Subject:
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Trolling for LEGO sets in Denmark
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.market.shopping
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Date:
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Fri, 10 Aug 2001 18:00:44 GMT
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Viewed:
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549 times
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I recently spent 11 days in Denmark, and found a fair number of
interesting (and cheap!) sets at LEGOLAND and the LEGOLAND Hotel in
Billund. You can read about that here:
http://news.lugnet.com/legoland/billund/?n=59
This message deals with buying LEGO in the rest of Denmark.
I spent several days driving though Denmark, mostly on Fyn and Jutland,
and several more days biking around Sjælland (the island with
Copenhagen). I get the impression that in Germany and Italy, there are
lots of sleepy little villages with ancient toy stores that never, ever
put anything on sale.
Not so in Denmark, or at least not to as great an extent. Denmark has a
fraction of the population of the larger European countries, and has few
towns that can support a toy store. The vast majority of the villages
marked on our maps were a few houses. The larger villages might have a
garage, cycle shop or grocery store, but only the fair-sized downs would
have a shopping district with a toy store or toy/hobby shop.
This isn't to say that there aren't other outlets for LEGO; I saw one of
the most complete displays in the large Copenhagen department store, and
a grocery might have a bin of 20 kroner sets. But I was after older
sets, and spent little time in displays that had only what I could get
in the US.
There are chain toy stores in Denmark. Toys 'R Us has an outlet in
Odense, and an outfit called Fætter BR has stores all over SJælland
especially. There are four within a few blocks of each other in
Copenhagen. But I soon group to despise the BR stores. Their current
LEGO wasn't very good (few large sets), they seem to specialize in
really cheap toys (somewhat reminscient of KB Toys), never had any sale
prices. I saw a few battered boxes of large red/yellow/blue bricks
marked 25% off there, but at over a buck a brick, it was a deal I could
pass.
What's worse, is the presence of a BR store decreased the chances that I
would find any other toy store nearby. I did run across private toy
stores with interesting LEGO on Fyn and Jutland, but I didn't find a
single set worth buying on Sjælland or in Copenhagen. I could have just
been unlucky, though.
Like most stores in Europe, small toy stores are open 9-5 Monday through
Friday, and 9-1 on Saturday. I ran across one store in Faaborg (sp?)
after closing that had a fair number of old sets on sale in the store
window, but nothing that I wouldn't pass over at a KB Toy Liquidators
(Insectoids, Rapid River Village, and the like).
I found a few interesting sets in small stores, sometimes on the floor
or tucked behind something else, but the fact that 99% of the stock was
current tells me that as a rule older sets are either put on sale or
returned. Maybe BR stores have the equivalent of a Liquidator outlet or
the boxes of beat up older sets that I saw in the LEGOLAND Hotel are
retail returns. I don't know. I hope other hunters have better luck that
I had. Of course, any AFOL's trip to Denmark will include a trip to
LEGOLAND; I'd recommend saving my suitcase-space for there.
The only other LEGO opportunity I had was to buy a plane on the SAS
flight. The plane was called a 'Sky Pirate' or something like that; it
was in the Adventurer's mode, without airplane windows or any other
interesting parts. I wasn't too disappointed when the plane didn't have
any.
Next installment: Living It Up in Denmark (non-Lego, so probably in
loc.us.nc)
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