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Would re-releases be such a bad thing?
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Comments
They might be aware of how much they've spent, although quite possibly not, but any value beyond that can be a mystery.
There's nothing special about LEGO sets in this regard. I know the value of any investments I have fairly accurately because they are investments. Other than the fact I looked it up last week, I had no real idea of the value of the property in which I live (I was out by 50%), quite simply because it has the purpose. That purpose overrides any monetary value - which is irrelevant because I have I have no intention of selling.
I do not have this constant obsession with how much everything is worth.
Star Wars isn't my thing, but I can't tell you how much, say, Cafe Corner is worth without looking it up. I know it's worth considerably more than I paid, but I have no idea whether it's three times (I'd guess twice was a bit low) as much or ten times as much. I have no idea whether it's increasing or decreasing. It is totally irrelevant to me.
If I needed money, I would indeed try to get a good price, but I'd look it up.
As CCC said, "There are as many types are of AFOL as there are AFOLs." There are no doubt a few that collect solely as an investment, others who give no thought to resale value. There are some who only by new sets in a given theme, others who buy sets from all the themes. There are probably folks who collect LEGO keychains solely because they collect keychains, and have no interest in LEGO otherwise. There are purists who will only buy LEGO, and there are fans who will buy other brands. There are fans who care what other people buy, fans who don't care what others buy, and fans who don't care that others don't care :)
I don't like resellers because they imho greatly inflate the prices of EOL sets and I would indeed call that more than greedy. But as long as there are people willing to pay these prices, I personally might not like the situation, but I accept it nonetheless.
As for why I am happy buing cloned sets versus why I think it would be a good idea if Lego rereleased them: because I would always prefer to support Lego versus some shady Chinese clone manufacturer who is dancing the fine line between legal and illegal. Period. It's not about the quality, because that is for all intents and purposes almost identical. I am an AFOL after all, and as I have said before, I would happily pay retail to TLG for a rerelease of a favorite set of mine like 10228 as a prime example. I have now ordered the Lepin version. A "greedy" reseller will now lose my business, which I have no problem with. But had TLG rereleased that set for example for Halloween this year, they would currently be processing my S@H order, instead of some AliExpress Seller in Hong Kong or wherever.
If you buy a knockoff of a Legit LEGO set- for whatever reason- you are condoning such activity (which appears to be illegal). This does hurt LEGO, even if only a 'paper cut'. This argument of 'well if LEGO would just remake the set there would be no problem' is a hogwash argument. A illegal copy is an illegal copy.
As for the question: is it illegal? Well it must be enough to drive LEGO to sue LEPIN.
If LEPIN was making other sets not in any way related to old LEGO designs and specifically licenses it likely would not be an issue as LEGO may be upset with LEPINs quality but not much they can do about that. However, seeing as LEPIN is getting a lot of, unfortunately, positive attention (and profits) for doing something wrong it just strikes me as a company that should be held accountable for such actions.
Heck, I'm most surprised that Disney has not gone after them for the SW license infringement; my guess is Lucas was running the show still they would be.
People can try to explain buying an illegal knockoff all away to make themselves feel better, but it is wrong to do. By paying said company you are reinforcing to them that it is OK to do so.
Also, knock it off with the 'greedy reseller' stuff. I'll let you in on a little secret (actually not so little or secret): There are no 'greedy resellers'. The item sells by law of supply and demand, not by what a reseller charges.. A reseller can ask for 10K for UCS falcon, and likely will be sitting on it for a while. So, by your reasoning of greedy resellers, where does that end exactly? Do you go into toy stores and tell the store that the price for that LEGO Town Square should be a quarter of what the RRP is?
I'm not sure how you can make such comments, but then lambast others opinions you do not agree with as 'idiotic'.
And as for illegal or not, it has been discussed in the other thread, not everything Lepin does seems to be illegal. Making clones of EOL'ed and especially non-licenced sets might not be illegal. I thought Lego was going after Lepin for their cloning of licenced sets like their Star Wnrs line or the Porsche, Disney Castle, etc.
I would wager that when it comes to those old Modulars, etc., Lepin will be quite safe from TLG's actions.
Also, the main topic here, like I mention in my previous message was the knockoffs of sets. I know that LEPIN does not do every set like this, but since you are the one keen on saying 'well since LEGO does not make it anymore it is Ok for me to buy a knockoff of a LEGO set' is really what we are talking about isn't it? Especially when the company is likely getting the majority of their revenue right now, and attention, for making knockoffs of LEGO designs?
As for sets like modulars. Modular buildings are designs, and presumably owned by LEGO. Now, I'm no legal expert here, but I'm guessing LEGO does have a leg to stand on. How do I think this? I'm guessing companies like MB would be churning out all sorts of old LEGO set designs instead of paying their designers if they could get away with it and would like have done the Cafe Corner themselves and charged less and gotten attention and revenue form doing that more than almost anything else they have done.
As for LEPIN would not make it if LEGO redid the set: How do you know what LEPIN would not make? Like @ericb said, if LEGO redid it, it still would be pricey (more than its original retail, which people bristled at when it was produced by LEGO) and then people would whine 'ohhh, if LEGO would just make it cheaper' to rationalize making such a purchase.
Anyway, the main problem for TLG is that when it comes to Lepin, Pandora is out of the box. Buyers in the West now know of Lepin, their quality, and their pricing. They have gained a foothold in the market that TLG can only get rid of if they manage to shut down Lepin. And even if they manage to do so, there will be another clone manufacturer on the horizon who does what Lepin does now, only perhaps a little more subtle.
You can say what you like, but I am absolutely certain that Lepin wouldn't be known and bought in the West, had Lego not that stance on rereleasing popular old sets.
However, if LEGO did re-release older, popular sets, then Lepin might just as easily have just gone after whatever older, popular sets LEGO didn't have available, and still have gotten a similar amount of attention. For instance, Black Seas Barracuda is still one of the most beloved LEGO pirate ships, even after being re-released as part of the failed LEGO Legends series. Same with Metroliner among LEGO passenger trains. There's no reason to think LEGO would ever try re-releasing either set again when even more of their molds are retired/obsolete than were in the early naughts! But a smaller company like Lepin might still be able to profit and gain attention by re-releasing it, since both sets are extremely valuable in the LEGO aftermarket. Enlighten DID in fact get a decent amount of AFOL attention for their BSB knock-off, they just didn't attract as much attention as Lepin due to their more obvious quality defects.
Obviously it's silly to think LEGO could or should re-release EVERY beloved older set. Particularly sets like BSB and Metroliner that they've re-released unsuccessfully in the past, or sets like the old monorail sets that require dozens of defunct molds and were never profitable even when they were current. So I can't think of any scenario where a company like Lepin couldn't make an impression with the AFOL community by re-releasing the sets LEGO has perfectly sound reasons for keeping retired, for lower prices than LEGO could ever hope to offer. There will always be things that the LEGO Group doesn't do, and there will always be competitors looking for some way to exploit that.
The people and attitudes I absolutley hate...!
As yet, and as has been pointed out, we don't know the basis of TLG's lawsuit. However, LEPIN's change of their logo, within just a few days, might be a hint.
Various people think the Chinese legal process is lacking in comparison with that in the West. If the latter consists of deciding guilt without even knowing the charges, that conjecture seems highly suspect.
Stripping store shelves bare has little to do with the law of supply and demand. There are many aspects to reselling - some are beneficial; others are not. It is essentially why the arguments can continue without coming to any conclusion.
Most people do something very similar. They walk into a store, look at the price, and if they don't think it's reasonable, they walk back out again.
I strongly suspect that they haven't done it because it's something they either wouldn't have thought of, or because it seemed "wrong" - much in the same way that it seems "wrong" to many people here. At the moment, we don't know where that will go, but it could easily end up with Mega Bloks producing older LEGO sets that took their fancy.
We don't. But the primary difference between a LEGO set and a LEPIN set, for the average punter, is price. It's not an absolute in that people would automatically select the cheapest option, but a re-release stands to be significantly cheaper than the other alternative of buying the original from a reseller. That swings the balance away from people selecting LEPIN - whether it would've been enough to make a difference is a different matter.
That's more problematic for many reasons. Older sets aren't so sophisticated - people even use that as a reason to not re-release Cafe Corner. The further back you go, the more that's the case. There's also less of a link - older modulars are popular because there are current ones. Go back too far and it's only nostalgia driving the interest, not the merits of the sets themselves. That's not going to drive sales enough to be worth while.
-Stripping store shelves is more 'profiteering' than what people are implying 'greedy resellers' are doing in selling old, out of production sets, for profit. I know when I wrote that, and could not change it when I realized I left that open to interpretation, someone pedantic enough would try to use that to make a point. But really who's fault is it that profiteers can do what they do? The guy doing it, or stores who refuse to enforce limits for hard to find items? Amazon imposes limits and does it effectively and if you are caught trying to circumvent them they suspend or ban you, so why not other stores then? Especially ones that say 'limit 1' but yet let folks keep submitting new orders to get a deal or a special promo? Heck regular brick and mortars do it all the time for BF with certain items 'limit 1' in their adverts, so why not do that for other items? I do not like profiteering but the stores could do far more to try to stop it.
-As for the vote with your feet: There is a far cry between leaving a store if an item is too much and going to the counter to demand a price be decreased under retail because you think it should be that. Stop being so pedantic and you would see that it was an example of what appeared to be the ideal of the poster I was responding to.
-IMO MB have not remade old LEGO set designs because, at least in the US, it is likely wrong to do so and I believe there could be legal precedent in the process; much less likely because they are lazy. US intellectual property laws are MUCH tighter than anything in China, so I'm guessing that is what it is, and not MB being 'too stupid' to figure it out until now.
-As for the argument that more people would buy a set from LEGO that was redone (at much greater cost) than a cheaper knockoff because it is not a reseller seems a bit ludicrous to me. Even IF that were true it would be the minority of a minority of folks interested in buying these old sets to 'stick it to a reseller'. People not buying a set post run are doing so due to the price. Period. It is not like LEPINs quality is light years beyond LEGO, nor would the average 'punter' know this. They want cheap stuff and the LEGO sets redone would not be cheap. People complain (admittedly me included) that LEGO is expensive at its cost now. Well, discontinued sets from 10 years ago would likely give those sticker shock when they realized it is not the same cost as back when they recall. So what is this difference you speak of? It would like make very little difference, and I doubt that is enough for LEGO to justify resurrecting an old set.
(Urrmm... I sound haughty. Sorry about that.)
I agree, there are arguments in this thread that will never have a conclusion, especially the reseller argument. This doesn't mean that there shouldn't be a discussion , but this is not the thread for it.
Please. Let's shoot somebody - it'll obviously be the gun manufacturer's fault and we can walk away scot-free.
Some people still hope they can say "you're not allowed to do that" and that people will take notice. Believe it or not, some do.
It's not pedantry; it's what happens. You're not going to get very far with it in a big chain but it happens all the time. In big business it's called negotiation; on a street marker it's called haggling. But it all comes down to buyers telling sellers what they are prepared to pay. In some areas, it's the only way things are done.
It's not about being stupid but about being culturally alien. LEPIN came along with a different mindset, realised that the case was arguable and tried it. It was much the same in the early days of (Western) clones. A few companies scratched at the door until one came along and tried to kicked it off its hinges. The rest, as they say, is history.
If someone has a choice between an original (from a reseller) for $500 or a copy for $100, the copy is very attractive. If, however, you also have the choice of the original (or something very close) from the original manufacturer, it's not so clear-cut. Clearly, some will still make the choice based on price and pick the cheapest, but some will be prepared to pay more for the new version from the manufacturer. Fewer copies of the copy are sold and its viability becomes more questionable. It's not so much that the purchaser wants it at it's cheapest but just they're not prepared to pay the reseller what they see as being far too much.
You've got hold of the wrong end of the, er, stick somewhere. It's got nothing to do with "sticking it to a reseller". A re-released set is simply the original at a more reasonable price than the reseller would previously have offered.
In isolation that may or may not be true - it doesn't matter. It's not about the sets. The importance to TLG is that LEPIN would not have gained the same reputation if they had competed directly. If they'd managed to halve their sales, there would be half as many people singing their praises. In the West, that may only be a drop in the ocean, but in Asia, where TLG see most of their growth, they've now got an established and respected competitor who wasn't there a year ago I haven't spent a penny on LEPIN sets. TLG allowed a situation to develop where many
people have had their heads turned and are now happy with buying the products of a competitor. Re-releasing the sets that LEPIN was obviously going to target next would probably have limited that - perhaps a little; perhaps a lot.
I know you did not say 'all people' would buy the LEGO produced set, so I want to correct that comment. But I think most average people are going to look on eBay and see the cheaper set and not necessarily care it is a knockoff, as I'm guessing that is how many of the knockoff superhero figures are sold. The problem with that is the buyer then complains that 'LEGO' has poor quality, or whatever, even though LEGO does not make the set or figure. As for stores and haggling, most stores are not going to haggle on a price unless you are speaking about price matching, which I am not. I'm talking about going up to a counter with a brand new perfect in box item and saying I do not want to pay this amount (without any kind of price matching, etc). Most retail stores are not going to do this, at least not in the US.
Now you're talking about two different things. Somebody who wants a new set won't be looking on eBay - or rather, one of the many Asian equivalents; they'll be looking in shops. They'll only resort to "eBay" when they can't find what they want at a price that suits them. If they see a set from LEPIN and the equivalent LEGO re-release in shops, they'll have a choice, and make their own judgement as to which to buy. Some will be familiar with LEGO as a brand and make that choice; some will go for LEPIN because it's cheaper. Without the re-release, they're more likely to just buy the LEPIN version, who then have another customer - LEPIN's position is bolstered by the lack of that re-release.
We're not talking about the US. The poster you originally replied to about pricing is in Germany; I'm talking about LEPIN's status in a whole series of Far Eastern markets. Every country is different and, frequently, so are different areas within a single country.
But then Lepin did in fact offer that set, and I thought, what a stroke of luck. But you know what: if Lego ever decides to rerelease the Haunted House in the future after all, I will get that one and immediately get rid of the Lepin version without hesitation.
Oh and for everyone who thinks people like me who buy Lepin clones of EOL'd Lego sets would look for some justification for their actions: we don't need to justify ourselves at all! We have decided to buy sets from Lepin, for whatever reason. And at least I still buy as much Lego as I did before I bought those Lepin sets, so I neither feel guilty or bad or whatever. I would indeed have preferred to buy the sets I bought from Lepin from Lego originally (or as a possible rerelease), but I don't feel any sense of entitlement to them. I just took an opportunity when it came along. Peace!
Build-wise, but necessarily in set value or nostalgia. The first release of the X-Wing is nowhere near the sophistication of the most recent. There is no comparison between the various iterations of the Millenium Falcon.
Resellers have a finite supply (mostly :-D). Suppose a reseller has 10 sets, he needs to get the best price for them. He doesn't care about the 11th buyer. Thus, he will price as high as he possibly can for them -- perhaps waiting for the market to reach that level. This is unlike a regular business where volume can make up for minute profit.
Price-matching is a store's way of letting their competitors do the haggling for them, with the advantage for the retailer that a customer has to track down the lower price at another retailer in order to cash in. People are less likely to use a price match than they are to take advantage of a sale in the same store. For example, Toys 'r Us ran a promo on CMFs for $2.50 each while Series 15 was in stores. I bought a bunch there, and price-matched several at Target. I'd wager a lot of people who bought them at Target were unaware Toys 'r Us promo and paid full price at Target. Target tracks the data on every sale, so they know how many people price-matched and how many paid full price, and can use that information to decide whether or not to haggle by running their own promotions.
Of course, I don't know what the ideal conditions for such a set might be. The original Haunted House set tied in with a current theme (Monster Fighters), so it could be that the best chances of seeing another haunted house would be the next time there's a "spooky" theme like that. Even so, I think the ideal conditions for revisiting a concept are a lot less constraining than the ideal conditions for an actual re-release.
A. Popularility
B. Nostalgia
C. Restrictions
Star Wars has had re-releases of almost every set they've done one way or another, and there aren't many complaints made about that - the only exception has been the Death Star which had fallen $50 behind the current value of the set and a $50 increase was seen as a $100 rise for a set with little difference to the original.
The 'Legends' range, whilst not exactly a financial success for Lego (so I've read), it enabled people to buy some older sets that they may have missed out on. It looks to have never been repeated, nor will be likely to be repeated. (Metroliner 30th anniversary release for 2021? I can but dream...)
As for restrictions, we were told that the re-release of the Winter Toy Shop was only way we'd get a Winter Village set due to production/designer time restrictions.
IMHO, maybe Lego should offer a 'poll' of sets (say more than 3 years old) they'd consider to be able to update & re-release and the highest 3 or so would get re-releases?
Remember this?
http://bricksetforum.com/discussion/1153/vip-minifig-set
"Fans" voting for their favourite figures, and eventually they all came from the last series available and lots of fan favourites from S1 and S2 were missing.
Since I only got back into LEGO around 20 months ago, here is an interesting tidbit. I had never built a modular. A few Expert sets, one UCS, and probably 130-150 of the 400+ sets I've bought in that time. My experiences are therefore a bit odd, at least to me, so I want to do a more complete "review" after I build the earliest modular I have from LEGO, which would be I think Grand Emporium? I plan to do that after we get settled after we move (mid November).
Though I did have some issues with the GG set from Lepin, and I gave it a 60% of LEGO grade (based on factors like clutch power issues, missing parts, cleanliness of parts, broken parts, manual printing, etc.) I will say that the pieces that were good were pretty good. But the lack of consistency in a product that relies on engineering precision is something that has to be addressed. But to me 60% isn't a terrible grade for what it is...I'm grading it hard but it still passes. And it could have gone higher had it not been missing so many parts. I believe that to NOT be a standard for the product. Based on my experience with receiving packages like this back when I was working in the industry and how the product was sent to me I think this was a factory direct shipment, but I am guessing that there are multiple factories doing it and all shipments are going to look different. Guessing. The only way to know that is if community compares arrival photography.
Honestly though, since I do not own Fire Brigade, Cafe Corner or Town Hall (or Market Street) the product was good enough to start making me question whether I want to spend secondary market money on sets I would be augmenting ANYWAY, with interiors etc, as I build a setup with more permanence. Definitely something to think about.
Based on some other reviews Ive been seeing I may have received a lower than average collection of parts.