Subject:
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Re: 10152 Update
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.lego
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Date:
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Mon, 20 Dec 2004 02:48:30 GMT
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Viewed:
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7839 times
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In lugnet.lego, John Neal wrote:
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In lugnet.lego, Kelly McKiernan wrote:
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After reading the various whining about “broken promises” in this thread,
remember this: circumstances changed as they often do in life. Maersk
wanted more of that set. They were willing to pony up to get it. Side effect
is, there’s enough left over for more sales to the public. LEGO looks at the
fact that this was a very good seller...
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But you ignore the fact that part of the reason that that set may have been
such a good seller in the first place was that people may have purchased them
as collectibles. I know I purchased a few extra with that thought in mind.
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If you purchase something at full retail, as a collectable, then someone’s P&L
statement is going to look pretty good. If enough people do that, then there has
been created a ‘demand’ that had more to do with the profit motive than the
desire to own something unique. I think that is what happened here.
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What part of that reasoning makes you think LEGO would need to think twice
about re-releasing it to the public? It’s an absolute no-brainer, as far as
I’m concerned. The company made business choices based not only on their own
bottom line, but they also tried to offer something they thought a small
percentage of their consumer base would appreciate. I find that encouraging.
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I don’t think anyone is complaining that there will be more of these sets in
order to purchase. It was the fact that consumers were led to believe that
the color maersk blue would never again be produced and thus the sets
containing that color would have value beyond their face value. I think the
whole matter would be solved in a nano second if TLC simply changed the
number or somehow made the new run tangibly different from the original.
This would require minimum effort and make everyone happy (except those who
were really hoping for the dark blue version, which may or may not appear).
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Except that Maersk wants more 10152’s. So TLC is going to make another run of
10152, and split the production between Maersk and S@H. I would be most
pleased if there were enough pellets to do the production run and reissue
something else from the collection of past Maersk sets (e.g 1552 or 1831). I
would suspect that part of the higher pellet cost is a one-shot setup fee. If
so, then it might make more sense to order extra.
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Many people are looking at it from the standpoint of “LEGO is producing
collectibles, so they need to honor the implied promise of limited
availability.” Does LEGO look at their products that way? I don’t know, but
I doubt it.
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If they had never said that Maersk blue would be gone forever after the last
run, I don’t think people would have any expectation of limited availability.
Therein lies the rub.
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My take is that TLC assumed that the existing stock of pellets would be
sufficient to meet everyones needs. The only thing that might change that
(unlikely back then) was for Maersk to ask for more. Guess what happened ? So
they could just make some for Maersk and ignore us (i.e. S@H) or do it this way.
This makes more sense to me (but is sure to honk off the
collectors/proffiteers).
Ray
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Message has 1 Reply:
 | | Re: 10152 Update
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| (...) I think that I didn't make myself clear. All I am asking for is that the new run of 10152s be numbered "10153" or something. This simple change preserves the collectiblity of the 10052s. I wasn't suggesting any more radical change than that. (...) (20 years ago, 20-Dec-04, to lugnet.lego, FTX)
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Message is in Reply To:
| | Re: 10152 Update
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| (...) But you ignore the fact that part of the reason that that set may have been such a good seller in the first place was that people may have purchased them as collectibles. I know I purchased a few extra with that thought in mind. (...) I don't (...) (20 years ago, 20-Dec-04, to lugnet.lego, FTX)
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