Town Hall and Grand Emporium Retired!

Aanchir

SumoLego said:

pharmjod said:

Do you have numbers to back up that it is no where near as scarce. What did cafe corner and green grocer go for not quite two years after they retired?

They were all out a similar length of time, but town hall was at a considerable price increase. Lego may not have made as many as a result. It could possibly be rare than those two. Only time will tell.

I regularly bemoan not having any insight into production number for any sets.  I would love to know the 'minimum' production run of these larger sets.

Don't know specific numbers but whenever people ask this I tend to refer back to this comment by Nabii which says "AFOL sets like the Emerald Knight [sic] number in the tens of thousands of units, Ninjago mid range sets are over a million sets produced."

Although this comment refers to the Emerald Night, a 2009 set, it was posted in 2012 so is probably accurate to sets that year. I'm sure the number of sets produced in BOTH categories has grown since then as the LEGO Group has grown, but no telling by how much. And "In the tens of thousands" could be anything from 20,000 to 90,000, so it's a really wide margin to begin with. Even accounting for growth, it's likely that the number of each Creator Expert set produced still falls somewhere within that margin.

SumoLego

^ I know that they have a very specific production run for sets - and they often completely sell out of a particular product.  There isn't a spigot to suddenly produce those sets on a short term basis.

One thing they do tell their retail and wholesale folks is that once the runs are done for the year, there is no new copis of that  product!

With the investing side, I often wonder with the continuous production of CMFs, that other than Series 1, Series 2 and the licensed series, these will all hit a wall.  I don't see a huge push to purchase the rest.  Once one gets to S20, it's not as lucrative.

Recce

AllBrick said:

Theres always L***n to fall back on if you can't afford the original.

Here's my 2 Lego TH and 1 L***n TH. Can tell which is the Lepin? :)

TigerMoth

Recce said:

AllBrick said:

Theres always L***n to fall back on if you can't afford the original.

Here's my 2 Lego TH and 1 L***n TH. Can tell which is the Lepin? :)

The LEPIN has the full thickness baseplate.

Recce

TigerMoth said:

Recce said:

AllBrick said:

Theres always L***n to fall back on if you can't afford the original.

Here's my 2 Lego TH and 1 L***n TH. Can tell which is the Lepin? :)

The LEPIN has the full thickness baseplate.

Yes, the thick baseplate gave it away, else difficult to tell apart, other than the Lego word on studs of course.

MattDawson

Actually the clock looks off as well, IMHO.

SumoLego

This is also a photo from a few feet away.  If I squint, I can probably mistake the three of them for the Parliament Building in London, or a small fox.

Love the ghost, by the way!

piratemania7

Like with other "older" modulars I think eventually people move on.  If I started collecting today from scratch everything after the PS (for now) is still available to a degree.  There is plenty of current sets for me to spend money on and build.  Now, as for the older sets I think unless you are a completionist and want every set from the line or have a ton of extra money to spend or really fancy say a FB or a GE then I dont really think you are going to have the same level or purchasing.

madforLEGO

Bumblepants said:

Looking at the prices on Grand Emporium and it seems to be pretty stagnant as well. I guess there is too much stock hoarded still to increase by much.

I think it can be said that the Grand Emporium is hurt more by its seemingly lackluster design than stocks of them in the after market. Im guessing many can 'live without' the Grand Emporium.

William_Townsley said:

What's the average price of the Green Grocers? 

I believe it is around 1200 USD. Green Grocer will go up still, but again I think the problem is that people assume that every set will rise like Market Street, UCS falcon, or Grand Carousel. People seem to forget those are 8 year old sets which contributes heavily to why those sets are pricey. Give TH the same timeline and price increases as a Cafe Corner and Im guessing those numbers will line up somewhat. I think you also cannot discount the economy as well. I know that the economy overall is somewhat better than say 2008, but how many people are worried about their jobs, lost their jobs, or are under-employed in the world? Also, LEGO is not getting any cheaper.