grow to 100 sets or anything like that. I want to keep it focused on key sets that are desirable and sought after. This tracker will also be enhanced over the next few days to setup alerts via the site as well as email and SMS. I have included the current price on the site as well as an alert icon if the current price is higher that retail MSRP. You will also see how long ago the in-stock status was checked. This page also works well on mobile devices. For now this page is open to everyone to see what it is, but as I finish the upgrades you will need to be a member and be logged into the site in order to access it. As I mentioned earlier, there will be other pages that will be monitoring all of the sets stock and prices on Amazon, Target, LEGO, Walmart and TRU. These should be live by next week if not sooner. We will use the thread to discuss adding or removing sets on this list of constant updates. I hope you like the start, it will continue to improve. Let me know your thoughts. http://www.brickpicker.com/brickwatcher/lego_stock_checker.cfm
    40 points
  20. Ok guys very important post is about to be announced by me yes 'mark from the UK' lol if i can get a least 10 likes ill let you all into a little secret into why i have purchased maybe every set that went on sale on ebay and in total 0000's just need at least 10likes and maybe you can make at least 3k on one set Thanks 'mark from the uk'
    39 points
  21. Due to last year's disappointing UCS sets I started looking at MOCs and was blown away by the Nebulon Frigate. ~ 5800 pieces later and this masterpiece now stands before me. Now addicted and can't wait for the next one. Thinking tie bomber, tie Interceptor or cavecods at at
    38 points
  22. I'm going to take a few moments to take a page out of my co-worker's book. He is a blunt man, and generally if something is wrong in the office, he sends out an email and copies everyone on it calling out whatever is being done (like not filling the coffee pot) and whoever is doing it. Not the best way to go about things, but results are there. He signs them "Crotchety Old Man" (hes 29) So here is my Crotchety Old man Post: A few things I want to put out there. These are facts IMO (clashes I know) that some people should know. I think people throw around silly numbers and comparisons way too much. You can say "Well we are free to think this - its not hurting anyone!". But it is. there are a lot of new members who listen to a lot of us. Its a responsibility to just be freaking realistic. So here are a few. Others feel free to add Sets aren't going to grow to 5x retail in most cases (99.9%) There certainly are sets that do. But these are insanely far and few between. Throwing out these silly numbers like "200$ next year!" on a 30$ set is silly. The ones that do that are certain cases, like the Zombies which no one knew about and was out 4 months. This stuff about sets growing in insane amounts is starting to get silly. For a lot of the reasons I am going to talk about tomorrow. But I have heard things like : 1500$ by christmas (last year) - 4x4 special edition crawler $800 - for the fire brigade and GE $1500 for the Tower Bridge 300$ by this christmas - Battle of Helms deep These prices are silly. What sets did in the past is relevant, not the telling case. Things are different and changing all the time. You have to be realistic. Will some sets surprise? Yes. But they aren't going to triple, quadruple, quintuple constantly. The market is completely different than it used to be I was certainly not around then. But its clear and obvious things are different. Some are for the better - Lego is as popular as it has ever been. However, the investor market is probably 100x or more congested than it used to be. Are sets going to stop growing? no. But the top values are going to go down. This is why sets aren't quadrupling all the time. Ask someone like Mos_Eisley. There was a time you could store any Star Wars set and chances are it would triple. Not that way now in the least. The market is certainly not dead. Things like the Fire brigade prove that. But its not growing like the old modulars. Lets be real. There is no difference between Flipping and Investing. Flipping is just a short term investment Lets just stop all the arguing over which is better and all this stuff. You know whats the best? Keeping the set for the shortest amount of time while paying attention to maximizing the value proportionally to it. You know what thats called? Being fiscally savy. Flipping/investing... who cares? Pretty much no one knows when a set is retiring More pointed at the people listening, not the people saying it. Don't listen to pretty much anyone that isn't a direct corporate higher up at Lego in terms of set retirements. My rule is this: Did the person say they know that the set is retiring now? If no: Good. If Yes: don't listen to them, they don't know. Investing and especially parting out is difficult A lot of people join this site, get excited, but sets, and then disappear. I have to believe that some of these people bit off more than they can chew, etc. But the reason is a lot of people make things sound too easy. BUY THIS - EASY MONEY! I do this some too, and I have been trying to word things better. Keeping track of all this is tough, and it will only get tougher. As the investor market fills, we wont know how things will work, but profits are going to continue to go down in most cases. You have to be smart, savy, know your history, be able to take care of taxes everything else. Collect as much as you can, invest only after you have done serious thinking about what it means, the time that goes into it, etc. Feel free to ask me. I am not an expert, but I can share my experience. While being very successful, I have had some hiccups and some that could have been serious. Its important to know these before hand. Don't jump into anything. There are 100s of things that are much more important that money, most that you can't buy with it anyway. End (calm) Rant Overall, just build Lego sets people. If you haven't, you need to shutdown your computer, turn off the TV, and enjoy one of the best gifts to our world.
    38 points
  23. It all started with one of our fish having babies. We separated them in a breeding tank for a couple of days. But that was not enough....my wife and sons teamed up on me and begged for a bigger tank. Next thing I knew...we had decided to not only get a bigger tank, but also decided exactly how we wanted to decorate it. We love our Lego displays, and this was just another creative way to add to the collection. What the hell...right?!! Great build! Very fragile! Great display piece!
    37 points
  24. Built the docking bay 327 which will be the new home of my recently purchased 10179.
    36 points
  25. To lighten the mood, here is a finished picture of mine. To get the colors of the engine plume correct, the four outside engines use a trans-orange plate while the center engine uses a trans-light blue plate. This was achieved using Brickstuff pico LED lighting system (http://www.brickstuff.com - cannot recommend enough. A little pricey, but great to work with and the end result is fantastic). 5x pico LED's, some adapter boards, an IR Lighting Effect Controller, and a small battery pack. The four outer engines (orange) have a flicker effect, the center engine (blue) is solid on. To get a clean install, I cheated a bit and used a 7/8" drill to go through the 'stud stack' so that the wire would be routed on the inside.
    36 points
  26. Pretty easy sequence to predict here people. Both for Cindy and Death Star. 1. Image leaks. 2. "Meh, not impressed, where has Lego's creativity gone?" 3. "Guaranteed investment winner" - Ed Mack 4. "Well, the previous version [is/isn't] selling well in [Europe/US], so don't think your market can predict the [US/Europe] market on this set!" 5. OrcKing posts high-res official thread pics minutes after they are available. 6. "You know, looking at this again, I like those two greebles, and look, two new unique parts in [seafoam blue/dark-light-gray-bley]" 7. Goes on sale on Lego.com with a Nexo Knights promo cycle or chopper. 8. "In for 3" - Exciter. 9. "This is my first Lego investment, was it good that I bought 20 of these already??" - user with reg date of x-1 week from posting date. ... .. ... 10. Profit! :-)
    36 points
  27. "You don't know you're in the good old days until you've actually left them." I am not sure how many of you have read my postings over the last 2 months since I joined in January, so I will give you a very brief intro to my background. While I am a relatively new Brickpicker member, I am certainly not new to this game. I was in it huge from 2004-2007, Had many UCS xwings, UCS Tie Interceptors, UCS ISD, UCS Y-wings, UCS Snowspeeders, CTT, Cloud Cities etc. While I was not an emazer level operation, I was running about 3,000-4,000 in volume on an average month and reached Bronze Powerseller level, so not too bad. However, in 2007, due to life changes I started selling off my stock without reinvesting. I cashed out and did not ante back up. Over the last 8 years since I sold of my last Clone Turbo Tank in 2008, I have peripherally watched the market. I have seen various sets rise to proportions never thought possible (10179), and some falter secondary to remakes. On occasion I would surf Amazon just to see what the lowest buy price would be, many times wishing I was still in it. I would visit the Lego store when I happened to be in Disney World just to check out what sets were out, seeing the exponential increase in sets being produced. In January, I happened to be walk into a Lego Store in a mall with my son, and was just shocked as to just how many licensed sets there were. I was also impressed with just how accurate some of the newer sets were in likeness to the actual original model (Wall-E and Ecto01.) Suddenly, I had this itch to get back in the game again, that I just could not resist. Luckily, over the last year, several life changes had allowed me to pursue this endeavor again for the second time. So I decided to get back into the game. For the record, I did not get into the game because of a USA Today or WSJ article. In all honesty, I am awful with politics and current events, so I had no idea how far Lego resale, or what is now called "brickvesting" had now become. I had no idea this was even being covered on a national level, until I decided to start back into Lego Resale. So I began googling about Lego sets, and to my shock, there were national news articles about Lego investing and even a WHOLE WEBSITE devoted to Lego Investing. All I could think about about was how far this had come in 8 years. From 2004-2007, there were minimal Lego and AFOL websites. There was bricklink and fbtb.net, and the only big forum community was on fbtb. And that was mostly Star Wars Legos without a whole lot about anything else. Although, in all honesty, back then there were minimal exclusives, and really Star Wars Lego's were the only think worth investing in. So I discovered this Brickpicker, and I just happened to get in at the time the Tumbler was retiring, so this place was on fire about the retirement of this Iconic set. In all honesty, this set was the set that pulled me out of retirement as it seems like such a good investment. I still believe the Tumbler is a great investment, however, reading the forums for the last two months caused me to realize just how much has changed in 8 years, and how much more difficult this will be now than it was from 2004-2007. It took me a while to figure just what changed. Lego's were such a guarantee before. Ebay and the internet while young and in it's infancy was still a known commodity and widely available in 2004-2007. People knew what items were selling for. You could search completed listings and know that Lego's could net a good sum of money. People had hopped onto various collectible fads in that time from Magic cards, beanie babies, furbies, baseball cards, and tons of other garbage. Lego had ALWAYS been immune because it was not a fad. It never had major publicity but was always reasonably popular. So what changed? As I read article after article, I finally noticed a pattern. It was 10179. This was the game changer, and quite frankly the worst thing to happen to Lego Investing. 10179 came out right about the time I was leaving my Ebay business. At the time, no one would touch this thing with a ten foot pole from an investment standpoint. It was already hard enough shipping 10030 ISD's. When I would ship an ISD, I would go to the grocery store, get a ton of boxes, cut them up and jury rig some kind of cardboard container. It was painfully time intensive. How the heck was someone gonna find boxes for a 10179? The weight, size, and investment of $500 (although it was pretty much permanently on sale around $400) was near insanity. The most expensive set selling at the time was the UCS X wing and it sold used for about $450 usedand MISB around $650-700. So how in the world was the market going to tolerate selling 10179 to make a profit. This was even in a time when Ebay fees and paypal fees combined were about 6-7% if I remember correctly. It was basically considered flop from an investment standpoint. It was the Sea Cow of 2007. Oh if we had only known what we know now. Many might ask, how could the single most profitable set of all time be bad for investing? 10179 gave a face to Lego Investing. Before Lego's were just a standard commodity like any other resalable collectable item. Sure some sets might sell for a profit for 200-300, but lots of other collectibles do that. I sold Art Asylum Star Trek Starships for a while and was buying them for $5 dollars and selling for $140-$150. There are tons of reselling opportunities out there if you understand the market, and Lego was just another one like any other toy or collectible. However, 10179 brought it to the forefront. It was the Honus Wagner and Mickey Mantle rookie card of the Lego world. Those cards caused people to jump on to baseball card collecting like no other. People would blindly buy baseball cards with no market research just because of those two cards. Sound familiar? The Mack's state in their webpage bio that part of what stemmed them building this website was 10179. Without 10179 there would be no Brickpicker. Without Brickpicker, there wouldn't be a USA Today headline bringing Lego Investing to the masses. 10179 was what gave bloggers and article writer's a nice catchy headline. "Lego's set sells for $5,000" "Lego's Brick's Better Than Gold Bricks." From the moment 10179 took off, it was all downhill from there in the Lego Investing world. 10179 was basically the coming out party of Lego Investing. People dream of making the big bucks. People dream of hitting gold. 10179 gave people a tangible dream in the Lego Investing market. Before then it was simply a faceless game that some people partook in. I would always get laughed at in any business meeting when people asked what I was investing in, and I told them once I had maxed out all other retirement options, I would probably put some in Lego's. You can only imagine my stares. Now with websites like this and USA today, and WSJ article's I have ammo now to defend my position. Unfortunately, now with the ammo, it is even harder to defend the position. So ultimately, 10179, has caused a spiral of events that will ultimately eventually bring about the end of Lego Investing. Is that likely to happen in the next 10 years? Not likely, but this site is adding 60 new members a day based on the number at the bottom of the main page. Albeit, not everyone is going to invest, and some might join just for the community, but there are some investors in that number. The market is still very strong, and will always remain strong because Lego is not a fad, and Lego will always have demand. Are you likely to lose in Lego Investing, like people lost big in baseball cards and beanie babies. Not likely, unless you are just AWFUL at picking sets, and are completely impatient. However, eventually a time will come, when selling just to cover your initial investment at RRP+Taxes will become standard for most sets. "You don't know you're in the good old days until you've actually left them."
    35 points
  28. Hello LEGO fans... After months of discussion about fake, counterfeit, knockoff, illegal, garbage, and crap sets and companies, the BrickPicker administration and moderator team have decided to remove this discussion completely from the BrickPicker forums. I had hoped that people could discuss these topics in a mature manner, without promoting them, but that failed miserably. It is unfortunate that there is a small, but vocal, group of people who support these illegal products and will try to push these products at any given chance. For whatever reason, they consider these products legitimate. BrickPicker does not... THIS IS A LEGO FAN SITE and will remain so. While we approve of discussions about compatible and legitimate brands like Mega Bloks for example, any discussions about intellectual property stealing companies like Lepin or others will be removed and members might face suspension or permanent ban from this site. We are not alone in this type of topic restriction. Eurobricks implemented a similar policy and I quote (from their site)... Remember: Eurobricks is a LEGO fan site, thus we want most topics here to be LEGO related. If you find you are posting mostly non-LEGO topics then maybe you have picked the wrong site. Clone and Competitor Brands: A Clone brand or competitor brand, is a product manufactured by a legitimate company. For Example Oxford,Mega Blocks. Kreo or Character Building. These are companies that do not infringe copyrights and provide a competitor product, such as licenses and themes LEGO do not produce. It is fair to discuss, compare and share these brands and their products in the Community section of the Forum. Bootlegs, Rip-Offs and Fakes: These manufacturers copy designs and minifigures from LEGO, other companies and even fans, to produce their own infringing products which they then sell, often at knock down prices. There are hundreds of names attached to these products and varied quality between them. We will no longer accept discussion and sharing of these products on Eurobricks. Most of these "brands" are facing legal cases and we have no interest in supporting them by providing a place for their criminal products to be seen. I applaud the administration of Eurobricks for installing such a policy and I ask other major LEGO fan sites to follow suit. We are all here for the love of LEGO sets and bricks and these knockoff products not only endanger the LEGO secondary markets, but the primary one as well. On a personal note, I am sorry it took so long for me to realize that discussing these illegal products was bad for our site and LEGO fans in general. The supporters of these counterfeit and knockoff products will have to discuss them on some other site, hiding in the shadows. Thank you for your time... Ed Mack
    34 points
  29. Today I tried something different and set up a Lego booth at a local indoor flea market that is held three times per year. I advertised on local Facebook buy/sell groups for about a month leading up to the sale. It seemed to drum up a lot of interest since many people told me that my booth was the only reason they came to the sale. I choose this particular date since it’s right before the holiday shopping season and advertised it as such. Pros...the sale was located less than a mile from my home, so very minimal transportation issues. Lots of traffic and networking opportunities. I had some business cards printed up and handed them out. Cons...lots of prep, from pricing research to literally pricing everything, boxing everything up for transport, set up, and take down. Also, the sale only ran for six hours, from 8am-2pm. Would have been nice to go to at least 4pm. My goal was to focus on small stocking stuffers to medium sets that are priced well for gifting, and it seemed to work. I brought a few large exclusives, but mainly just to draw attention to the booth. I priced my retired sets about 20-35% below eBay sold prices, and my non retired sets below regular retail, while still maintaining an acceptable margin. Surprisingly, I didn’t have many people trying to negotiate, as many realized my pricing was more than fair. I was a little worried about that since it was a flea market / garage sale type environment. In six hours I did just over $900 in sales, mostly the small to medium sized sets I was hoping to move. All in all it was a pretty decent experience, which I will most likely try again in the future. The next sale is in January, which I’ll skip. The following sale after that is in March, which should be a decent opportunity since people will be getting their tax returns and will have some extra cash to spend.
    34 points
  30. Here you go. Are likes important? ^^ Anyway, I find it interesting that the City Vulcan sets are also seem to be done. They are from last year, so they are not really that old. Did a pretty good investment with the last (deep sea) sets, but I didnt bought any of these Retired.txt
    34 points
  31. I am very glad my whole family loves my hobby. My husband and I bought these today for our collection!!! Not the greatest deal ever, but I saved some money and got the sets I wanted. Not in photo are old VW Beatle and monster Haunted House
    34 points
  32. I think you may have joined the wrong forum.
    34 points
  33. Well...I finally found all the pieces...a couple off color but still looks amazing I think. It took my son and I 7 hours with 3 slight rebuilds until we got the balance right. Yes, it is tricky getting it to stand! Let me know what you all think. #legodad
    34 points
  34. All the winning prizes have shipped...Finally. A lot of work. I would appreciate that winners would post photos of their prizes in this thread. I would like to thank everyone once again for your support. Principal Robbins received and deposited the $62,000 check yesterday. Instead of planning for next year, the school would have been planning to close its doors without the support of all of you. I salute you...
    34 points
  35. Twas the night before Clearance And all through the aisle Steamrollers were packed Into my cart like a pile Exo Suits were hung In the storage with care Knowing that in a decade They still will be there Sergeant Jyn Erso was nestled Deep under my bed With terrible proportions And a face that looks dead Wonder woman in her armor And cheetah in her cap The lasso of truth will tell you That this set is pure crap When out on my doorstep A noise shook me awake ShopJustice still delivering Olaf Flat as a pancake Faster shipping than FedEx The turds as they came I cried and I pouted As I called them by name "Now, Dots! now, Mario! Now Lego Movie 1 and 2! On, Raiders! on, Mighty Dinos! On, Takodana and constractables too! To the depths of the dumpster! Stacked 50 feet tall Now throw away! throw away! throw away all!" Each year I make efforts To donate a bit more But Toys for tots sends a bill For returning them to my door Since I can't give them away I'll dig a big pit It's the final solution To get rid of this sh!t I shook as I laughed At the thought of relieving this pain It was nearly 3am So I looked quite insane As I poured the kerosene I cheered with delight "I'll light you on fire, So you're out of my sight"
    33 points
  36. Today I crossed off something on my lifetime Valentine's Day bingo card.
    33 points
  37. list wins again. not bad accurately predicting the EOL of a 5 month old set. I'm feeling generous and seems Cladner and Val-E are working to hard at this, might as well simplify their jobs for the holidays. Plus some of these need to disappear quicker... 10815 My First Rocket 41123 Foal's Washing Station 60131 Crooks Island 70326 The Black Knight Mech 70338 Ultimate General Magmar 70339 Ultimate Flama 70605 Misfortune's Keep 75142 Homing Spider Droid™ 75158 Rebel Combat Frigate 75821 Piggy Car Escape 75822 Piggy Plane Attack 75824 Pig City Teardown 75826 King Pig's Castle 76060 Doctor Strange's Sanctum Sanctorum 10232 Palace Cinema 10248 Ferrari F40 10249 Winter Toy Shop 10525 Big Farm 10571 LEGO® DUPLO® All-in-One-Pink-Box-of-Fun 10580 LEGO® DUPLO® Deluxe Box of fun 10590 Airport 10606 Doc McStuffins Backyard Clinic 10607 Spider-Man Web-Bike Workshop 10608 Spider-Man Spider Truck Adventure 10615 My First Tractor 10616 My First Playhouse 10617 My First Farm 10687 Spider-Man™ Hideout 10694 LEGO® Creative Supplement Bright 10699 Sand Baseplate 10702 LEGO® Creative Building Set 10705 LEGO® Creative Building Basket 10720 Police Helicopter Chase 10722 Snake Showdown 10724 Batman™ & Superman™ vs. Lex Luthor™ 10725 Lost Temple 10726 Stephanie's Horse Carriage 10727 Emma's Ice Cream Truck 10728 Mia's Vet Clinic 10729 Cinderella's Carriage 10735 Police Truck Chase 10747 Andrea & Stephanie's Beach Holiday 10808 Little Plane 10810 Push Train 10811 Backhoe Loader 10817 LEGO® DUPLO® Creative Chest 10818 My First Truck 10820 LEGO® DUPLO® Creative Building Basket 10822 Sofia the First Magical Carriage 10828 Doc McStuffins´ Pet Vet Care 10830 Minnie's Café 10831 My First Caterpillar 10842 Batcave Challenge 10849 My First Plane 10850 My First Cakes 10852 My First Bird 10853 LEGO® DUPLO® Creative Builder Box 10855 Cinderella´s Magical Castle 21024 Louvre 21026 Venice 21027 Berlin 21031 Burj Khalifa 21050 Studio 21113 The Cave 21119 The Dungeon 21120 The Snow Hideout 21121 The Desert Outpost 21122 The Nether Fortress 21123 The Iron Golem 21124 The End Portal 21125 The Jungle Tree House 21126 The Wither 21127 The Fortress 21128 The Village 21131 The Ice Spikes 21132 The Jungle Temple 21306 Yellow Submarine 21307 Caterham Seven 620R 31042 Super Soarer 31045 Ocean Explorer 31046 Fast Car 31047 Propeller Plane 31048 Lakeside Lodge 31049 Twin Spin Helicopter 31050 Corner Deli 31051 Lighthouse Point 31052 Vacation Getaways 31053 Treehouse Adventures 31054 Blue Express 31055 Red racer 31059 Sunset Street Bike 31060 Airshow Aces 31063 Beachside Vacation 31064 Island Adventures 31065 Park Street Townhouse 41065 Rapunzel's Best Day Ever 41066 Anna & Kristoff's Sleigh Adventure 41067 Belle's Enchanted Castle 41068 Arendelle Castle Celebration 41101 Heartlake Grand Hotel 41118 Heartlake Supermarket 41119 Heartlake Cupcake Café 41124 Heartlake Puppy Daycare 41125 Horse Vet Trailer 41126 Heartlake Riding Club 41127 Amusement Park Arcade 41128 Amusement Park Space Ride 41129 Amusement Park Hot Dog Van 41130 Amusement Park Roller Coaster 41132 Heartlake Party Shop 41133 Amusement Park Bumper Cars 41134 Heartlake Performance School 41142 Palace Pets Royal Castle 41143 Berry's Kitchen 41144 Petite's Royal Stable 41147 Anna's Snow Adventure 41149 Moana's Island Adventure 41172 The Water Dragon Adventure 41175 Fire Dragon's Lava Cave 41179 Queen Dragon's Rescue 41180 Ragana's Magic Shadow Castle 41181 Naida's Gondola & the Goblin Thief 41182 The Capture of Sophie Jones 41184 Aira's Airship & the Amulet Chase 41185 Magic Rescue from the Goblin Village 41230 Batgirl™ Batjet Chase 41231 Harley Quinn™ to the rescue 41232 Super Hero High School 41233 Lashina™ Tank 41234 Bumblebee™ Helicopter 41237 Batgirl™ Secret Bunker 41238 Lena Luthor™ Kryptomite™ Factory 41239 Eclipso™ Dark Palace 41300 Puppy Championship 41301 Puppy Parade 41302 Puppy Pampering 41303 Puppy Playground 41304 Puppy Treats & Tricks 41305 Emma's Photo Studio 41306 Mia's Beach Scooter 41307 Olivia's Creative Lab 41308 Stephanie's Friendship Cakes 41309 Andrea's Musical Duet 41310 Heartlake Gift Delivery 41312 Heartlake Sports Center 41321 Snow Resort Off-Roader 41326 LEGO® Friends Advent Calendar 41487 Lloyd 41488 Master Wu 41489 Confidential_BH MDP Target 1 41585 Batman™ 41586 Batgirl™ 41587 Robin™ 41588 The Joker™ 41589 Captain America 41590 Iron Man 41591 Black Widow 41592 The Hulk 41593 Captain Jack Sparrow 41594 Captain Armando Salazar 41595 Belle 41596 Beast 42043 Mercedes-Benz Arocs 3245 42044 Display Team Jet 42045 Hydroplane Racer 42046 Getaway Racer 42047 Police Interceptor 42048 Race Kart 42049 Mine Loader 42050 Drag Racer 42052 Heavy Lift Helicopter 42053 Volvo EW160E 42054 CLAAS XERION 5000 TRAC VC 42061 Telehandler 60097 City Square 60098 Heavy-Haul Train 60100 Airport Starter Set 60101 Airport Cargo Plane 60102 Airport VIP Service 60103 Airport Air Show 60104 Airport Passenger Terminal 60106 Fire Starter Set 60109 Fire Boat 60117 Van & Caravan 60119 Ferry 60120 Volcano Starter Set 60121 Volcano Exploration Truck 60122 Volcano Crawler 60123 Volcano Supply Helicopter 60124 Volcano Exploration Base 60125 Volcano Heavy-lift Helicopter 60129 Police Patrol Boat 60130 Prison Island 60132 Service Station 60134 Fun in the park - City People Pack 60135 ATV Arrest 60136 Police Starter Set 60142 Money Transporter 60143 Auto Transport Heist 60144 Race Plane 60145 Buggy 60146 Stunt Truck 60147 Fishing Boat 60149 4x4 with Catamaran 60151 Dragster Transporter 60152 Sweeper & Excavator 60155 LEGO® City Advent Calendar 60168 Sailboat Rescue 70317 The Fortrex 70347 King's Guard Artillery 70348 Lance's Twin Jouster 70349 Ruina's Lock & Roller 70350 The Three Brothers 70351 Clay's Falcon Fighter Blaster 70352 Jestro's Headquarters 70353 The Heligoyle 70354 Axl's Rumble Maker 70355 Aaron's Rock Climber 70356 The Stone Colossus of Ultimate Destructi 70358 Aaron's Stone Destroyer 70359 Lance vs. lightning 70361 Macy's Bot Drop Dragon 70362 Battle Suit Clay 70363 Battle Suit Macy 70364 Battle Suit Aaron 70365 Battle Suit Axl 70366 Battle Suit Lance 70372 Combo NEXO Powers Wave 1 70588 Titanium Ninja Tumbler 70589 Rock Roader 70591 Kryptarium Prison Breakout 70592 Salvage M.E.C. 70593 The Green NRG Dragon 70594 The Lighthouse Siege 70595 Ultra Stealth Raider 70596 Samurai X Cave Chaos 70621 The Vermillion Attack 70622 Desert Lightning 70623 Destiny's Shadow 70624 Vermillion Invader 70625 Samurai VXL 70626 Dawn of Iron Doom 70627 Dragon's Forge 70751 Temple of Airjitzu 70902 Catwoman™ Catcycle Chase 70904 Clayface™ Splat Attack 70907 Killer Croc™ Tail-Gator 70908 The Scuttler 70915 Two-Face™ Double Demolition 71006 The Simpsons™ House 71016 The Kwik-E-Mart 75095 TIE Fighter™ 75098 Assault on Hoth™ 75099 Rey's Speeder™ 75101 First Order Special Forces TIE fighter™ 75104 Kylo Ren's Command Shuttle™ 75105 Millennium Falcon™ 75111 Darth Vader™ 75114 First Order Stormtrooper™ 75116 Finn 75118 Captain Phasma™ 75119 Sergeant Jyn Erso™ 75120 K-2SO™ 75121 Imperial Death Trooper™ 75125 Resistance X-Wing Fighter™ 75126 First Order Snowspeeder™ 75128 TIE Advanced Prototype™ 75129 Wookiee™ Gunship 75131 Resistance Trooper Battle Pack 75132 First Order Battle Pack 75137 Carbon-Freezing Chamber 75139 Battle on Takodana™ 75145 Eclipse Fighter™ 75147 StarScavenger™ 75148 Encounter on Jakku™ 75149 Resistance X-Wing Fighter™ 75151 Clone Turbo Tank™ 75152 Imperial Assault Hovertank™ 75153 AT-ST™ Walker 75154 TIE Striker™ 75157 Captain Rex's AT-TE™ 75162 Y-Wing™ Microfighter 75163 Krennic's Imperial Shuttle™ Microfighter 75164 Rebel Trooper Battle Pack 75165 Imperial Trooper Battle Pack 75170 The Phantom 75171 Battle on Scarif 75184 LEGO® Star Wars™ Advent Calendar 75523 Scarif Stormtrooper™ 75524 Chirrut Îmwe™ 75525 Baze Malbus™ 75828 Ecto-1 & 2 75870 Chevrolet Corvette Z06 75871 Ford Mustang GT 75872 Audi R18 e-tron quattro 75873 Audi R8 LMS ultra 75874 Chevrolet Camaro Drag Race 75875 Ford F-150 Raptor & Ford Model A Hot Rod 75876 Porsche 919 Hybrid and 917K Pit Lane 75882 Ferrari FXX K & Development Center 76042 The SHIELD Helicarrier 76044 Clash of the Heroes 76045 Kryptonite Interception 76047 Black Panther Pursuit 76051 Super Hero Airport Battle 76052 Batman™ Classic TV Series – Batcave 76053 Batman™: Gotham City Cycle Chase 76054 Batman™: Scarecrow™ Harvest of Fear 76055 Batman™: Killer Croc™ Sewer Smash 76056 Batman™: Rescue from Ra's al Ghul™ 76057 Spider-Man: Web Warriors Ultimate Bridge 76058 Spider-Man: Ghost Rider Team-up 76059 Spider-Man: Doc Ock's Tentacle Trap 76067 Tanker Truck Takedown 76068 Mighty Micros: Superman™ vs. Bizarro™ 76069 Mighty Micros: Batman™ vs. Killer Moth™ 76070 Mighty Micros: Wonder Woman™ vs. Doomsda 76071 Mighty Micros: Spider-Man vs. Scorpion 76072 Mighty Micros: Iron Man vs. Thanos 76073 Mighty Micros: Wolverine vs. Magneto 76075 Wonder Woman™ Warrior Battle 76079 Ravager Attack 76080 Ayesha's Revenge 76081 The Milano vs. The Abilisk
    33 points
  38. Having now built this, it's no wonder why Lego haven't released a UCS AT-AT. Despite his being well designed and structurally very stable it was a bit of nightmare putting everything together. I spent almost a day attaching the head onto the body. Biggest build to date coming in at just over 6700 pieces. Hopefully that will be topped by the new Falcon and then my UCS collection is complete with respect of in my opinion all of the iconic ships in Star Wars universe.
    33 points
  39. Saw this MOC somewhere on the web and thought it was great so decided to recreate it...
    33 points
  40. "Well I have about 20 Emails and 3 phone calls on the New Death Star and what am I doing about the 10188.I was going to wait a while to post but with my name poping up everwhere well he is my thought. "Do I have the blues on this on the 60 DS I had sure who wouldn't. But you guys with just a few act like the world has ended, and Lego investing is dead, Well I have sold 15 DS, $550-600, most on Craigs List, and with the Double VIP Points a few weeks ago and I had a few hundred dollars VIP Points I took the $5000 grand and so and went out and got Sancrawlers, Ferris wheels, More Simpsons sets, Ewok Villages, PR, Etc and with all the VIP points I had I got 2 Sandcrawlers Free. and I got Most of my DS for $262 from B&N and alot for for $285 with the Toys R US Buy 2 get onfe free, and that was twice a year for years, and others I got were $300 or so on Amazon. so I have 45 DS Left, I see these taking many many years on being worth $800-1000 unless the new one is not made long. "My Theory is I am waiting for Christmas to see how much these are going for which I don't see much, I look at it this way now after Christmas if there are 100's on ebay I will unloade 25 more even if I can get a $50 profit I will do it so I look at it me having $12,000 grand put away, having lost nothing but these would have been a $1000 set in another year or two. so either way I am still living on wall street, I still have 40 POTC Pearl and Queen Sets, 40 HP 4842 & 10217 Sets, 45 SSD, 58 HH and thousands of more great sets and exclusives. and as I said before I would like to stop buying when I am 70 and thats 2 yrs from now, now easier said than done. "Now I will sail if Lego does the HH, TH, and other great Exclusives basically the same way well then giving up on investing might be a thought, So here are my thoughts and what I am doing, and you guys that have 5 or under and don't need the money I would hold on to them, you guys with 10 and up if you can make your money back I would sell about 5 of them. and whoever thinks the new DS will be a poor seller I disacree. So if anybody wants to email me or even call me I have talked to hundreds of you guys on the phone. "So Don't Crack and give up the ship" Ed
    33 points
  41. Spent some time and built the new Spider-Man Web Warrior Bridge (76057). Had to modify and combine two, of course! Then added lighting into the side and top of the towers, and under the bridge as well.
    33 points
  42. You know when your other half walks in the house looking all happy with herself and says "Well..........?" And you know she must have changed something but you've no idea what. This is the Lego equivalent.
    32 points
  43. Don't know if it's new but Walmart Tie fighter USC $139.99 rollback. http://www.walmart.com/ip/LEGO-Star-Wars-TIE-Fighter/42104274
    32 points
  44. Hi everyone. Well, after thinking about it for the last couple years, I decided to start up a real life physical retail store selling lego. I’ve been working on getting the space ready for the last couple months, and will open the doors this saturday, October 20th. Starting out, I will be the only employee, but I’m sure that will change very soon. I’ll at least have to hire someone to host the birthday parties we will offer. Since i’m doing this independently, instead of joining a franchise like bricks and minifigs, i don’t exactly know what all to expect, but i’m sure it will be fun. If anyone here is in the rhode island area, come check out the store and say hi.
    31 points
  45. I thought that there was a display forum, but I can't find it on my phone so this one will do. Below is this year's Christmas setup except for the stockings on the wall. We have a larger, fuller tree which presented some problems and I grow tired of stringing lights through the town (Assembly Square is a terrible setup for this). Enjoy!
    31 points
  46. Working on a western scene and saw a western train station on Lego Ideas and liked it (https://ideas.lego.com/projects/9050), but wanted to mod some changes, make it a modular and add some LED lights (http://www.lifelites.com/). I have worked on this one on/off for about three years making all kinds of modifications to it. I want to redo the inside of the building at some point, maybe give it more detail like the outside. However, for now I am content with it. I hid the battery pack to the street lights under the water tower and ran the wiring under the building (you can kind of see the battery pack, but not too bad). The clock tower lights up too, though it may be hard to see. I hid the battery pack inside the roof, with a little trap door to turn the power on. I like that it is usable for western type scenes as well as a modern train station (since there are so many older train stations still in use across this country). I also modified the locomotive so that it runs on Power Functions. All the wooden planks that wrap around the station are the 1x4 wood grain tiles (not stickers), part #2431pb243. I bought a bunch a few years ago and am glad I did, they are quite pricy now. I think it makes it look a lot nicer. Spoiler: and those of you with OCD…you may notice in the pictures that the four clocks are not aligned to be the same time…sorry.
    31 points
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