Just built myself the 75312 Mandalorian version of Slave One. Lovely build, it’s not big but it’s an almost solid block when you’re done, really heavy and satisfying (albeit with kinda sloppy wing-things). Kind of an awkward midsize scale, big enough for a minifig under the cockpit but some odd seeming proportions, then again it’d be much more expensive if it was even slightly bigger or £500 if it was “true scale”. And lots of light grey and light green and mid grey stuff to drive colourblind folks mad.
But I love the artistry lego sometimes put into the instructions, where you’re spending a few minutes building an inexplicable “thing” then you turn over the page and suddenly, oh, that’s what it is! In this one there’s a bunch of steps where the build’s actually way fiddlier than it has to be, but it’s totally worth it for these little gotchas, I love that stuff. There’s a little cargobay built in for your frozen-in-carbonite dude and I didn’t even know it was there til the end, despite building it with my actual hands. Class. Or the din djarin minifig having a completely blank head because OF COURSE you’ll never take the helmet off, that’s both good design and a funny joke, I’m actually congratulating them for what’s really a cornercut/cost saving because it’s so damn smooth. The little vehicle that converts into a stand is neat but honestly, I wish it had a proper stand, I’ll end up building one or maybe buying an aftermarket one.
Also I’m reasonably sure you can sell the minifigs out of this for more than I paid for the whole kit, Not that I’m going to because boba fett ****in rules. It’s retired but still available in some places and right at the bottom of the price curve, I paid £22 from a closing down Entertainer, was tempted to buy the whole stock.
rockhopper70
Full Member
What’s everyone’s thoughts on Lego as an “investment” now? . It sort of seems that a lot of folk have got wise to buying sets and not opening them to hold on to, hoping they will increase in value.
Well first of all, it’s a sickness, toys are for playing with.
But, it still definitely looks doable as long as you’re smart. Sometimes you see deals and it’s almost unavoidable that you’ll make money, like I mentioned I just paid ebay prices for the Tales Of The Space Age set, if you’d bought those last year at £35 from the Lego store you’d be making £20 profit every time, and it’s bound to go up because it’s such a specific and lovely set. And I’ve got the ISS from a couple of years ago that I bought likewise in a sale from the Lego shop and it’s almost exactly doubled in price (it’s not an investment, I just haven’t built it!) Sometimes it’s even flippable, one of the big toy shops was clearing out Death Star 10188s a couple of years back and you only had to wait til the sale ended and you could turn over a useful profit literally a couple of weeks later. You can pretty much smell collectability on some kits.
But you can absolutely guarantee that loads of people are going InVeStMeNt!1! and buying up retiring Speed Champions and such that used to give people a huge profit but now not so much… Or just not realising you have to take into account the costs. (I do a little ebay trading, I used to have a product that I made regular low-profit sales on, but eventually other people noticed and undercut me and I can guarantee that unless they were stealing the postage from work or something, they were losing money on every sale and telling themselves how smart they were)
