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Comments
:)
-Dan
Well if they found a couple more pallets then I would think it would be ready to ship right away. I think they never did intend to discontinue if more are being produced to ship Jan. 7th.
The EN is still for sale in other parts of the world, right? Let's say Lego is wanting to EOL this product as soon as possible world-wide (not just in the USA). The USA is a hot market right now for this set (ask Amazon). If the pallets are located in Europe, it will take until at least January 1st to get them here through their normal delivery channels.
If they do plan to continue, they now have to compete with four other train sets they sell AND those underselling them for the EN in the aftermarket. Plus they aren't shipping until after Christmas, so they get to kiss off the rest of the most active sales season. Ultimately, sales of the EN from Lego are going to go down.
I believe the set is EOL.
I'm with you and am looking forward to the after-Christmas sale (which will answer a lot of questions)!
Example: You buy a full-price LEGO Polybag for $3.99. It goes to 50% clearance. You will only receive $1.99 back.
That policy technically *only* applies to seasonal merchandise, and is in effect to prevent people from "renting" Halloween costumes, Christmas trees, etc. You could probably pretty easily make an argument that a LEGO toy is NOT a seasonal item, but they could make the counter-argument that it is on the "seasonal clearance schedule."
Brent
There is a deal right now on Public Transport on TRU for 25% off plus a free holiday polybag plus free shipping, worth picking up one or two of them, I think it is going out this year as well.
I think the LEGO stores will have this at 50% on the 26th, and I plan to get at least 2. One for myself, another to sell.
Oh, ok, fine... I'll buy a few Public Transports... free polybag never hurts either... but if [email protected] has them for 50% off, I'm going to be grumpy. :)
The funny thing is, I don't know what is left to mark down to 50% on [email protected], besides 10215. Almost everything else that was on sale for 25% off on Brick Friday is gone now, with perhaps the exception of 8404.
If TLG suddenly starts producing another batch of ENs, they are likely going to sit on the shelves for a long time. This takes up shelf space in both stores and warehouses and is negative working capital that could be put to better use elsewhere. So if they do it this year, I think they will quickly put two-and-two together and understand that the sales spike they are so eager to exploit is simply speculators, and that the sales spike will evaporate immediately on another production run.
Bottom line: if TLG does it this year, I bet they don't do it next year.
The better bet is to hit up the in-store sale if you have a Lego shop nearby. For the average buyer it will be a nice sale, but even judging by last year which was a very good sale, it's not going to be raining Grand Emporiums or anything like that. Midrange sets that are modestly popular seem to be the norm there...something like Cad Bane's speeder for example.
Head over to brickupdate's blog (http://www.brickupdate.com) to get an idea of what it looked like last year.
I have a hard time believing that even 1% of that is resellers/speculators...
I will say, that when I got to a LEGO Store, it is PACKED with kids, and many parents buying stuff. Sure, I may buy more per transaction on sale stuff. But think about how many families are out there with 2 kids buying stuff at full retail.
"Adult fans — who hold conventions, organize group meetings, and buy and trade bricks online — account for roughly 5 percent of Lego sales, says Michael McNally, Lego's North American director of brand relations. They represent the first and second generations of Lego users; although the Danish company dates back to 1932, the plastic Lego brick did not debut in the United States until the mid-'60s."
Now clearly, balancing this out are those who spent $30,000 on last year's Dec 26th sale (I heard reports from someone who did this.) or those who max out the 50% off discount on Black Friday up to $5,000.
It's actually interesting to consider those special VIP invites that went out in November for about 10 or so big customers per LEGO Store. How many thousands of transactions does LEGO do in a month at each store, where only 10 AFOLs were invited back as VIPs?
Thanks.
-Dan
@vman100 Very true about Winter Toy Shop. Being part of a series, I wonder if they did so for the same reasons that the modular line succeeded - to show people they need to "collect them all!"
-Dan
And while the speculators may not be a large % of total annual sales, I would venture that they could be a large percentage of a specific single sets sales during a specific period in time (i.e. right now). Of the last 1,000 EN at Amazon/Target, I would be willing to bet speculators were a relatively large percentage of those sales. And how long had those 1,000 ENs been sitting there before the frenzy started (in part perpetuated by this forum/thread)?
So it wouldn't be beyond comprehension that TLG could say, "wow, EN (or DS or whatever) is really selling well this holiday season, let's do another production run." They may be thinking of the market much like many of you are, i.e. that speculators are a very small portion, and therefore missing that they are actually a large portion of the sales jump on the particular product they are assessing.
Which brings me back to my original point that if TLG extends a production run based on sales this year they won't do it again. As the extra inventory sits on shelves through 1Q12, they will at some point understand that the spike in sales wasn't attributable to true end market demand.
They should know darn well that the last few pallets will be bought by resellers, that doesn't mean you do another production run.
Lego thinks much bigger than this, they are (or should be) much more worried about the 500,000 Dino sets they'll sell this month rather than the 10,000 EN sets they "might sell" if they made them.
I suspect they'll get hit pretty hard this weekend, so I'll be going back next week to see what may be in stock for the Dec 26 sale.
Brent
On the other hand, the number of Lego Speculators on this forum is high, and I think that tends to inflate the view of folks who read and post in these forums as to the overall amount of Lego speculation. This forum and other online Lego discussion forums do not at all represent the general population...we are the "extreme of the extreme"...already in a select group of people because we are AFOL, and then an even more select group as community members who are into their Lego hobby enough to visit these forums each day. In the end it's a tiny portion of the population, even a tiny portion of the AFOL population. Where else would lego speculators congregate? There's only 1 other forum I know where folks have talked openly about investing and even there it is limited to a thread or two...it should logically follow that a lego investor is well connected online (to find sales) and therefore a lot of them happen to be here since this is where the discussion is at.
True, there are lurkers here not posting who are also investing at the levels at LFT is (I purchase similar amounts), but even if it is 10:1, or 100:1, the total number of sets bought by speculators is small. The tales of folks making $30,000 purchases after Christmas are great, but the number of people actually doing business at this level is very small, and I think bricklink inventories bare that out. Additionally, if you look at eBay sales over the past year (if you have a market research tool), you see that eBay has the capacity to absorb thousands of these retired sets selling at double or triple MSRP.
People saving 1,2, even 5 of a set to resell is just a drop in the bucket...I think if you see an uptick in the number of folks buying 50-100+ sets of the same item for resell then that could really effect the market, but I have serious doubts about the number of people buying at that level worldwide running this as a true business. However, the more and more lego investing is talked about, the more a chance of that happening.
http://www.ebay.de/itm/LEGO-Ente-Duck-Limited-Edition-NUR-Hier-Sammlerstuck-Collectors-piece-/250953464182?pt=DE_AllesfürdKind_Spielzeug_Lego&hash=item3a6dfdf976
Brent
I watched for an hour while I was talking to the staff and picking out some items...
I think that 95% of their business really is just parents buying stuff for the kids, I watched a number of older ladies (clearly grandmas) come in with printed e-mails asking the staff for "these items here", the staff picked them out and started to explain what they were, the nice ladies just said "would you please just bag them up for me, they are for my grandchildren". They didn't know or care what they really were, they were just buying what they were told to, probably by Mom and Dad. ;)
One lady was there buying several HP sets for her kids for Christmas, another person bought a bunch of Ninjago stuff for his son, it was interesting to watch.
I did get more Pick-A-Brick boxes, they still have those. Now I just have to find people who would like a few extra PAB boxes for use after the 25th... Hmm, now where would I find such people? :)
Back to the topic at hand, I will say that I took the last four 4840 sets off the wall, those are now gone from that store and won't come back. The assistant manager there tonight actually was very happy to have me clear a few items from the shelf (I took all the remaining 5866 & 5765 as well) because they have SuperHeroes and Friends coming next week and need the shelf space for them, those older items weren't really selling anyway and they would rather display the new good stuff.
So I can say that there ARE times a retail WANTS you to take all they have, when it is EOL items that they need the room for anyway, in this case they were perfectly happy with it. I did ask (as I always do) if they wanted me to leave a few of each and they said no, please take it all.
I did pickup some more Wedding Sets, so if anyone wants one for trade, I'm happy to do so.
LFT: When do you expect they will go EOL?