Subject:
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Re: Are we? or are some of us builders? (was: Misnomer: we are all Lego collectors!)
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.general
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Date:
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Tue, 12 Jun 2001 04:19:56 GMT
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Viewed:
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837 times
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In lugnet.general, Ross Crawford writes:
> In lugnet.castle, James Howse writes:
> [snippety snip snip]
>
> > However, LEGO(company) knows where the money is and it's not with the
> > builders. And since they're a company who wants to collect money, they need
> > to go where it is, generating hype, imposing value and rerelasing sets which
> > go for overinflated E-bay prices.
>
> I agree with most of this essay, so haven't quoted it.
Thank you. When I wrote it I didn't realise there was more to the thread
than the original message, some of the replies are informative.
> However, I think
> (someone correct me if I'm wrong) that the vast majority of LEGO company's
> income is derived from the "younger" market, which I think fall much more
> generally into the definition of "builder" [1]. So I think the most money is
> probably with the "builders" [2], which is why TLC doesn't generally cater
> (directly) for "collectors". The LEGENDS line seems to me to be a relatively
> low-cost [3] diversification by TLC to address this imbalance slightly.
> [1] This doesnt touch on "juniorisation", which tends to push the definition
> more towards "player" than "builder".
> [2] or more correctly with the builders' parents / guardians, who most such
> builders have wrapped around their little finger 8?)
> [3] No model design required - probably not much in the way of tooling up
> either.
I'm probably making artificial distinctions here but bear with me.
The divide between builder and collector is fuzzy and there are points of
cross-over. A collector (value-collector) needs to know his product in order
to give it value (hence behaving as an interest-collector) and a builder
(interest-collector) needs to have stuff to build with (hence being a
value-collector). Granted that most of LEGO(company)'s revenue actually
comes from children who are builders, they are at that point behaving as
collectors (which on reflection is Jimmy's original point, that
LEGO(company) can't see the building going on, to them everyone is a collector).
What I meant by the comment above is that if one is after LEGO(products) as
a means to an end there are strategies for avoiding paying full price
(sales, second-hand, megablocks, bulk bricks) or even as a worst case, going
without. For a collector, where the having the products are an end in
itself, eventually money becomes no object (depending on personal
circumstances). Hence a mid-range set can go for up to 25times its release
price because of people are willing to part with cash. This is the
motivation behind LEGO(company) branding, hyping, marketing "collect them
all"(c.f. Bonikle) and rereleasing a set that does well on EBay and is
highly rated by collectors. (To rate a set on LUGNET implies one has sat
down and thought about it's value, interest and beauty, i.e.
collectablility). Even LEGO(bricks) interconnectablilty comes into play,
where new stuff fits with old, so "get new stuff to go with the old stuff
you have" is an enticement to collect.
James (who's feeling full of hot air)
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