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I only have one, but there again I don't re-sell, so who cares.
Black Pearl is a disappointment compared to both the above though, the scale felt a bit off. I guess it will also do well as its an iconic ship, but it's not a patch on QAR, not a patch...
to look at on a shelf, QAR is the best I would agree. For design and use, and feature set, IF is miles ahead. BP was a poor choice by LEGO. It was built to hit a price point, instead of build to what it should be.
Honestly, TLG didn't need to pay a licensing fee for pirate sets. They would have done well continuing their own pirates theme.
That's a lot of extra expensive for a branded Captain Jack minifig. Captain Johnny Thunder would have been fine too.
The FB is not in the most recent issue of Lego magazine, but GE is, as well as the other two modulars. Also not in the magazine is Star Wars IS, but the DS is, and also the SSD! My thinking is that lego doesn't want anyone ordering these sets off of the catalogue in Dec or something (the FB or IS) and then having to say "sorry its gone now! tough luck!"
Does anyone have any stories, or heard of a story where lego did this (pulled things from their magazine) and then kept the item on the market for another year or so?
Also, regarding investment potential in these sets, my thinking is that A) very few people do what we do. We are a microcosm of the lego market, even for the big sets. I don't think lego would make decisions on what to retire and when based on our predictions and purchasing habits, or our after market selling habits, whatever those may be.
B) there's always gonna be some 16 year old who's parents cant afford $150 for a Christmas lego, but 3 years later the kid themself might be able to pay $300 for that same set post-retirement! Someone will always want these sets, and someone will always be willing to pay double RRP eventually, even if there are a million of them out there now and we all own 20 of them! Someone somewhere isn't buying these sets, and someday they will regret it, just like I regret not buying the Millennium Falcon and the Taj mahal and everything else cause I wasn't in the market then!
Lastly C) I don't think we are in danger of losing money or investment effectiveness as long as we dont go around screaming at the top of our lungs "hey everyone! invest in lego sets, its better than the gold market and the stock market! you can double your money within 1 or 2 years! 6 months if you time it right!"
I arrived at this conclusion on my own (that is... that legos are an awesome investment). I just kind of got back into legos after about a decade and thought "holy cow these things go for alot in mint condition!" I have disposable income and i want to invest, but thanks to the economy everything else sucks! You dont buy gold when the price of gold per once is more expensive than its ever been in the history of the world, like it is right now! you buy it when its the least expensive its been in decades. Id buy a house but i dont have THAT much. But I have enough to buy a $200+ lego set every month or so! And as long as my house doesn't burn down or get broken into im not gonna lose that investment! And considering the market trends on these sets post EOL, I think this is the smartest investment decision anyone can make! Period!
How can your house burn down if you don't have enough disposable income to buy a house...lol.
Quick advice. Insure your Lego collection :)
Note to self: Buy less Lego, find something else to invest in...
Also, with the possible exception of LFT and a very few others (if anyone), you may not be able to bet on making money on Lego on a large scale like you could investing in stock. There's only so much demand for Lego and, like stocks, some sets are winners and some are losers. For most people, investing on a small scale (a few large sets here and there) might make the most sense. That way, you stand to make a few dollars without the risk of losing a ton of money if things don't work out for whatever reason.
Lastly, especially if you're young, stocks offer exponentially more growth potential than Lego over the long term. Lego prices tend to max out and even decline, especially when you consider inflation. Stocks, on average, offer consistent growth over the very long term.
Compared to that amount of supply when in production, all the hoarders' sets post-EOL add up to almost nothing.
The bottom line is take any first rate Lego set you care to mention (Lego has never been better than RIGHT NOW and in the last few years)...it will cost more post EOL than it did when in production.
The only real "speculation" in this is how much your profit will be, how long it will take to get there, and which sets to buy. If you are a life-long Lego geek, passionate about the product, and know what is cool and what isn't, you'll do OK with these as an investment.
As I said earlier, I think it is important to know what a "special" Lego set looks like and invest in those. There will always be people who want that because it's special, and who did not get it for whatever reason while in production.
I "invest" in Lego just like many here, so I obviously want things to continue as they have. But I do it on a fairly small scale (in the $thousands as opposed to tens or hundreds of thousands or more), because there is an element of risk, namely the risk of marginal profits. To assume that the secondary market boom will continue as it has historically may be bit optimistic, even when taking into consideration the relatively small secondary market supply.
These are just my thoughts on the matter. I would love to be wrong, as it would benefit many people here. It just seems like there are countless examples, starting with Tulip mania in the 1600s, that point to the possibility of marginal future profits when investing in Lego.
Without exception, every single set I have discovered that is "special" by my definition and makes me say "oh, that's a great one; I think I need that" has gone up in value since its discontinuation. The only issue is whether it has gone up 50%, 100%, 200%, or more. And from what I can gather, the prices start escalating anywhere from immediately upon EOL to 6 months to a year. Maybe 2 at most, depending on what profit levels you are looking for.
Any modular is a special set. Buy as many FBs as you can afford, and wait for them to be discontinued. They will be selling for $200, $250, $300, and more soon enough.
Yea, no kidding... I have thousands of dollars tied up in the above four lines, and none of it is ever going to do very much. I'll be thrilled to get back my money, and that is actually losing money because there are other sets I could have bought instead and actually have made a profit.
One of the reasons some sets rise in price quickly and others do not is the rare parts within that are needed for something else.
Brickmaster set 20010 is a good example, it is one of the few sets with multiple copies of the light bley levers needed to bricklink UCS Falcon, so it raced in price way up, and I'm sure many of them were opened up for the levers alone.
Yeah, that's a bummer. I also bought quite a few of the PQ sets around Christmas when they were 50% off at Walmart. Thankfully, I got cold feet and returned most of them lol. Still have a few though. I don't even think breaking even is a possibility, even they were purchased at half off!
I have been reselling for a couple of years now and have definately changed some of my strategies...being able to pick the winners takes some skill and analysis, you can't just go and buy all of the big sets, or anything that's on sale. Within themes there are also winners and losers...and the "winners that everyone knows" start to carry the danger that they become too well known.
I've picked up a few Duplo sets that aren't great sellers, but I got them for 75% off, so who cares, I make good money on them at 25% off RRP, and they sell ok at that price. Had I paid even 50% off, then they would not have been worth doing.
There are many such examples. Holiday polybags come to mind.
It's still relatively readily available--maybe it's my location, as the local Lego store by me has always had several on the shelf. And it is already an expensive set. It seems to me that most of the non-investors who would want one to open, assemble, fondle, whatever, would already have bought one.
I dunno. Chalk it up to me being a non-investor and trust me, I'm not being disrespectful. That said, I must ask with the utmost respect to you investors: Are you waiting for SW fans that come along after EOL and think "Hey, cool, a Death Star, I gotta have one!"?
On top of this, "it's already an expensive set" essentially amounts to nothing where post-EOL resale value is concerned. In fact, in the case of the UCS Falcon, this actually functioned to help resale value.
On the other hand, I do think the longevity of the Death Star coupled with its strong sales will prevent it from reaching astronomically expensive levels. You should easily be able to double your money on this set within a year of EOL, though. And even if you only get 50% over RRP... that's $200.
http://shop.lego.com/en-GB/Harry-Potter-ByTheme
Back to our topic...Thoughts on current SW sets that should EOL this fall? I love the MF - just waiting for a good discount. I remember back in the spring, it could be had for $77 and I passed on it.