redjersey

The "old bag" (that's our monarch you're disrespecting btw) will be 93 in April. 10 years more would be pushing it, 15 or 20 are most unlikely. But like you, I think I'll hold Buck House for just a year or so.

Well, I've just checked and they're sold out again. I hadn't checked since yesterday so I've no idea how exactly long it took, but certainly less than 24 hours.

Limit of 5 per customer at johnlewis.co.uk

I managed to buy 2 Saturn V's at my local independent toy shop this morning. Both with seal code 26S7. They told me they were the only 2 they'd had and they weren't expecting any more any time soon.

42055 Technic Bucket Wheel Excavator is currently £107.99 at John Lewis

I counted more than 30 Dr Who sets on the shelves in the Liverpool Lego Store on Friday, marked down to £34.99. Looked in again today, didn't count them but most are still there.

Just bought a second $50 batch of tickets. It's a pleasure to support the school and offer my appreciation for all the work Ed and Jeff put into this invaluable site. Thank you, gentlemen!

Sandcrawler is available with a limit of 5 on the UK SOH.

Took delivery of 2 of these today, both seal code 25S6.

It surely will be, but you surely don't believe that had the vote gone the other way the Leave Campaign would have dispersed quietly? Farage and his cronies would have demanded a 2nd referendum based on the closeness of the result, backed up in that call by the axis forces of the Daily Heil, Sun & Telegraph.

The Leave campaign would have been demanding a 2nd referendum had the vote been reversed. viz "In a 52-48 referendum this would be unfinished business by a long way."  Nigel Farage, 16th May 2016

Well I'm deeply sad that I am about to stripped of my European citizenship and the rights that it bestowed on me - not least the freedom to travel, live and work in any one of 28 nations across the continent. That's thanks to a needless referendum called by a Tory Prime Minister to appease a far right of his party terrified of losing their seats to the little Englander UKIP. Those on here who seem so keen to see the break-up of the EU and celebrate giving Johnny Foreigner a kicking would do well to note that if it does happen, it will have been caused by the rise of the far-right nationalism espoused by the likes of Wilders and Le Pen and their acolytes across Europe. Both my grandfather and father were called up to fight on European soil in wars that cost millions of lives. The fact that I, at 63 years old, and my son at 33 have lived our lives within Europe at peace and generally in harmony is thanks largely to the European Union in its many iterations. As for Lego investing, frankly I'm too sad (and angry) at the outcome of this referendum to even care about the effect on sales of Star Wars lego sets.

Page 25 of that catalogue mentions a new series of Disney minifigures will be available in September. Time to snap up a few of the current series before they disappear.

John Lewis have had these online again for the past week or so, now billed as 'Exclusive at Lego and John Lewis'. 'More than 10' in stock.

Mine came in an email from amazon: Dear Amazon.co.uk Customer, To get your £7 promo code:Step 1: Go to the offer page and click the button "Click to qualify for the promotion code".Step 2: Buy at least £30 in Gift Cards in a single order. You'll receive the £7 promo code by e-mail within 48 hours of your Gift Card being dispatched. Your £7 promo code can be spent on products sold by Amazon on Amazon.co.uk until 22 April, 2016. Go to the offer page

Amazon UK are offering a free £7.00 promo code with the purchase of a £30 gift card, subject to qualification. I bought one and sent it to myself, as you do. Valid for any item shipped by amazon.co.uk. You don't qualify if you've bought an amazon gift card within the past 24 months.

Haha, yes it's great when I buy Lego to build myself. But if I buy to sell it back to a UK buyer I have to pre-pay the VAT when I ship it! If I don't, Customs make the buyers pay the duty. That makes them very unhappy.

Architecture Studio 21050 is currently £109.95 on Amazon UK, 27% off. Actually £91.63 for me with no VAT to pay...

Amazon UK currently has Poe's X-Wing Fighter at £55.96, limit 1 per customer. There are 20% reductions on a number of other Star Wars sets too.

I recently bought 4 x Architecture Villa Savoye sets from B&N, as they're now retired in Europe. The sets cost a total of $279.80 and shipping to the UK was $53.95 for the 4 by UPS Express Intl. I'd assumed they'd all ship in one box but each arrived within 3 days in its own box with LOADS of airbag packaging. They were all absolutely pristine so I can't recommend B&N highly enough. As an added bonus, Customs didn't pick up on them so there was no duty to pay. Edit: Just noticed this was in the Australia deals section! Hopefully the shipping experience to Oz is as good as it was to Europe.

I've received an invoice too, so I presume they've now charged my payment card. No further tracking information yet though.

At least 20 Ecto-1s on the shelves of my local toyshop this morning, all 01S6.

Fantastic progress in the last few days. I'm back in for another 3 tickets. Keep those purchases coming, folks.

The package weighed around 13 pounds. For reference I'd checked USPS which quoted $104 so it seemed reasonable. It was very speedy too. I shipped a Technics Mobile Crane to a neighbouring Island (Guernsey) recently. Just 25 miles away and it took 8 days...

With Lego items seemingly retiring in Europe weeks or months before North America, our friends over the pond have had an advantage in that they can stock up on items they know will likely disappear from retail and rise in value very soon. Now I missed out on the Ideas 21301 Birds set when it retired in Europe. It’s performed really well since then and a MISB example currently fetches more than £70 on eBay. Retail here was £39.99. Knowing that it’s still available in multiple US outlets for $44.95 (£32 or so), I decided to look into the possibility of buying a few online in the US and bringing them home to Europe. I’m sure others may have done this but I thought I might share my experience in case anyone else is thinking along similar lines. I Iive in Jersey, Channel Islands but the procedure’s pretty much the same wherever you live in Europe. So after a little research, I set up an account with MyUS.com, a specialist in onward shipping of items bought at retail in the US. The basic account costs $10 to set up with no monthly cost, but I opted for a $7 per month, no-contract premium deal which costs $20 to set up but offers 20% discount on shipping. That gave me a US address in Florida to which my sets could be delivered. I went on to order 3 Lego Birds sets at Walmart and 3 from ToysRUs. Both offered free shipping but added Florida sales tax of $3.15 to the cost of each set. Both offered the option of payment via PayPal which I chose as it avoids problems with credit/debit cards being potentially declined for ’suspicious activity’ reasons. So payment and shipping weren’t a problem and my items were duly delivered to my ‘suite’ at myUS. Their website shows just what you have ready for onward shipping and allows you to calculate the weight of a consolidated package with a choice of onward shipping ‘partners’ i.e. DHLExpress, FedEX, USPS etc. What’s most useful is that they open and check your packages and group the contents into a shipping box. They don’t ship the packaging they arrived in unless you ask them to. Anyway, shipping via DHLExpress (1- 5 business days) was cheapest at around $108 (yep, that’s a hefty sum) and I added optional insurance at $4 and extra packaging at $5 and proceeded with a shipping request. My parcel shipped the same evening, 15th January, with online tracking. Early on Monday 18th January, the package arrived in Jersey - impressively quickly, I thought - but was held for Customs clearance. I was aware that while we have no VAT in Jersey, I would have to pay 5% GST (General Sales Tax) on both the item cost and the shipping cost. This I paid online - a total of £12.66. Bear in mind that imports into the UK would attract 20% VAT and other EU countries have their own VAT rates. Customs than called me to say that imports of toys from the US also incur CCT (Customs Common Tariff) duty. Thankfully this is only 4.7% on the value of the goods, so cost me a further £8.32. The parcel was duly delivered the following day, 5 days after shipping. It had been well packed and all 6 Birds sets came in pristine condition. With shipping and duty paid, the cost per set amounted to £50.86, which I’m happy with. I’m going to hold them for the medium term but even if I were to sell at today’s eBay prices I’d more than cover my costs. Would I do it again? Well, what I would say is that I’d only recommend this for smaller sets with the ‘retiring soon’ tag where shipping costs can be spread over a number of units and gains can be readily predicted. Shipping costs for large exclusives for instance would be prohibitive. But yes, I’d go again and as they're still available I’m already in for another 10 x 21301.