Predictions on Discontinuing Sets and their Secondary Market Value

sidersdd

^ Yep. The minifigs were slightly different as well. Different head pieces for some reason.

Farmer_John

I really feel stupid. I'm just glad I found out before the Expedition was EOL'd. I really need to grab at least one or two before the prices skyrocket (pardon the pun).

cloaked7

I think that is the main diff. I heard that LEGO built the first set primarily for AFOL's, but kids were getting it and the earlier set was coming apart on them. So, the revised it, and included some addt'l bracing on the fuel tank and a change in the way the engines are connected. Other smaller changes like a different satelitte (sp). I think LEGO will send you the braces so you can add them to the earlier set if you contact them.

Also, with the numbers I think LEGO did the switch of the 31 and 13 on purpose. I have noticed them do similar things with set numbers. Check out 8989 and 8998. :-)

Farmer_John

I do appreciate the heads up on this...

brickupdate

Is that a revised title to this thread? This discussion certainly covers a lot of ground, but I certainly enjoy where this thread has gone.

Yellowcastle

^ This one seems a little more accurate...

AvengerDr

A user over on EB posted a link to an ebay auction for a UCS MF which just ended. It was sold for £3000! And it was used. Whoa..

rasmustali

I do not see how its value can stop increasing unless LEGO releases UCS MF again. Which I am sure will not happen.

richo

Totally disagree. With a 10 year licence extension re-signed, and rampant demand for this set, I am willing to place a small wager they make another UCS Falcon.

fyrmedhatt

A user over on EB posted a link to an ebay auction for a UCS MF which just ended. It was sold for £3000! And it was used. Whoa..

That is just insane, over twice the normal going rate for new sets! (US price at least)... Probably a case where the excitement of the auction got the better of the bidders.

As for the10213 vs 10231, I'm pretty sure 10213 will be the rarer set, and will fetch more on the secondary market in due time. The design flaw is really not that significant, and there are only a few extra pieces included in the new one.

AvengerDr

But it won't be the same as the 10179, otherwise they would be shooting themselves in the foot. It will be a slightly different one, maybe better maybe worse. In this way collectors will want them both :D

y2josh

@richo - Maybe. But more than likely not. The MF has already been done and there are other iconic ships that haven't gotten the UCS treatment. I imagine you'll see a Slave I, an A-Wing, an AT-AT, a standard TIE Fighter, a TIE Bomber, an MC80 (Liberty class and Home One class), a Nebulon-B and perhaps even a speeder bike or Jabba's sail barge before you ever see a remake of an exisiting UCS ship.

Additionally, from an 'improved design' standpoint, both the X-Wing and the Snowspeeder could stand to be improved upon. Whereas I would say the UCS Falcon (at least insofar as the exterior is concerned) is a near-perfect model, I wouldn't even begin to say the same of the X-Wing and the Snowspeeder, which are really showing their age at this point.

And given that they seem to do about one UCS ship a year... I wouldn't hold my breath on the Falcon re-release.

Bandit

There is *no* way they ever do another UCS Falcon like that. It will never happen. These are made for the AFOL collectors. They release one or 2 sets a year. There is a huge backlog of ships/sets these said collectors (i.e. me :D) still want to see done on a grand scale like the falcon. I would be really upset if they wasted a new release on a set that's already been done, and that literally can't even be improved upon.

Farmer_John

The MF has already been done and there are other iconic ships that haven't gotten the UCS treatment

I agree, but then I begin to wonder what Lego was thinking when they decided to sell the UCS Obi-Wan ship. Maybe it's just me, but there are so many better sets they could have done instead. The Obi-Wan ship has now been on sale for two consecutive Christmases, which seems to indicate it isn't moving well. I hope the next UCS set isn't as bad as the Obi-Wan ship.

I hope they do more of the UCS sets from the original three movies, which are all iconic compared to the ships in the newer movies.

rasmustali

Isnt the next UCS 2000 piece R2-D2?

y2josh

^Yes, but in terms of this year's ship, it's the B-Wing.

Bandit

To be fair, the Obi-Wan ship was done at a $99 price point and is only 676 pieces, which barely gets it UCS status as far as I'm concerned. If they were going to do it, I'm glad they did it that way. It seems more along the lines of the tiny UCS Naboo Starfighter they did 10 years ago. I would have been upset had they done a $99 price point version of an iconic ship I actually cared about, rather than a $200+ version that's bigger with much more detail.

I can only assume/hope the B-Wing coming out later this year will be of the 1400+ piece variety and will be awesome.

They'll do a 5000+ piece set again one of these days. Here's to hoping it's a giant 2+ft tall AT-AT, done to fit in relative scale with the UCS AT-ST.

DaddyDeuce

LEGO Group could certainly decide to start rereleasing collectable sets in order to fill market demand and drive down prices in the secondary market. And I agree that "true consumers" (whoever they are) would benefit by getting the set they want at a lower price.

But it isn't clear to me at all that LEGO Group would benefit overall from such a move. If they began removing the incentive for collectors/investors who purchase and store sets, then collectors/investors would likely reduce their purchasing activity. This would make it harder for LEGO to sell some of their products; they would lose the current market of willing buyers who will step in and consume the end of the inventory of a product that LEGO is phasing out.

There is a fine line that a company has to walk when dealing with a "collectable" product. It is to nobody's benefit if LEGO becomes the next Beanie Baby. The time to get out of collecting and run for the hills is when it becomes obvious to everyone involved that sets are being produced and bought *solely* for the purpose of getting resold at a higher price down the line, with it being clear to all participants that these aren't LEGO that anyone (even AFOL) are going to build and enjoy.

The truly ridiculous hypothetical we could see is when MISB LEGO sets are graded by some independent third-party for the quality of the box, and then sealed in a protective clear plastic overbox with a certificate of grading attached, intended only to be displayed in their clear overboxes for all time.

richo

On that MF auction, something doesn't look quite right to me, including the bidding. Call it my spider senses.

gmpirate

^ Yes, I always discount auctions like that. Besides, "one" auction does not represent the market.

rasmustali

seems fishy to me also. Only one who would buy LEGO like UCS MF would have to be AFOL and no AFOL would pay such money for a set that he could easily get for half of that money.

AvengerDr

yeah I noticed that as well.. one of the guy bidding the auction up had only 1 fb point

Dougout

@Bandit (10178) was an AT-AT under the UCS category. It was motorized and had 1100+ pieces. Does anyone know if the at-at (8129) can still be found anywhere? TRU has it on their website, but its out-of-stock

Farmer_John

The truly ridiculous hypothetical we could see is when MISB LEGO sets are graded by some independent third-party for the quality of the box, and then sealed in a protective clear plastic overbox with a certificate of grading attached, intended only to be displayed in their clear overboxes for all time.

Please, please, please don't give anyone ideas...

richo

^ Hear, hear.

Farmer_John

yeah I noticed that as well.. one of the guy bidding the auction up had only 1 fb point

I've heard that sellers sometime play games by having someone (or themselves under another username) bid up the price and then not go through with the purchase so they can go the 2nd offer route for the other sap who played in the bidding war. Sometimes it actually works.

Buyers have their games they play too. I sold a rare guitar on eBay around 2003 to a guy from Germany. There was another guy who actually lives close by that contacted me via eBay and requested that I not sell the guitar to the winner because "all our classic guitars are getting exported to other countries." He told me I should tell the winner that I dropped the guitar and it broke, and he would purchase it for his highest bid. I told him that if he wanted it, he should have bid more and to quit bothering me. Needless to say, a very happy gentleman in Germany emailed me to express his satisfaction with his purchase.

The point is that there is always somebody looking for an angle and you have to be careful buying and selling.

DaddyDeuce

Another thing I don't get. The Maersk Train, 10219, is selling for around $150 on eBay and Amazon right now. What gives? It is still available at [email protected] for $120, and TRU for $130 (with free ship). I figure people just don't know about [email protected]?

Answering your question about the markups on eBay; I bet most buyers there don't know about [email protected] When you think about it, it isn't common for a toy manufacturer to sell directly to the consumer via their website. If you didn't know about [email protected] you might not guess it existed.

There is also the consumer mindset regarding eBay - many people assume that the best price for anything is always on eBay. So if you go to eBay and see the train is selling for $150, that must by definition be the best price.

richo

^ paypal option might be a puller for some people also. Not accepted by S&H.

Great_small76

I went through a mad period - prior to collecting Lego when it was all about Mint condition boxed dinky toys - I did no research and just outbid everyone on ebay for mint condition dinky toys thinking it would be best price seeing as though I had bid with 2 secs to go on many on most purchases - how wrong could I have been. There were loads going in private collector auctions for a lot cheaper than ebay - it was just the fact that I was more aware of ebay that going to the direct source in the first place.

Bandit

@Bandit (10178) was an AT-AT under the UCS category. It was motorized and had 1100+ pieces. Does anyone know if the at-at (8129) can still be found anywhere? TRU has it on their website, but its out-of-stock

Well, it has a 10xxx number, but it's not a true UCS set (just like the Sandcrawler, Cloud City, and the current Tantive IV). It's really no different than the other 2 regular AT-ATs they've made (other than the motor).

cloaked7

Would someone explain how the EOL date is determined? I read that it is somehow connected to when a set is no longer available on [email protected], but not sure if that's correct. Just wondering, does LEGO issue an EOL date sometime after a set is officially EOL? Continuing my thought. So, a set could be EOL but still available at retailers? I guess it depends on how much inventory is in the retail environment when a set is EOL? And still continuing... If it is somehow set when LEGO is permanently out of stock on a set and let's say amazon still has the set it is possible (not probable) that a person could still purchase the item at a reasonable price? (talking about something that shoots up in price, like the EN did). Just trying to understand how the EOL process works. Thanks

drdavewatford

^^ Agreed - not UCS.

Brickset's list of UCS sets is about as near to definitive as you can get, IMHO....

http://www.brickset.com/browse/themes/?theme=Star Wars&subtheme=Ultimate Collector Series

DaddyDeuce

Would someone explain how the EOL date is determined?

There is no such thing as an "official" EOL date. Some people use the date a set sells out at LEGO [email protected] as an EOL date, but that doesn't mean that it is sold out everywhere or even that [email protected] might not receive a resupply shipment.

Take 7189 Mill Village Raid for example. It has been sold out of the US [email protected] website since November 28th, but there is still at least one retailer selling them for RRP. If you know where to look you can easily buy them, and you aren't going to see any real price activity on the secondary market until the retail channels are depleted.

As a counter-example look at 10193 Medieval Market Village. It is sold out at Amazon.com but in-stock at basically every other major retailer (including [email protected]). There has been a lot of speculation that it is about to be discontinued. But can you really tell? Maybe Amazon is about to get another 30,000 units in stock?

Somewhere in the bowels of the LEGO Group a decision gets made to stop making a set. They never announce that this has officially happened, but slowly the retail channel starts drying up. When you see retailers go out of stock and not get restocked for a period of time you have to think that maybe it is going go out-of-stock everywhere.

Because so much toy buying happens around Christmas time, that is a time of year when inventories can get drawn down very quickly. It leads to many sets apparently being discontinued between November and January, when in fact production may have ended months before.

cloaked7

Thanks @DaddyDeuce. Another question along the same lines. How about production of a set? Is there only 1 production run of a set? Or, can there be several? And, by production I mean the assembly of bricks into a set. I imagine there is a separate production of the bricks apart from the set assembly. But, I could be wrong. I know nothing about LEGO production.

The_Brick_Builder

Brickset's list of UCS sets is about as near to definitive as you can get, IMHO....

http://www.brickset.com/browse/themes/?theme=Star Wars&subtheme=Ultimate Collector Series

10188 Death Star isn't on the list?

drdavewatford

^ That's because it isn't UCS.

LegoFanTexas

^^ - exactly, that confused me as well, but the UCS sets actually say UCS, or so I understand... They also have the black display plaque with the stats and other info about the set...

Death Star is pretty cool, but not UCS... That being said, I personally consider it to be in the same line, since it IS huge!!! :)

rocao

There are lots of inconsistencies where you could establish a criteria, and then there are obvious exceptions.

10188 seems like it should be UCS. It certainly is large enough. It has a 5 digit 10xxx set number. But the box doesn't have any UCS printing and it doesn't have information placard you'd expect in a UCS set.

But then last year, TLG came out with the attached promotional poster labeling the depicted sets as "Ultimate LEGO Star Wars sets", and 10188 is the centerpiece. Of course, this doesn't say "Ultimate Collector Series"... but "ultimate" is certainly a peculiar reference.

More peculiarities abound with the poster though: 7181 Tie-Interceptor, 7191 X-Wing, and 7194 Yoda aren't on the poster, and those certainly are UCS. 10178 AT-AT and 10123 Cloud City are, though. Also 10131 Tie Collection is on the poster, but not 7283 "Ultimate Space Battle", which was in the same vein as the former. Of course there's always the argument that this isn't meant to be a definitive list, but ... then why even bother?

Bandit

Yeah, that poster just lists all the 10xxx sets. Which it likens 'Ultimate' sets. That may well be, but given that 3 sets it neglects to even include actually have 'Ultimate Collector Series' written on the box, that poster is meaningless as far as determining UCS status.

If it's a model meant to be displayed, it's UCS. If it's meant to be played with to any degree, it's not. If it has a display plaque, it's UCS. If it doesn't, it's not.

The Darth Maul bust and Yoda don't have plaques though. However, those 2 models both come with a totally unique 1x2 lego logo stamped brick incorporated into the model, so I'm going to count those as their 'plaques'. :)

Farmer_John

Thanks @DaddyDeuce. Another question along the same lines. How about production of a set? Is there only 1 production run of a set? Or, can there be several? And, by production I mean the assembly of bricks into a set. I imagine there is a separate production of the bricks apart from the set assembly. But, I could be wrong. I know nothing about LEGO production.

The business I work in produces expensive products, and we (as a business) use the term EOL to describe when we (the OEM) quit making and selling the products. I've always treated EOL'd lego sets the same way...when TLG ends its production and quits selling them (at least in a given market). Sure...there may be sets out there in retail outlets, but there are no more to be produced. Hence, EOL'd.

A while back, someone posted 4 National Geographic youtube video segments in one of the Brickset threads regarding the lego's operation. It's a beautiful thing to watch, and is more or less automated. It appeared that TLG can make any given set with the push of a button (so to speak). Sometimes things don't go too well and TLG makes a bad batch such as the Fire Brigade 39R1. In this case, pieces were missing due to some combination of errors in their programs and their quality control. The point is there are different batches run on different sets to meet the global demand.

You should watch the 4 National Geographic youtube videos below to see how Lego works...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vxqhi-EWYEk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jov-QB27_Vs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EfJEwNN10iw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dC86PtZ_0AE

Dougout

^ Awesome videos. I love learning about lego and how they're made.

cloaked7

I agree. Awesome! Thanks for sharing @Farmer_John

Coolsplash

This was one thing I did before joining the Brickset forum, to watch the Nat Geo video. Provides in depth analysis on how LEGO is really produced.

Time to change the thread title again? :)

DaddyDeuce

The business I work in produces expensive products, and we (as a business) use the term EOL to describe when we (the OEM) quit making and selling the products.

I should add that in my profession EOL dates have real meaning and are announced by our suppliers in advance. They want us to be aware of an upcoming EOL and act accordingly. We can also negotiate EOL in certain cases if it is inconvenient for us.

My point about LEGO is that there are no official published EOL dates by the LEGO Group. Products just suddenly (or slowly) start going out of stock everywhere.

Farmer_John

I should add that in my profession EOL dates have real meaning and are announced by our suppliers in advance. They want us to be aware of an upcoming EOL and act accordingly. We can also negotiate EOL in certain cases if it is inconvenient for us.

My point about LEGO is that there are no official published EOL dates by the LEGO Group. Products just suddenly (or slowly) start going out of stock everywhere.

Yep...our company is a "supplier" and we can't EOL without significant notification to vendors, plants that use our products, etc.

Lego does take a different approach...at least with the end-customers. Their approach is more of the ..."SURPRISE"...approach.

But I completely understand and agree with your comment.

LegoFanTexas

@DaddyDeuce - that brings up an interesting point:

"Would it help or hurt the Lego market in general, or TLG directly, to simply publish EOL data?"

y2josh

^I don't know... they gave fair warning on 10179 and it certainly hasn't hurt that set. Granted, by 'fair warning,' I mean you had about a week to pick one up once they said it was going, but still...

Farmer_John

Personally, I kind of like the way TLG does it now. It adds another level of complexity to purchasing to resell sets. Even if TLG published an EOL date, vendors like Amazon, WM, TRU, etc. would still have stock to be cleared out at RRP. Or better yet, those same vendors might snap up the remaining TLG stock to sell to customers for higher than RRP prices (I can see TRU and Amazon doing that anyway).

LegoFanTexas

I just found a few new Series 3-4 CMF at my local Lego store, they were hidden behind a display and they were nice enough to sell them to me...

Any value? The store employee felt the bags and seemed to know what he was doing, he put a post-it-note on there to say what they were...

Series 3:
Hula Girl
Mummy

Series 4:
Sailor

Are these worth anything? Keep? Open and give to my kids? Trade?

Matthew

Not really, if you take a look at Bricklink, those particular ones go for under RRP. (possibly not the hula girl as much). There were so many of series 3 and 4 produced, that the market was flood, forcing prices down of even the more desirable figs, but these were never top of that list.