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Predictions on Discontinuing Sets and their Secondary Market Value
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Comments
If I sell it on Ebay for 500.00, Ebay fees are 34.50 and Paypal fees are 15.53, leaving me with 449.00, I paid 434.00, my profit is 15.00.
I literally just hit the order button, waiting for confirmation to come through. I'll be gutted if it's cancelled.
The question is, is now the time to move some of the "saved" sets while the window is open, or is it going and they should be "saved" longer.
For all we know, come January, Amazon will have another 50,000 of these sets in stock, then anyone who is holding them will be holding them for yet another year. The really bad part is that if this set stays, those 50,000 sets won't sell very fast because resellers won't buy any more for awhile, having been burned expecting this set to sell out now.
One final point... my local Lego store is overrun with Death Stars, they have them piled to the roof in the back room. Funny that they are stuffing the stores with them now, yet are sold out online.
If someone bought some sets to resell during the "sold out" periods over the upcoming year where the price goes up 20% over retail, that's one thing. But I imagine most of you bought with 200% returns in mind, or more. Just lock them away for five years or so. =)
I've now got 7 of these sitting around, that is almost $3K in dead money doing nothing until they retire.
If I sell them all now for a $50 profit each, I've really put $3K back into my pocket. If they are still around in a year, nothing says I can't rebuy them and save them at that point.
Sometimes in business you make sales, not to make a profit, but to recover COGS (cost of goods sold), and even sometimes not all of it, just some of it.
My suggestion: If you don't need the money for something else, keep these sets, and buy more if you can when they become available again, and you'll have a lot more in return then you expect. Just be patient because this will be a hot seller when it retires.
I am saving a bunch of smaller sets for over a year now ($20 to $100 sets), to resell when they retire, being the biggest one the Battle of Endor. I am in no hurry to sell them, and god knows I needed the money in a couple of occasions this year. I hope to buy even more $100+ sets on the 26th and forget them on my garage for another 2-3 years hoping they'll reach a certain level when I can actually sell them for a 300% profit.
Relax and keep them. If you sell now, you've wasted time, effort and took no risk. If you wait, you'll not regret, because the time and effort will pay off.
Right now, I have a MISB Cafe Corner and Green Grocer that are in the "investment pile", but secretly I'm hoping to just move them to the "build" pile at some point, once I sell enough other stuff to break even.
If she sees 7 Death Stars that she knows very well what they cost just sit there for a year or more, I might not have such an understanding wife at that point. :)
Happy wife, happy life... true words... :)
Just in principal of the deal, I probably won't be ordering at full price from a store. If I have to do that I will just order it from Amazon.
I do have both piles as well, a build and a re-sell pile, and from time to time I move sets from one pile to the other just like you do, assembling kits that originally were supposed to be sold in the future. I've started hoarding in a smaller scale exactly 1 year ago, and by now, I haven't sold anything, and she does not believe I ever will, so now when I try the "I am going to resell this for 3x the original price" she goes "Yeah, right!" on me. But most of the sets I have a fairly recent, thus not achieving that point in which I could have a profit on them.
Maybe you could explain her that these sets need a bit more time to "mature" in stock, so you can get optimum return on the investment. Others you can resell right away, like the XXL boxes that gave a 100% return 1 day after thanksgiving. Put some DS sets up on eBay for $600 or more, and since you probably have a good feedback, you may have someone that does not live near a LEGO store to buy it from you. Unload 3-4 sets and keep the rest for longer.
Speculation in the LEGO Market: Akin to Tulip Mania & The Housing Bubble?
I've seen this in other markets - baseball cards and the housing market, where there was a point where a broader audience woke up and realized that there is a viable economy here. EG: how many people will be saving multiples of Emerald Night MIB vs having done so with Sante Fe back in the early 2000s?
Another great topic that is being discussed here is "Spouses of AFOLs: How to Keep Them From Divorcing You." :)
Your one comment may keep me from buying so much in the after Christmas sales... You're right, I've only been doing this for a year, and only seriously for a few months. I'm sure I'm not the only one.
Baseball cards aren't the same as Lego, but the same economic principles apply, to a point. The difference of course is that baseball cards never had the mainstream following that Lego does, look at this week's Toys R Us ad in the paper, multiple Lego deals front and center. Walk into a Toys R Us store, the whole right wall is Lego, two more isles are Lego.
Go into Target and Walmart, both stores have 2 full isles devoted to Lego.
Baseball cards never commanded THAT... If nothing else, you'll have parents to sell the sets to who will give them to kids for birthday/christmas/whatever.
However, you're right, the profits may just not show up. I should have seen baseball cards death the minute that Topps started selling complete season boxed sets to consumers. That defeats the whole point of "collecting" cards in baseball card packs for kids, trying to find that "rare" card to trade with friends for another "rare" card, when you can just buy the whole season and be done with it.
I'm not saying that the Fire Brigade, Imperial Flag Ship, Emerald Night, ect won't increase in value if they are MSIB. It is natural that they will because the supply won't be there. I just don't think it will increase as quickly with all of the outlets to purchase them once the are soldout on LEGO. Again that is pure speculation. I was in my dark ages for the Green Grocer and Cafe Corner.
I also think the used market will take a significant hit unless it is a unique piece, IE tan windows for the Emerald Night. It is the only set with them.
Kyle
I would be very surprised however if FB sticks around through the end of next year. Maybe it stays for another few months post-Xmas, but if it's not gone by summer, I would be surprised. There isn't room in my local Lego store to display four modular buildings.
I will say that Lego should continue to retire even desired sets since it adds to the whole mystique of the brand. I think the practice encourages higher sales too since I'm sure we have all had that set or two that we are on the fence about but get anyway since we figure it will be EOL'd and we don't want to regret not getting it later.
And changing up the EOL dates from the typical two years likely helps the re-seller in the long run. A few more like the DS or if FB sticks around another year, then no one knows when they should be buying/hoarding, and there aren't but so many people out there that can tie up thousands of dollars in Lego for a year or more if they make a wrong bet on the EOL date.
I'm sure TLG likes the volume TRU does (and the advertising TLG gets from being constantly featured in the ads), but if I were them, I would make TRU reign in the sales practices a bit, lest they permanently devalue the brand.
Here are two that I would have thought would go up more:
10174 - AT-ST - 1,068 parts - currently selling for $180 delivered on Amazon, been sold out for 2.5 years, still less than 20 cents a part
10175 - Darth Vader's Tie Fighter - 1,212 parts - currently selling for $225 delivered on Amazon, sold out for 2.5 years, still less than 20 cents a part
Both of those sets have been gone a year longer than UCS Falcon, yet are half the price per part of 10179, which is going for $1,960 on Amazon, or 38 cents a part
So clearly some sets are "winners", and others are "losers", from an investment point of view.
Now in fairness, I have both 10174 and 10175 built and displayed in our Lego room, loved building both of them, glad I could get them cheaply since they retired during my dark ages (sounds funny to say that).
How about 10143? That retired at the same time as the two sets above, and it is going for 42 cents a part on Amazon. Why is it so high compared to the above sets? As a side note, I'm shocked to see it up there, just a few months ago they were in the $900 range, a $500 jump in 2 months? Sheesh!
But UCS Falcon did that, I bought my first in Feb of this year for $1,100 MISB, and they only have gone up from there. I've bought and sold 3 of them since, still have that first one. :)
Does anyone else think about Lego this much, or do I just need a 12 step program? :)
Lego is a completely different animal. It's a universe.
What is interesting is that amount of minifigs, bricks and parts in the world continues to rise. Right? Lego pumps out zillions each year, and the price of parts on the aftermarket remains stable. This has happened through the decades and even through the introduction of Al Gore's Internet. Just amazing. Value of Lego is very consistent.
Now let's hope we don't see a Beckett Lego.
Baseball cards, and others bubbles, also had issues because of multiple companies trying hard to make 'hard to find' chase cards.. basically making profits for them, but eventually killed the market.... As long as LEGO is in business, prices of sets will go up when discontinued, there are ways for LEGO to wreck the market.. basically what they sorta do with their SW line.. redo sets over and over... But since they do this only with the licensed lines and when they make new models they make differences then you will have collectors that want the sets that are no longer around... will their be a lower ceiling on how much a set goes up? I guess, but it is all supply and demand, and I do not see kids just saying they want to stop getting LEGOS.... I guess if LEGO decides to make chase sets (I mean aside from the CMF) then there may be trouble in LEGOland. PLUS you have people that return to LEGOs all the time and want sets from their dark ages... So it is all relative.. I just do not see LEGO secondary market going away for sealed sets.
The other one to keep an eye on is MMV.....
I'm 100% with you...I started buying extra sets to resell and fund what I wanted to keep. It's not that I can't make money...it's that I can't find the time to spend dealing with eBay trying to sell it. And that's what makes me (and honestly, my wife) nervous about having these sets laying around.
Even when something goes up 300%, I still am hesitant to sell it. And I don't know why. It's like selling one of my children or something.
It is very EASY to BUY, But much more DIFFICULT to SELL....
Look at sold prices on closed eBay auctions. That's what the sets are going for.
P.S. 500th comment! :)