Brick le France - with beaucoup de retired sets

If you’re an American AFOL, you’ve probably glanced at notices for new sets and have seen pricing in other countries listed. You’ve probably also seen AFOLs from around the world complaining about how sets are priced in their country as compared to US prices. As an American AFOL living in Germany, I figured I would take a look to see what I could learn.

Before I go into a specific example, I wanted to point out a difference in taxes. In the states, depending on where you are, you pay a sales tax. This tax is priced in after you make the purchase. So LEGO sets its retail price (or Walmart, or Amazon.com, etc.) and then you pay an additional percentage at checkout. In Europe, from what I’ve seen, the Value Added Tax or VAT is built into the price. Your receipt tells you how much the item actually was and what you paid in VAT. So keep that in mind for those Americans who forget the sometimes 8% to 10% sales tax that gets added onto purchases.

Back to my main point… I stopped at a Cora store in France a few weeks back. For those of you in the US who have never been, Cora is kind of like a Walmart only the one I went to was much nicer than a Walmart. While there, I of course had to check out the LEGO selection.

First off they had a lot of retired Collectible Minifigures, but not the current Harry Potter Collectible Minifigure series.

As you can see from the pictures, they had the Ninjago movie minifigures still on sale for €3.99 each. These were released back in August 2017 in the EU and apparently they still have them at retail price. Next you can see the Batman Movie Series 2 minifigures. These were released in the EU on 1 January 2018 and Cora had them for €3.50 which is less than the original retail of €3.99. Finally they had the Series 18 minifigures for €3.50. They were released back in April and again Cora had them for less than retail. I’m wondering if this is a trend in Europe or an anomaly. At Walmart or Target, usually collectible minifigures go fast so I was surprised to see so many options

Next up were a few City sets.

You can see #60104-1 - Airport Passenger Terminal - Retired in France in November 2017. Retail was €99.99, but selling for €94.99. Also #60051-1 - High-Speed Passenger Train - Retired in France in June 2018 and selling for €10 under retail. #60052-1 - Cargo Train is right next to it. It retired in June and they still have it selling at the original retail price. The last one I’ll mention is #60103-1 - Airport Air Show which retired in France back in January 2018. I have no idea on pricing from the picture I took because the label does not match the set. Anyways, interesting to see some retired sets still out there.

I didn’t go nuts taking pictures of all of them and I didn’t buy any either, but one that stood out was #75105-1 Millennium Falcon. It retired in France back in January 2018 and was done in the US back in November 2017. It was still at Cora and there were multiple copies. I know I have seen the price of that set going up on BrickLink.com and I may have been one of the sellers of those a few months back.

If any Americans are reading this, should I have bought some of the retired sets you can’t find in the states anymore? Even with the exchange rate of around $1.20 to the Euro, would it be worth it? What do you think?

Set Review - Series 18 Collectible Minifigures - #71021

The 18th series of collectible minifigures were released in the US on 1 April 2018.  There are 17 minifigures in this series and they retail for $3.99 in the US.  After the Ninjago movie minifigures and the second set of Batman movie minifigures, I am glad to have another original, creative set.  This series is being released along with the 40th anniversary of the minifigure so there is a party theme to celebrate.  So here they are...

The first four minifigures are costumed with tails.  The cowboy has the back half of the horse that he's riding.  The unicorn and cat just have tails.  The dragon has some impressive wings and horns on the back as well as a tail.  In keeping with the Batman Series 2 minifigures, these also all have orange base plates to stand on versus the standard black base plates in many of the past series.

The next four all have some impressive costumes.  The first is a spider.  He has a pretty impressive spider on his back and is holding a small spider.  The next is an elephant with a tutu.  She is next to a mouse and has an alternate face where she is pretty shocked to see the mouse.  I'm a big fan of the cactus.  If you have never seen an actual Saguaro cactus up close, they are pretty impressive and some get rather tall.  I think this minifigure costume is a good representation.  Next is a firework of some sort.  The sun glasses definitely add to the costume.

Here are four more party minifigures.  The first is a clown that makes balloon animals.  There are two balloon animals and the scale and accuracy of each were well done by the LEGO designers.  Next up is the blue brick girl.  Along with the red brick guy, they were the most numerous in the orders that I placed.  The last one to mention is the flower girl.  There's a flower costume hat and a pot to go around the pants.  This one is definitely outside the norm for what LEGO creates and I'm a fan.

Next up are two with some bigger pieces that are quite different from the past 18 sets of minifigures.  First up is a guy popping out of a cake.  He is a full minifigure and just fits in the larger cake piece.  The splashes of frosting on his shirt are a nice touch and the gold party hat helps too.  The next one is a race car driver.  He has some creative patches on his shirt and the car looks like it could be a part of the Speed Champions line.  

Finally there is a boy who is a party attendee.  He is holding a balloon and has a gift that includes some past LEGO collectible minifigure bags.  Then there's the original LEGO policeman minfigure from back in the day holding the original set he came from.  I ended up purchasing 3 orders of 17 from LEGO Shop at Home (they only allow you to purchase 17 per order) and I only had one of the policeman minifigures.  There is a girl to attend the party too, but she did not come in the first 51 minifigures I ordered.  If I get her later, I will add her picture to this post.

I was about to wrap things up with this post and then had to save it as a draft.  In the meantime, another order of series 18 minifigs arrived and the party girl showed up.  She is similar to the party boy only she has a purple party hat and balloon.  Her gift is full of 1x1 round tile sweet treats.  

It took 4 orders of 17 minifigures from LEGO to get all 17 minifigures.  I'm thankful to have a store to sell the extras in otherwise this method is not the way to go to collect these.  With that being said though, this series is awesome.  These are some great minifigures that were creatively designed.  If you're a collector of these, I recommend picking these up over some of the past licensed minifigure sets.