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Predictions on Discontinuing Sets and their Secondary Market Value
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That said, the RRP Lego is listing products at AND the amount of dollars, pounds, euros, etc. people are still paying for sets in the secondary market is as high as ever. Imagine what will happen with today's EOL'd sets if and when an economic recovery occurs? Somehow I don' think prices will be lower overall, but that's just my opinion.
^^ This is another conversation
^^^ This is another conversation
Does no-one know how to start a new thread round here? :o)
http://02.chat.mibbit.com/
server is: irc.zone.ee
channel: #legodiscussions
I do wonder though if groups of seperate communities might be natrually forming.
Mods?
I keep looking at WM for EOL'd sets, but they seem to be keeping their prices fixed at RRP for the most part. I did get a Cars Spy Jet Escape for 1/2 off, but that was it. They have a ton of HP sets that I thought were EOL'd, but nothing on sale.
Also a lot of the stuff in here is about other things e.g. how white are star wars etc.
'Retirement speculation & announcements'
'Lego secondary market sustainability'
are ones that initially spring to mind.
I don't mind when threads go off topic to a certain extent. Sometimes you can't help it in order to answer a point made in passing. But if it deviates too much then of course the mods will split it into a new discussion. Maybe they could do that with the "colour of star destroyers" comments?
As for value long term, its a toss up due to the scarcity @pcirone mentioned.
Do I want to dig through 2,000 posts to clean it up? NOPE :o)
It's easier to merge threads than split them so feel free to create any (reasonable) new threads you feel are lost in here. We will then review and decide if any additional movements are necessary. All that being said, please note that IMO we don't need an individual thread for any/every set that may retire someday or go up in value someday. This thread and the one on Speculation are perfectly fine homes for those discussions. As to the color of space ships, a potential secondary market bubble, etc., those certainly belong elsewhere.
I am still undecided whether to buy the MMV and the 3 winter villages.
@tategoi - you don't have MMV? What are you waiting for??? Then again, I guess someone needs to wait to buy one of mine once it is retired. ;)
Yes, LEGO as a collectible hobby existed long before you started participating. Yes, people cared a great deal about LEGO prior to whatever current level you are witnessing.
I bring attention to my uncertainty of your perspective because, despite finding that you often have keen insight, it's hard for me to believe that you could not know the answer to your question if you've spent even a small fraction of your time here digesting what's been posted by others on the forum or looking at the resources available on Brickset.
If you were paying attention, you'd realize that there are life-long collectors among us whose collections number in the thousands of unique sets and span the last half century.
Is there any other way that images, instructions, and inventories of nearly every LEGO set ever produced could have been collected and made available when the company itself didn't strive to keep these records?
AFOLs connected and the community emerged since the dawn of the internet. LEGO listings on eBay numbered between 30k-50k as early as 2000. I didn't start using Bricklink until 2003, but at that time, there were already thousands of stores across the world.
I, like many others, have been buying and selling LEGO to supplement the cost of the hobby for well over a decade, so I understand and appreciate its treatment as a commodity and investment vehicle. I continue to support the buying and selling topics on this forum because I think it's an integral part of the hobby.
But please, everyone, don't allow your focus to become so single-minded such that the other aspects of the hobby -- which many members hold dear -- are dominated and overshadowed.
However, rereading it, I can see how you took it that way, I did not use the right words, my phrasing could have used a rewrite. What I *should* have said was:
"Has the volume and quantity of Lego being purchased for resale by future collectors at this level 10 or 20 years ago, or is the volume of sets and dollar amounts being spent by resellers for future collectors happening at this scale in the past"
That was more what I meant, and I didn't say it that way...
I am well aware that Lego collectors have been around for a long time, as you say, pictures and instructions and other information about sets from 20+ years ago is pretty easy to find because of that.
I was focused on the volume purchase of current production sets for the sole purpose of future resale. Why? Because if that is new, and it is actually being done by more than a few people on this forum, then it means we are forming our own bubble. I understand this, however there is buying and selling to supplement the cost of a hobby, then there is buying and selling thousands of sets that end up in storage units for the purpose of making real money.
So my question is, has the latter being going on for more than the past 5 years? I love Lego, I have a room full of it, three closets full of it, and now a storage unit full of it. I just spent this morning building AT-TE while my son built the new TIE Fighter next to me, my wife is working on the VW Camper...
So we love Lego... But the money counts too, which is why I asked the question... What I don't want is to end up with $100K worth of Lego in storage, only to find it doesn't go up in value because of a bubble that burst. I thought that was a fair question to ask...
Build on! :)
To that end, I don't see LEGO's overall aftermarket value dropping anytime soon (there are individual over- and underachievers, of course), but it's also a good idea for some of the 'long term' investors to stay mindful of the fact that any given sets value isn't going to go up forever, and sometimes it really is better to sell a set early after retirement rather than hoping that the value will skyrocket ten years after a sets EOL.
I think the phenomenon of reselling as we know it today sprang forth from eBay and was galvanized by the myriad of deals websites and forums. And this applies to nearly any product, not just LEGO. From the discount racks at Macy's to wholesale golf clubs, people suddenly found they could make a viable living buying discounted merchandise and selling to a global audience.
With respect to LEGO: yes, there were re-sellers then just as there are now. Back then there were far more instances of old collections being purchased at garage sales and resold because the value of LEGO was still being established; back then so many parents with grown children were looking to unload 'junk', whereas nowadays, it is much fewer and farther between where you'll find someone that doesn't have the wherewithal to do a quick web search for valuation or doesn't have a friend who will inform them.
But the trend was still the same then as it is now. The majority of sets will climb in value quickly once retired, just as stocks have momentum and people want to buy before it climbs higher. For a few very special sets, the prices reach stratospheric levels. There are already threads identifying the common characteristics of these sets, so I won't expand on it here.
Meanwhile, most sets plateau at a level where buyers generally won't pay any higher and sellers don't want to risk losing an easy sale by testing the next price barrier. Again, just like stocks, there are re-sellers that look to exit their positions sooner than others so the composition of the market also factors into how prices might stick or jump. From my observation, the rapid ascent slows to a plateau generally between 1-3 years after retirement. From there, some sets -- maybe they're "better" models, maybe just more rare -- will still still creep upwards, but not at the same rate. The others will slowly trend down as demand is satisfied and interest wanes. Yet there just aren't many instances of sets where one stands to lose money, and that's why I am and have always been bullish on LEGO as an investment. I've seen the examples of a couple often cited sets that are selling at or slightly below original MSRP years after retirement. However, in all those cases, I remember that they were widely available at deep discount, so most people selling those in quantity are still making money.
To this day, I have yet to lose money on a single set I intended to resell, and I've sold sets large and small from both popular and unpopular themes. Of course, some do better than others, but if you predominately buy LEGO at discounted prices, it's just so hard to go wrong because the sets still have element value, whether or not YOU are the one parting it out.
Now, naturally, if people are taking on more risk like buying at higher price points and from other resellers' exit points, such that artificiality is introduced into the valuation, then, sure, a bubble is forming.
But I still think all this activity is fueled by real demand. It's ultimately a very fun, high quality product that appeals to all ages for a multitude of reasons. It certainly has a lot more intrinsic value than cardstock with athletes' photos on them. With no major competition in sight, I think the LEGO company is the only entity that could really saturate and destroy the market, but they obviously will protect their interests.
http://www.brickset.com/search/?ownedBy=rocao
I have only entered about 60% of my collection.
With LFT's restatement, it's clear that no offense was intended, but as it was vague before, yes, I think it could be construed as insulting. It's not a perfect analogy (hides from Yellowcastle), but in my mind, it was like showing up late to one's own dissertation, sharing it, and then asking the committee whom has been conducting research in the same field for the past 10 years if anyone cared about the subject prior to him pursuing his degree.
As a side, when is the next free shipping offer typically from Lego?
1) A list of the months (in descending order) that experience the most EOLing of sets by Lego.
2) The same list as above only on a per Theme basis.
That would be a very interesting analysis (if I had access to the database). ;-)
P.S. Statistics can provide so many insights into the behavior of Lego, etc..