Predictions on Discontinuing Sets and their Secondary Market Value

Bandit

Maybe he got his lists confused. That's almost my exact "don't touch those sets except for 75% off" list. ;)

LegoFanTexas

^ 7189 was a hard sell for awhile, since B&N had it in stock 6 months past EOL. They only finally ran out this summer which is why the prices are only now starting to rise, so they must have had a ton of them.

I agree with you that 7869 will do well, but it will never sell in volume. It is only of those sets that you can do fine with having 10 or 20 of, but I wouldn't want 100 of them.

BrickDancer

@Bandit - I didn't realize that before, don't recall seeing it but will rewatch Ep. III soon. Great, now it has to go on my 'Want List' at EOL prices. I'm anti-Clone War so when I could have picked it up at RRP I just passed it by as 'meh' for the high RRP =(

Bandit

^ haha, uh oh, forget I said anything then. ;)

Pitfall69

^Yes, It might do ok. I was commenting earlier on why Mill Village Raid wasn't doing so well after EOL.

cloaked7

^^^ 7869. Yup I have 10 of them. Course that is a lot for me. I don't see me losing money on them. If I can get more at a good discount (BF?) I will.

mathew

I think MVR will do better this winter when The Hobbit sets come out. It looks like it will match up well with the Bag Ends set.

cloaked7

^ Yup, as will the MVV.

FatMatt

^Mill Vegan Village?

Pitfall69

Men's Viagra Village?

Pitfall69

^That will definitely go "up" in value

FatMatt

^^I don't think I will be visiting there.

cloaked7

Tangent - what's up with set 6873 (Spiderman and Doc Ock)? It is selling for over retail on eBay. S@H is out of the set and it just came out a couple month's ago. Is it going to be a good one for resale? 295 pcs for $30 seems to be a great price. Any thoughts?

Also, I was surprised to find one at my Wally World this evening. The only one they had. A pleasant surprise. Just wish they had 6. :-)

y2josh

6873 is still in that very narrow "available, but not readily" window. Give it a few weeks and it should drop.

gmpirate

Odd that they are going above RRP on Ebay. Every Lego store I have been in has had plenty of them. Personally, I think its just a minifig set. The building part is meh . . .

prevere

It'll be back in stock soon. Then the Xmas rush - out of stock again. January comes, back in stock.

DaddyDeuce

I skimmed the thread from page 100 forward, found people talking about the dealer "last order date" list but didn't actually find the list. Could anyone give a pointer to what page or date range it was posted?

Thanks!

gmpirate

Really, the dealer lists don't mean much except in hindsight. What is discussed here is just about as accurate as it gets. For anything else, the one or two year time frame will apply to "most" things depending on the theme.

madforLEGO

FatMatt said:

I was looking through one of the threads and found this amusing. It is from April 2011:

"If I was a dealer and not a collector and had investor I would be rich.. lol But I am not.
I know which sets will be worth mint when they are released by just looking at them..
thinking about it.. I would buy these sets..
4182 Isla De La Muerta
4191 The Captain's Cabin
4193 The London Escape
4865 The Forbidden Forest
6918 Blacksmith Attack
7189 Mill Village Raid
7327 Scorpion Pyramid
7914 Mandalorian Battle Pack
7869 Battle for Geonosis
7868 Mace Windu's Jedi Starfighter
7929 The Battle of Naboo
7956 Ewok Attack
8487 Flo's V8 Cafe
8638 Spy Jet Escape
9348 Community Minifigure Set
853111{Exclusive Weapon Training Set}
853176 Skeleton Mummy Battle Pack
all of the collectable figures.."

Was this guy serious? Okay, he may have picked a couple winners out of the 18 he stated.

Maybe they were thinking that if they bought a MASSIVE amount of them or something.

gmpirate

^ and wait for inflation to bring them to RRP

Pitfall69

That persons list is an example of why this thread is about speculation and by no means the final word on what will become valuable.

LegoFanTexas

DaddyDeuce said:

I skimmed the thread from page 100 forward, found people talking about the dealer "last order date" list but didn't actually find the list. Could anyone give a pointer to what page or date range it was posted?

Thanks!

I do not think the whole list has been posted. For (what should be) obvious reasons, I'm not going to post it. If someone else wants to, that is their business.

But as others said, the list is not really a EOL list, it is a last order by date for the smaller third party dealers, and it does not always reflect the true marketplace.

Bandit

^ plus, and correct me if I'm wrong, it does not contain info on 10xxx exclusives, which is mostly what we care about anyway (what I care more about anyway).

LegoFanTexas

^ You are correct, only 4 digit sets are on the list.

prevere

The learning curve for aftermarket selling is about a year I think. I'm not going to rip on that guy too much. But after a few years - you tend to get an immediate feeling good or bad about any given set.

LegoFanTexas

^ I agree, and I'm still wrong plenty of times. :)

And sometimes I'm right, without knowing it either... I had no idea on Ninjago, I was just picking up everything that was 50% off, and that stuff happened to be in the lot. It evens out all the Atlantis and PQ stuff, to a point... but overall the Walmart clearance last year was a wash for me, the profits from half of it paid for the losses on the other half.

But I was very new then. :)

Pitfall69

Raise your hand if you had insight to purchase 100 UCS MF's, CC's, MS's and are now reading this forum from your yacht???

LegoFanTexas

^ You know, the funny thing is, if you really had 100 UCS Falcons right now, you'd have to underprice the market pretty far to move them in any short period of time.

Are they selling for $3K on eBay? Yes, but very slowly... Maybe a few a month total... To move 100 of them you might have to sell them for $2,200 to $2,500 to get people to move on them.

Same problem with the other sets, any kind of volume and the market just isn't there. For example, I'm offering my new UCS Falcon for $2K that is just missing the retail box and I'm not getting any interest.

So there really are just not that many people who want to buy.

graphite

^ There are plenty of people that WANT to buy, just not plenty that can afford to buy. I'd love to buy one and I'd probably break down and pay $2k if I could but that isn't gonna happen right now.

Pitfall69

I don't think one would care if they sold only 1-2 MF's a month. Especially if they got them on sale like I got mine. $349.99 and free shipping. So...even if you sold only 2 a month for $2,100 SEALED that would net you $3,500 before EBay and paypal fees. Then, you would obviously be selling other expensive Lego sets because you had the insight to purchase those ultra collectible sets.

Pitfall69

If I had 100's of those sets I would not flood the market. There would be no need to. I would be making 60-70k a year just selling a few sets a month.

Pitfall69

My point is that NOBODY had the insight or even the funds to invest in 100's of these sets. We should just take whatever information put out there with a "grain of salt" and try to make educated guesses and "informed" purchases.

LegoFanTexas

Pitfall69 said:

I don't think one would care if they sold only 1-2 MF's a month. Especially if they got them on sale like I got mine. $349.99 and free shipping. So...even if you sold only 2 a month for $2,100 SEALED that would net you $3,500 before EBay and paypal fees. Then, you would obviously be selling other expensive Lego sets because you had the insight to purchase those ultra collectible sets.

Capital has a time value, if you sell 2 a month, that is 50 months or 4 years.

And I don't think you could have bought 100 at $349, that was a limit 2 deal, was it not? At $500 invested to return $2,000 after fees, 2 years later, is that a good deal? Yes. To do it 7 years later? Not as much of one.

Also, there is risk, nothing stops TLG from doing a limited run of 10,000 UCS Falcons for $999, tossing in a chrome C-3PO to make the fans happy. :)

I think if they did that, they'd sell every one of them in a few days.

Bandit

If I had $100,000 in cash sitting around that I felt comfortable using to buy hundreds of copies of just a couple expensive sets, I'd probably already have a yacht. :)

Pitfall69

Ha. Anything is possible. Lol. They see the demand and yet they still haven't done it, so I highly doubt that would happen. Refer to HUW's April Fool's joke :)

Yes, we know the many factors involved in the appreciation of a Lego set. I used an extreme example, but I still stand by my point.

* As I'm standing on my soap box, LFT pulls it out from under my feet and says "No box for you!!!" *

Bandit

There is no sure thing. Eggs, basket, blah blah blah. Using a massive amount of your assumedly limited capital on just a few expensive sets is risky indeed. No way would I ever have done that with the Falcon, especially when it seemed like TLG couldn't even get rid of them. A few? Sure. 100? No way. :)

Pitfall69

Yes, but my point was that if you had "inside information" (that is what people think this particular forum is all about) and HAD the capital you would certainly do it.

Bandit

Inside information or a time machine? If I had a time machine, I'd be winning powerball every week. ;)

Pitfall69

Before we go way off topic. My comments were in reference to lists of potential money making sets and retail last order dates and expected EOL dates of current sets.

LegoFanTexas

If I had next Tuesday's newspaper, I could retire. Just have to know the right stocks to sell options on. :)

Pitfall69

Ok ok ok. Sigh...

Legofanscott

LegoFanTexas said:

Pitfall69 said:

I don't think one would care if they sold only 1-2 MF's a month. Especially if they got them on sale like I got mine. $349.99 and free shipping. So...even if you sold only 2 a month for $2,100 SEALED that would net you $3,500 before EBay and paypal fees. Then, you would obviously be selling other expensive Lego sets because you had the insight to purchase those ultra collectible sets.

Capital has a time value, if you sell 2 a month, that is 50 months or 4 years.

And I don't think you could have bought 100 at $349, that was a limit 2 deal, was it not? At $500 invested to return $2,000 after fees, 2 years later, is that a good deal? Yes. To do it 7 years later? Not as much of one.

Also, there is risk, nothing stops TLG from doing a limited run of 10,000 UCS Falcons for $999, tossing in a chrome C-3PO to make the fans happy. :)

I think if they did that, they'd sell every one of them in a few days.

Does anyone think Lego will ever do another set the way they did with the falcon by doing a pre order Limited edition?

Would be fantastic if they did :)

Ive got a soft spot for anything to do with limited editions xD

LegoFanTexas

^ My only problem, newspapers don't come in boxes... :)

Pitfall69

:)

BuriedinBricks

gmpirate said:

Odd that they are going above RRP on Ebay. Every Lego store I have been in has had plenty of them. Personally, I think its just a minifig set. The building part is meh . . .

Tend to agree, although the prison cell and exam table are kind of cool. I wish they would have bulked up the lab a little and skipped the vehicle.

FatMatt

Did anyone notice the BP is sold out at S@H?

Bandit

^ about time!

Renny

QAR next?

BrickDancer

Is there a chance that it changes back from 'sold out'? If not, that was a short lifespan since it was released only in November. QAR is older by 5 months, but sticking around?

LegoFanTexas

Imperial Shuttle went to "Sold Out" on May 4th, then came back.

It may be just sold out enough to not take new orders, but may come back with new shipments in a month.