Predictions on Discontinuing Sets and their Secondary Market Value

coachie · April 2012

@Playftl It's up in the air at the moment, but could go sky high. It'll probably slowly drift down after that.

Sorry, slow day at work.

jonboy2000 · April 2012

^ it's barely even taken off yet and yet the speculation begins (yawn) : )

prevere · April 2012

Historically, it's difficult to find large minifig collection packages (like the Fairytale) sealed. This is a great buy for parents. I think most of these purchased get opened and played with.

Long-term speculation on the Marvel / DC launches recently...
Will these appreciate like the 1st generation SW sets that came out in 1999? My immediate reaction is doubtful.

madforLEGO · April 2012

^ Nothing will appreciate like it used to, unless it is insanely expensive to begin with, and even then.
There are too many people collecting to sell later.
Will they appreciate? Sure but do not expect meteoric rises that occurred in the past.

doriansdad · April 2012

Anything Marvel will go through the roof. Never been done before, the sets and minifigs are excellent, there is a huge adult fan base and with multiple movies in the pipeline they will remain in pop culture for many, many years. Some minfigs appear in multiple sets (eg Iron Man) but your singles (if they remain that way) such as Wolverine will be worth $$$. Thank goodness TLG will be gluing their magnets from now on...should help us investors out. Obviously the never been done before DC (superman, wonder woman etc) will also do very well. The key to these themes are the minifigs...the actual sets are secondary....if they figs look good so will the returns.

madforLEGO · April 2012

^ Marvel has never been done before?
Spiderman? And the last I checked Spiderman did not appreciate very quickly.
Now I know Spiderman is not the WHOLE Marvel universe, I get that. BUT Spiderman did not take off back then and that was BEFORE all the speculators now.
Batman took off, but again that was before the Speculators took hold..
Now I will be VERY shocked to see Marvel rise the way Star Wars had done earlier in their lines.
Will they rise? Sure but Im also guessing LEGO is going to milk the license for all its worth which I think they will make as many sets as they can in large quantities.
Im just saying don't bet the house on it

doriansdad · April 2012

I think you should see a nice 300% return on sales prices in 6 years....just MO.

brickupdate · April 2012

My gut is LEGO will have a looooong term contract with Marvel/DC as they do with Star Wars. So a minifig like Wolverine - which is a hugely popular character, will see many versions and be in many sets. I have no idea why LEGO ever does a short-term license, such as Pirates of the Caribbean. With a long-term license, you will have secondary market value, but also a consistent presence with new sets, that helps keep prices in a line, a bit.

madforLEGO · April 2012

9394 Fairytale and historic minifig set back on S@H US but listed as out of stock will ship on 29 Apr

Yellowcastle · April 2012

^ PotC, PoP, Toy Story and Cars were part of a much bigger Disney license.

mathew · April 2012

Maybe I'm in the minority on this but I don't see what the big deal is with the Marvel Lego sets. The toy market in general is over saturated with Marvel stuff. I suppose the same could be said for DC superheros. I personally like Superman and Batman better so maybe I'm biased.

prevere · April 2012

Most of us here have limited budgets and of course need cashflow to maintain the fun. The question is are you putting your $ into Superheroes or Star Wars?

I can see these initial Marvel / DC sets being sold out by end of Oct for Xmas. There could be some fast cash on the table for turning a profit on sold-out product. The risk is, if it doesn't sell out, you're stuck with it until EOL.

brickupdate · April 2012

@prevere "Stuck" with LEGO is a lot more fun that being stuck with other commodities! Build!

prevere · April 2012

Thanks for the correction brickupdate. That was a poor choice of words.

Our family builds and sorts daily. :)

brickupdate · April 2012

It should be noted that the Fairy Tale and Historic Minifig collection that had just 66 left in stock at Amazon this morning now has 916 in stock!

BrickDancer · April 2012

^All personal opinion, but I for one am pulling back from Star Wars and moving more money into Superheros.

The only SW I am banking on is IS 10212, not so much on DS 10188 even. Percent ROI is too slow and low for DS since it's never on much discount. IS on the otherhand was obtainable at ~$185 with lots of room to double or 2.5x on cost. Questionable is the MF, obtainable at ~$95 and which will get a nice bump up ($200-$250) upon EOL before the next revision is released.

Superheros will be oversaturated for 1 year minimum after EOL, but rise in value to 3x is almost guaranteed in long-run of 3 years or more after EOL. Easy winners will be Superman/Lex; Funhouse; Batcave; Wolverine; Cosmic Cube; Quinjet. All sets should see healthy discounts sometime or another between 25%-50% off. Another guess is that the DC wave will be short life on the shelves, due to it being mostly revisions of Batman I, first wave of Marvel out and new wave of Batman (hopefully) expected in near future. But 3-5 years is a long time indeed for your $$$ to be tied up in the basement cellar.

LegobrandonCP · April 2012

Although not on sale, LEGO Education still has the Fairytale set in stock at MSRP: http://www.legoeducation.us/eng/product/fairytale_and_historic_minifigure_set/2042 :)

madforLEGO · April 2012

^--- '....in the long run' is the key point...
Since MANY people will be hoarding these thinking they will all make blockbuster cash once these are discontinued (assuming of course that LEGO will only make Wolverine and other characters only in one set then never make them again and only make two years worth of sets instead of something like the SW line) I do not imagine HUGE profit for any of these...

BrickDancer · April 2012

^Agree with that point. But we are assuming a couple factors that is not known yet. Total volume of each set produced, span of shelf life, uniqueness of minifig per set, etc. These will heavily play into the economics as is.

But the biggest factor not being considered is future market population. Imagine the AFOL demographic explodes 2x in size over the next 5 years, due to their heavy advertising to focused groups, cross platform offerings, licensed merchandise lines, increased retail outlets and brand presence. So the increase in hoarding might be negated or at least off-set by increases in customer population in the next decade. In the end, we still might see the same appreciation growth for high demand themes such as Star Wars of the past.

FatMatt · April 2012

MMV is now out of stock at S@H. For what it's worth, every over the phone Lego rep I have talked to for the last several months has said that it is definitely on it's way out the door, so I wonder if the end is near for this one. DA is out of stock as well, though I expect it will be coming back for at least a while.

DaddyDeuce · April 2012

^ I can still add 99 MMV to my cart at the S@H website, expected shipping date 16 Jul.

Can also add 99 DA with "will ship in 30 days".

madforLEGO · April 2012

Yeah I think I need to get a few MMV

LegoFanTexas · April 2012

Somehow, MMV just won't die. :)

Amazon being out of stock means little, they run out of stock all the time, only to restock over and over...

Maybe MMV will still be with us when LOTR goes EOL. :)

doriansdad · April 2012

Most of us here have limited budgets and of course need cashflow to maintain the fun. The question is are you putting your $ into Superheroes or Star Wars?

I have never invested heavily in Star Wars to resell. I picked up a few Battle Of Endors on sale and made a couple bucks off some Venators a year ago but that's about it. My only personal older sets that have been built are worth something but probably will never sell them. Star Wars has a habit of rehashing everything which really kills any great value. Jabba's Palace looks awesome and I may snag a few of those on sale, as well as the Deathstar playset when the time is right.

My best bets are non-licensed sets highly rated by AFOLs (as they are the ones with the paychecks ponying up), particularly if they belong to a series (modulars, winter theme, pirates etc). I will be stockpiling Lord of the Rings on heavy discount tho. One or two Superhero sets will stand out and I will invest in those too, but certainly not the whole lineup. The non-licensed quality, innovative sets for me encapsulate pure Lego joy and these ones always do well on the aftermarket.

roxio · April 2012

^10184, pure bliss

prevere · April 2012

I think Star Wars will be a much larger range of hit and miss for the next cycle of product. And longer waits for good appreciation. The AFOL stuff is always the best, and fewer resellers can make the dollar committment those take.

Sometimes I get caught up getting stuff at clearance (or the super TRU deal over Easter weekend); when I should be buying Tower Bridges I guess.

prevere · April 2012

Speaking of the pirates. I wonder what the rest of the year holds for POTC. Will these be gone by Black Friday, or carry through 2013? With the Miners series and all the other new stuff, I just wonder if there's enough room at the retail stores for it.

mathew · April 2012

I can't see POTC being carried through 2013. The question will be if they bring back Pirates in some form. The last wave, with exception to the Imperial Flagship was kind of lacking. I wouldn't mind seeing Lego just focus a small number of "grand" sets, aimed at AFOL, as exclusives. They did it with Kingdoms Joust and Imperial Flagship.

hoyatables · April 2012

I still can't believe I missed out on the Imperial Flagship. It was out for such a relatively short period of time (or so it seemed) -- I would have certainly picked one up had I known it was going offline. I started really visiting the forums here in late January -- missed quite a few EOLs, actually, as LEGO retired a number of sets in late 2011, it seems.

LegoFanTexas · April 2012

IF was out for a year, that isn't bad for a large set like that, but yes, it is short overall compared to sets like DS and MMV.

dougts · April 2012

^ actually 2 years - Jan '10 to Dec '11

doriansdad · April 2012

Yep I will never understand consumers...IF was readily available at a discount at both Lego stores and Amazon....as soon as it goes EOL then they start buying and pay triple the price. Happens everytime.

LegoFanTexas · April 2012

^ actually 2 years - Jan '10 to Dec '11

You are correct, I misread it, could have sworn that said "Jan '11".

2 years is plenty of time, if someone watched it sitting there all that time and said "someday", then well, someday is today at twice the RRP.

BTW, I am one of them, had I seen UCS Falcon for $500 a few years ago, I'm quite sure I would have said "bah, $500 for a Lego set, that is WAY too expensive, who would buy that!"

How little I would have known. :)

pvancil27 · April 2012

I think people get too caught up in this major profit idea. I managed to turn 5 sets of SW stuff I bought at Walmart on their 50% off clearance into selling 3 of them for the price I paid for all 5. Boom, my two sets I kept were free. Yay me.

mathew · April 2012

Yep I will never understand consumers...IF was readily available at a discount at both Lego stores and Amazon....as soon as it goes EOL then they start buying and pay triple the price. Happens everytime.

This is the kind of post that irks me. There are several of us here on Brickset that just started collecting at the beginning of the year. Imperial Flagship from what I've read was pretty much EOL around black friday 2011. I would of paid $150 for IF.... if, big "IF", I would of been collecting back in 2011. I wasn't so it's a non-issue. I just picked up one on a trade, but I'm not complaining.

hoyatables · April 2012

Yep I will never understand consumers...IF was readily available at a discount at both Lego stores and Amazon....as soon as it goes EOL then they start buying and pay triple the price. Happens everytime.
This is the kind of post that irks me. There are several of us here on Brickset that just started collecting at the beginning of the year. Imperial Flagship from what I've read was pretty much EOL around black friday 2011. I would of paid $150 for IF.... if, big "IF", I would of been collecting back in 2011. I wasn't so it's a non-issue. I just picked up one on a trade, but I'm not complaining.

This. But also, up until early this year, I focused almost exclusively on just the Modular and City sets. The new Star Wars sets (which included a number of cool OT sets) pulled me back into Star Wars -- and reading this forum opened me up to some of the other cool options that I had always noticed in the store out of the corner of my eye but hadn't really considered. I am now taking a much longer view -- buying really promising sets even if not in my current "themes" so that I have them long term for a rainy day and/or future family. I would have really loved to pull out my old Black Seas Barracuda and Caribbean Clipper for my kids in ten years or so, and then when they want more pull out the Imperial Flagship.

That said, even though I missed out on the IF, I did get MMV and MVR thanks to this thread. They will sit in the attic for now, to be reunited one day with my 1980s Castle LEGO empire!

mathew · April 2012

That said, even though I missed out on the IF, I did get MMV and MVR thanks to this thread. They will sit in the attic for now, to be reunited one day with my 1980s Castle LEGO empire!

IF will probably level out in pricing over the summer (before they start going back up come Christmas) so you might want to keep an eye out for a good deal. Long term, I think it's a good investment even if you pay $300.

I would go ahead and build MMV and MVR if you haven't already. MMV, especially because it's nice to admire and also because it's probably going to be EOL soon. You don't want to open it in a few years and find out that it's missing some pieces.

cloaked7 · April 2012

^ Interesting thing is, LEGO could prevent a lot of this by publishing EOL dates ahead of time. If only by a few weeks. But, I don't see that ever happening.

madforLEGO · April 2012

Actually IF was retailing for $179.99 with no sale, so many people waited for them to go on sale or get a good deal (which were to be had)

pharmjod · April 2012

Probably just adds insult to injury, but on BF last year you could get the IF for ~$122 with the various discounts, not counting the free limited edition Christmas set you got with purchase.

brickupdate · April 2012

In regards to recently retired sets such as Imperial Flagship and Emerald Night, etc... when they are widely available, even at a discount, many folks seem to hold off. The second they become sold out and retired, people seem to feel they "missed out." For folks like me who buy A LOT of LEGO and keep MIB, that is part of the risk/expenses... buying sets when they are still all over the market at or below retail. There is a cost to not missing out, and that cost is a non-liquid asset and cluttered closets.

Right now, I didn't miss out on Death Star because I have four MIB. Plenty of folks on here think that is foolish, it won't raise in value after retirement. Plus the fact that I have over $1,000 locked up in this set. But once it does retire, many will be slapping their foreheads that they "missed out" on it.

Most of us are guessing as to what will be worth money on the aftermarket. I have at least 3 Alien Conquest Earth Defense HQ sets, all bought at 50% off though. I have four or five Medieval Market Villages, all bought for $90. Foolish? Wise investment? Just the ordinary life of a LEGO hobbiest?

dougts · April 2012

^ obviously, there is a distinction between "missed out" for personal collection use and "missed out" for post-EOL resale. "missing out" for personal collection use will only draw any sympathy from me if it's someone who just came back to LEGO - we've all been there, we've all had sets we "missed out" on because they retired right before we came back. and so will the next person, and the next person, etc. I just missed out on a few myself (GG, MF). The specific sets changes depending on the year, but for every AFOL returning from the dark ages it's going to be something.

For people planning on buying to resale, meh. you didn't miss out, you were holding out for a better sale that never came. You took a risk, you lost. Next time it might pay off. It is what it is. on BF my store initially was not double-stacking the IF and EN 25% with the pull-tab discount, so when I pulled a 20%, I just bought one of each. I came back later when I found out they DID start stacking the discounts, and got my 25% converted to 40% on those 2 that I had bought, but by that time the rest of the inventory had sold out. I was being greedy, and in retrospect I should have bought every one they would have let me - even at "only" 25% off, I would have made a killing. My bad.

hoyatables · April 2012

Thanks dougts. Definitely the former here. I don't do resale at all. Just buy for my own use. Of course, the resellers ensure that there will be opportunities to still get that "just missed set" (for a price). So I guess that's better than no chance at all.

mathew · April 2012

I've decided to throttle back on purchases and only buy sets that really appeal to me. That means that I'll over pay for some sets and skip some really good deals on others. For example I totally skipped the last TRU deal. There just wasn't anything of interest for me. I could of bought up a few sets to resell down the road, but that would mean tying up money that could be better spent elsewhere. I bought and then traded away FB because I just don't find the set very interesting.

brickupdate · April 2012

I definitely agree with @mathew - while I do buy a lot of sets, I now only buy those that I personally like. So - in some event that LEGO investments become worthless - I will be "stuck" with a bunch of sets I would be happy to open up and build! :)

Cam_n_Stu · April 2012

@brickupdate and @mathew - I've adopted the same approach too. I guess you could argue this is what separates the hobbyist hedging their bets and hoping for a return that will most likely fund more LEGO for their collection from the true speculators/investors here.

Molican · April 2012

Sorry that I have missed this, but what is the point with 7066 Earth Defense HQ? What makes it worth buying if you are not really into Alien Conquest? Rare or interesting bricks? And what will be the price in Euro to definitely buy it?

prevere · April 2012

^Molican. Sometimes a mediocre series like AC will have 1 key set that does above average in the aftermarket. I'm sure we can get some examples from everyone here.

7066 fits this bill for space collectors; some AFOLs and kids. The biggest general reason is that this thing is a tank. And Lego doesn't make many tanks.

Aftermarket will be slow at first. But patience pays off.

One example I'll give is 7637 (Farm). Though $90 in the stores; this was readily available at 25-50% discounts towards EOL (much like AC Earth Defense). Around the holidays, this was fetching close to $150. So a $45 buy in fall 2010 could get you $125+ last Xmas, and maybe $150+ this Xmas. (You'll have to convert to EU, sorry).

madforLEGO · April 2012

Sorry that I have missed this, but what is the point with 7066 Earth Defense HQ? What makes it worth buying if you are not really into Alien Conquest? Rare or interesting bricks? And what will be the price in Euro to definitely buy it?

The other reason is the more 'geeky' price per part I believe, so AFOLs that build lots of sets or building on MOCs also like this set for half off

dougts · April 2012

It's a well-regarded set that has a bit of everything: Base, rover, tank-like vehicle, viper with launcher, multi-shot flick-fires, medical lab. There's a ton going on, it looks fantastic, and all fits together really well.

Not saying this is going to shoot up in price necessarily - being from a one-and-done theme isn't going to help, but if the two I have in box don't become worth selling, I'll be ecstatic to open them up and combine them with my display model to make a big MOC.

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Predictions on Discontinuing Sets and their Secondary Market Value

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