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As for Palace Cinema, not sure why everyone is surprised, fairly certain the Retiring Soon tag has been on it at [email protected] for at leas the past month or two.
This would mean lower supply in the aftermarket.
Lego suffers first drop in revenues in a decade!
"Lego suffered its worst financial performance in more than a decade, forcing the Danish toymaker to declare it would overhaul its entire organisation and cut 1,400 jobs."https://www.ft.com/content/d5e0b6b0-9211-11e7-a9e6-11d2f0ebb7f0
So, well TLG starts to get what they deserve for.
Rereleasing the #10179 is a BIG mistake.
Why want anyone collecting exclusive lego sets anymore, when high priced rare sets get rereleases and the prices bursts like bubbles?
Many collectors paid insane prices for rare copies. They must feel like fools now.
Collectable markets mostly only exists, because there are rare high priced thinks to collect. Who wants to collect mass products with dozens of copies and rereleases?
TLG are destroying the collectible value. TLG, please Learn from Ferrari or Rolex, they keep the offer limited and so they create their enormous and powerful brand.
I mean, Lego should produce normal sets like police stations etc. at high levels, but the exclusive sets should be limited AND NEVER DO RERELEASES, like the name "exclusive and rare" itself says. With high priced limited exclusive sets they create the high market brand and value to promote and boost selling of the normal sets.
Best example is Porsche, with famous 911 sport cars they didn't make the big money, but with that the brand get's the great power. Only with that they can sell the Cash Cows SUV's Cayenne, Panameras and Makans with premium prices.
Without the sport cars Porsche wouldn't earn premium profits, because the brand would hit big damage. Fast sport cars is all what the high granded name PORSCHE is about.
TLG... Idiots!!!
Ford made the GT-500 to sell to collectors, but they could do it because they sold lots of Escorts, Pintos, and plain-jane Mustangs. Original GT-500s still demand a premium.
You can buy the complete works of Shakespeare for $10 at Barnes and Noble, but a first edition folio will sell for millions at auction.
Let's not forget they almost went broke a little over 13 years ago.
Re-releasing sets is just an attempt to capture and bring in more people to the market. The main problem is market over saturation. As I said before, it is impossible to grow forever. Re-releasing sets does bring down aftermarket value, which reduces the collectible image of the brand, but so doesn't pumping out 10 large exclusives per year.
Limited edition stuff is just a gimmick and can be even more damaging. The fact that I can't reserve a mini-SNES or Xbox One X kind of makes me frown on those companies. In the long run, I say to myself "Wait, why do I even want those things?". I really don't, they are just impulse buys that seem cool.
Either way, disappointing your fan base will damage your brand. They don't appreciate resellers and since they like selling as many sets as they can, I doubt they will make very many limited edition sets.
We will find out how they're handling slow sales by how many exclusives start to get discounted.
I think the big sets are for headlines and the smaller ones are for making money.
For easy math, let's say the average CMF has 10 pieces. 10 x 60 per case = 600 pieces. Buy them all on sale for $2.50 each, that's $150 for 600 pieces. $1500 for 6000 pieces. At MSRP of $4 each, the price balloons to $240 per case. Millions of people who would never drop $800 on a single set will spend "pocket money" to buy CMFs for kids as impulse buys - and all those little sales add up.
The issue with that is that even a re-release usually doesn't drive a set's value below RRP, and certainly not to "next to nothing". The only people who get bit in the ass are speculators who take huge risks buying up sets on the aftermarket for an already inflated price expecting that price to keep rising. And if those sets end up losing value it's nobody's fault but their own for waiting so long to invest in that particular set.
Also, don't loads of collectibles get re-released or redesigned? And usually it doesn't severely decrease the value of the original edition? Holographic Charizard cards from the original series of Pokémon cards are still worth loads of money even though there have been plenty of Charizards since then — including one with the exact same art and attacks in Base Set 2 which came out just a few years after the original!
Finally, "Collectible Minifigures" aren't even called that officially. The theme is officially just "Minifigures". They are collectibles in the same sense as Pokémon cards or anything else of that sort, but "this might increase in value!" usually isn't a major selling point of any of those products. The intent is for the END USER to collect them for their own personal use/bragging rights, and also trade them with friends. The world doesn't revolve around reselling.
At this point, the 1400 people aren't needed, therefore they go....not usually a good idea to employ extra people.
If you search the web page the word collect is there 8 times. I guess that is still not official.
And arguing re-releases ruin markets is silly. An old, pristine Ford Mustang, for example, is still worth money even though they make a new model every year, and even have gone back to a similar design to the original. Some are valuable, some are not, at any given point; that is how a market works.
I don't think LEGO cares about the resale value market much, except if they see an ongoing niche thriving in the aftermarket that they can tap into, like the UCS Falcon.
Finally, this thread is about predictions. I predict that the UCS MF will do well for them and will eventually make a profit on the market as the largest of all time and, unless Disney ruins the franchise, because it is one of the most universally recognized and appreciated vehicles in all of fiction.
'Collect' and 'Collectable' means whatever to whoever, and many sheep in this world- especially with eBay out there- now think that 'collectable' means 'valuable'.
Are they wrong? Maybe (I mean it may be valuable to them in more than monetary ways as well), but it does not change the fact that many think those words mean 'valuable', and companies know this and cash in on that all the time. Even for 'never do wrong' LEGO.
As for the UCS MF (which I think many may think that 'MF' stands for the words exclaimed by those who paid dearly for this set when the saw it re-released), well no one should be surprised that one of the major symbols in the Star Wars universe would be redone in this form. Especially when there have been how many versions of it not prefaced with 'UCS'? LEGO will redo every set for SW, there is just too much money involved for them not to (though the assault on your wallet, I mean Assault on Hoth set may not). They have not redone Jango's Slave 1, that is a bit surprising, but once the Slave 1 UCS is going away I think you will even see that one again (never mind they put Jango in a bunch of smaller sets). IMO the profitability in SW is in finding those sets that LEGO does NOT redo once every 2-3 years.
I agree that the new 'UCS' MF will do quite well when it goes away as will the original. Everyone complains about the prices of these. Well it is not stopping those from buying it, and by the time it retires the set may not be such a 'bad price' as it seems now. there I think was a rumor somewhere about this being limited production, which would be surprising for a set that is rather pricey (and not under what it probably would cost them for a normal LEGO produced set)
This goes back to LEGO knowing what they are doing though if they are hard selling the fact that the PC is retiring soon as they do not want another repeat like the PS going on sale for 119.99 USD in December.
A UCS Quinjet could also be a possibility, since Quinjets are one of the non-character subjects of the Marvel movies that have gotten the most screen time. Though I know many AFOLs already think the number of Quinjets in the Marvel Super Heroes theme have been overkill.
Kind of off-topic, I know, but these are just the sort of things I start thinking about when I hear about sets approaching retirement.
I also havent been paying much attention lately so feel free to update me if this has already been discussed.
(As I mildly panic and run out to buy one.)
There's a post on the ideas blog saying more Saturn Vs are being produced but these things take time. My guess is TLG underestimated demand for this set. Par for the course for the Ideas theme.
I still feel no rush to buy it - TLG knows they're hitting it out of the park.
Ferrari re-release very similar cars, with different product numbers, year after year to keep up with demand. Same with Rolex and their watches.
Plus LEGO doesn't sell collectables. They sell toys.
"Exclusive" means limited to a certain number of retailers. It doesn't mean that they will never produce something similar in future. Of course they should do re-releases at a time when it makes sense. They released an OT MF 10 years ago. Many people are now into LEGO and SW and cannot buy one from LEGO. The time is now right to sell an updated version, to tie in with the new film franchise.
This doesn't change the old one. It is still exclusive in that it was only sold (on the primary market) through LEGO stores/[email protected]
Plus where does this name "exclusive and rare" come from? I have never seen LEGO advertise a retail set like that. It is just something you have made up.
This is exactly what they are doing now. Releasing a high priced exclusive set (sold only through LEGO Stores and [email protected]) which ties in with the new SW franchise to promote selling the normal sets.
Also, it's readily available in most LEGO stores around Europe if my Facebook wall is to be believed...
- demonstrating they have the proverbial memory of a goldfish
- malicious in spreading rumours for clicks
Neither option is reflecting well on those people.So echoing @CCC and @sid3windr, I'll repost here Hasan Jensen's (LEGO Ideas Team) statement I posted in the Saturn V thread on Sept 01:
There's plenty of other sets to discuss in this thread. No need to add Saturn V to the mix on what seems to be a regular basis, unless there's an appetite to discuss a potential 2018 retirement date. Q1? Q2? Q3? Q4? 2019?
#10179 for sale in NYC for at least $500. Not mine, just posting for reference. Was posted to craigslist two days before release of #75192. Anybody seeing similar sales?