Reviews of LEGO 10211-1: Grand Emporium

Welcome to the grand opening of the Grand Emporium!

The LEGO® Modular Buildings series continues with this spectacularly detailed 3-story department store, designed in a realistic scale with lots of special building techniques and rare pieces. On the street outside, citizens carry shopping bags, send letters at the mailbox, admire the window mannequins, then cool off at the ice cream stand while a busy window washer works above. Enter through the revolving doors to discover a ground-floor clothing department, complete with a cash register, fitting room, hats, jewelry, perfume, and even a selection of spare trousers. A brick-built escalator carries customers to the second floor housewares department with glassware and golden plates for special occasions, and then it’s up to the top floor for the toy department (complete with toy house and push-scooter) with an impressive chandelier above the open atrium. Up on the roof are a billboard and skylight!

• Add this classic department store to your LEGO Modular Buildings collection
• Grand Emporium features many authentic details
• Set includes 7 minifigures
• Measures 15" (38cm) high and 10" (25cm) wide
• Build five mini modular buildings including the Grand Emporium in the 10230 Mini Modulars!

The Grand Emporium is one of the best LEGO modular buildings available.  From the escalators to the flower pots in front of the building, this set is loaded with tons of details.  Currently, it is the only modular shopping center.  I remember seeing this set in the magazine for the first time and placing this on my Christmas list months before anyone wanted to even start thinking about Christmas.  I ended up receiving this set and it is one of my top favorites.

All the parts included in the unique parts list come in five sets or less.

The minifigures in this set are not that detailed, as they are the classic smiley-face minifigures that are included in the modular sets.

These are very normal minifigures with regular smiley faces, but they go really well with all the modular buildings.

All the sets from the Modular line has been targeted toward adults.  LEGO decided to branch out with a bigger budget and more details with these sets, and the results have been amazing.  I also think that younger children will enjoy playing stories with larger LEGO buildings.

Here we have a customer buying some expensive perfume while her husband is in the dressing room:

Apparently they have a very naughty son:

Staring at the strange maniquins:

The only reason that the dad and son came was to ride the escalator:

Of course, it would be a wasted experience had they not taken a stroll through the toy section:

Here is Miss Manager saying hello to her maniquin friends:

Ooo!  Shiney!  (The chandelier was one of my favorite parts to build.)

I really enjoyed building this set.  The only thing that got very repetitive was the constant task of popping windows into their frames.  Other than that, it is an inspiring build process with many building tecniques that can be applied to other creations.

The Grand Emporium has a price of .07 cents a piece.  The set contains lots of tan bricks, which are extremely useful for building MOCs.  This set has a retail price of $149.99, but has been selling for an average of $159.27 on eBay.  It is hard to part this set out, because the minifigures are not that valueable.  People buy this set for the build, not the minifigures.  Here is a table showing the modular buildings and their PPP ratio:

The Grand Emporium has the 6th best PPP ratio of all the modulars at .069 cents.

All the LEGO modular buildings have been very well-received by the LEGO AFOL and TFOL community.  When the Cafe Corner was reveiled, LEGO said that they would make more buildings like it if they the Cafe Corner was a success.  Thankfully, the modular buildings were a huge hit and LEGO decided to make more.

The Grand Emporium is a S@H exclusive and is not available from any other retail store (the only exception is Toys 'R' Us, but everyone knows that they do not even offer half their items at retail.)  This should make this set a bit more valuable after retirement because there will not be any sitting on shelves with a major discount.  After LEGO retires it, it is done.

The packaging of the Grand Emporium is like all the other modular buildings which features the building with minifigures surrounding it experiencing down town city life.

As with most LEGO sets, the only thing that I would have changed with the packaging would be the size of the box.  The large box makes this set hard to ship.  Other than this fact, the packaging is great.

I expect the Grand Emporium to experience some grand profits after it retires.  Let's face it: Unless the bubble bursts, modular buildings will remain stable investments.

Everyone thought that the Fire Brigade would flood the market.  Obviously, this did not happen.  Here is a value snapshot from the past six months of the Fire Brigade:

The Fire Brigade dissapeared very quickly from LEGO S@H.  A repeat is possible for the Grand Emporium.  No matter how many of these consumers buy, there will always be more TFOLs and AFOLs that want to complete their modular collection.  As more modulars retire, the value of this set will go up as the number of sealed boxes goes down.  A shopping center is an essential for a down town street - even more so than a fire station or market.  I can see this set with a value of $500 dollars four years after retirement.

The Grand Emporium is the first modular to feature tan as a main color and really makes the set stand out when displayed.  The dark green windows and the revolving doors really top this set off.  I have a shelf that I keep all my modular buildings on, and the Grand Emporium is a great addition.

The Grand Emporium is a great set that you do not want to miss before it retires.  If you are also a LEGO collector, I recommend buying one of these to build, display, and enjoy.  Overall, the Grand Emporium is a set that any LEGO collector or investor will not want to miss out on.

I hope you have found this review helpful.  Thanks for reading!