Bricklink Designer Castle 2024

[cehnot]

Bricklink just announced that the Mountain Fortress was chosen as one of the five finalists to be made into sets.

Mountain Fortress

Edited May 9, 2023 by cehnot

[kchan98]

Looks great, with 20 000 available and 2 per household hopefully everyone that wants one can get a set within a day or two.

[RichardGoring]

I was looking for the castle topic to post this, thanks for the new thread. I think it looks awesome. It feels different enough to warrant getting it and some lovely off-grid details. Very pleased it made it through.

[AstroFalcon]

Finally somewhere to house the small Black Falcon army I’ve been slowly amassing from PaB. This is pretty exciting.

A couple questions for anyone who bought a designer program build before:

- Are you limited to backing only one build? I’ll definitely go for this one but if possible I might get the snack shack too.

- How much can we expect this to be? At almost 4000 pieces its slightly smaller than 10305 but do these sets tend to cost more?

[GeoBrick]

Last program one could order more then one of the designs. Its unlikely LEGO or Bricklink would impose such a limit this time.

[hikouki]

8 hours ago, cehnot said:

Bricklink just announced that the Mountain Fortress was chosen as one of the five finalists to be made into sets.

Mountain Fortress

Love the angles and the overall design.

7 hours ago, AstroFalcon said:

Finally somewhere to house the small Black Falcon army I’ve been slowly amassing from PaB. This is pretty exciting.

A couple questions for anyone who bought a designer program build before:

- Are you limited to backing only one build? I’ll definitely go for this one but if possible I might get the snack shack too.

- How much can we expect this to be? At almost 4000 pieces its slightly smaller than 10305 but do these sets tend to cost more?

First thing I thought of was finally I can have somewhere to house the Ice Queen CMF... then I saw this happened to be another Black Falcon outpost. LOL

[MAB]

15 hours ago, AstroFalcon said:

Finally somewhere to house the small Black Falcon army I’ve been slowly amassing from PaB. This is pretty exciting.

A couple questions for anyone who bought a designer program build before:

- Are you limited to backing only one build? I’ll definitely go for this one but if possible I might get the snack shack too.

- How much can we expect this to be? At almost 4000 pieces its slightly smaller than 10305 but do these sets tend to cost more?

You can buy as many different sets as you like, within the purchase limits for each set. I reckon $450 for this one. They pushed it as close as they could to the 4000 piece limit.

[Follows Closely]

15 hours ago, AstroFalcon said:

- Are you limited to backing only one build?

I purchased one of each the last few offerings. I see no reason this would change. 

15 hours ago, kchan98 said:

Looks great, with 20 000 available and 2 per household hopefully everyone that wants one can get a set within a day or two.

I suspect that this will not last more than a few hours. If you want one, log in within the first hours of the sale.

[TeriXeri]

Looks nice,  but certainly want to see how sets like Viking Village or the Dungeon and Dragons Keep will turn out, as this set is still quite a while away.

[Follows Closely]

Given that the Summer/Fall 2024 is such a long ways out; I am taking a shot at building a preview copy of @SleeplessNight's Mountain Fortress. (

Edited May 12, 2023 by Follows Closely

[Sebbl]

Congratulations to @SleeplessNight! Well deserved.

[KraK]

Only 20 000 copys available ? Are you sure of this information ?

[GeoBrick]

20 minutes ago, KraK said:

Only 20 000 copys available ? Are you sure of this information ?

That's what the BDP rules say.

[KraK]

Okay... Its sad. It's really not much...

[GeoBrick]

13 minutes ago, KraK said:

Okay... Its sad. It's really not much...

Still, way better then last year, when the amount that was available for "Castle in the Forest" was initally only 5000.

[MAB]

56 minutes ago, KraK said:

Okay... Its sad. It's really not much...

It could well be too many for some of the chosen sets. With MOC designers pushing right up to the number of parts limit, these are going to be expensive sets. This castle is likely to be at least twice the price of the previous Castle in the Forest. And with so many of them coming out now and larger allocations than before, I'm not even sure how good investments they will be (which is good, if they get into the hands of builders rather than investors). It wouldn't surprise me if some of the ones that get made don't hit 20,000 units sold. Last time, I think it was the Kakapo, Windmill, Safe, Aquarium and the History of Flight were funded but did not sell the maximum allocation of 10000 units.

Edited May 15, 2023 by MAB

[RichardGoring]

10 minutes ago, MAB said:

It could well be too many for some of the chosen sets. With MOC designers pushing right up to the number of parts limit, these are going to be expensive sets. This castle is likely to be at least twice the price of the previous Castle in the Forest. And with so many of them coming out now and larger allocations than before, I'm not even sure how good investments they will be (which is good, if they get into the hands of builders rather than investors). It wouldn't surprise me if some of the ones that get made don't hit 20,000 units sold. Last time, I think it was the Kakapo, Windmill, Safe, Aquarium and the History of Flight were funded but did not sell the maximum allocation of 10000 units.

Agreed. These are all generally very large, and so will be expensive. For me, this castle and the snack shack are the ones to get. The others are nice, but probably not for the price they will be and what you get from the model. I bought all of the other sets, except the safe. But I'm considering the selling the LEGO store, as I just don't think it's that great/interesting. Studgate station is also posing a problem, give just how much space it takes up, but I do rather like it.

I wonder if peak excitement has been reached on these, or whether more people have seen the 2021 sets being built and so there are a great many more people aware of the program, fueling it further?

Might have to get a couple more Black Falcons in time for the release of the new castle though.

[MAB]

42 minutes ago, RichardGoring said:

I wonder if peak excitement has been reached on these, or whether more people have seen the 2021 sets being built and so there are a great many more people aware of the program, fueling it further?

Might have to get a couple more Black Falcons in time for the release of the new castle though.

I imagine there will be more people becoming aware of it wanting to build them (a good indication the scheme is a success), and maybe even more investors thinking they doubled (and a bit over) in price last time, so it will happen again this time. Exclusivity always helps people to make the decision to buy it but it is starting to become a bit like the CUUSOO (IDEAS) sets in the early days. Some people used to collect those because of the theme rather than the actual set, but that seems to have died down now that they produce so many of them.

The number of other large LEGO sets may also impact on BDP sales, that number has risen even in the past couple of years.

Getting Black Falcons is easy now! And that may also play a part in making the decision to buy the sets or not. No exclusive minifigs, and if the minifig parts are easily and cheaply available, that can help sway people away from buying the set.

[Rjbricks]

I do love the look of it and especially the idea of a wintery castle.

But I’ve a limited budget and also want Rivendell and need to keep my powder dry for potential new medieval village set and DnD set…

[Follows Closely]

2 hours ago, MAB said:

Getting Black Falcons is easy now! And that may also play a part in making the decision to buy the sets or not. No exclusive minifigs, and if the minifig parts are easily and cheaply available, that can help sway people away from buying the set.

The BDP sets have no paper instructions, no exclusive parts or minifigs. They are easy to source the bricks for and most collectors would have a good portion of the bricks on hand, say 25%-75%. Yet the value of the sets are well above the price of the bricks. The Castle in the forest for example is around $475 on bricklink. The pieces (new) come up to $336 shipped, skipping the sticker sheet in this case.  I do suspect that the growth will be stagnant for these sets because of the lack of paper instructions and exclusive elements.

 

I think this use case is a good example of what we can expect from the next round as well. The bricks will be $550-ish and the set will be fetching $650-$700 as soon as they are shipped. The price will go up 5% or so a year.

[MAB]

14 hours ago, Follows Closely said:

The BDP sets have no paper instructions, no exclusive parts or minifigs. They are easy to source the bricks for and most collectors would have a good portion of the bricks on hand, say 25%-75%. Yet the value of the sets are well above the price of the bricks. The Castle in the forest for example is around $475 on bricklink. The pieces (new) come up to $336 shipped, skipping the sticker sheet in this case.  I do suspect that the growth will be stagnant for these sets because of the lack of paper instructions and exclusive elements.

 

I think this use case is a good example of what we can expect from the next round as well. The bricks will be $550-ish and the set will be fetching $650-$700 as soon as they are shipped. The price will go up 5% or so a year.

It is crazy to think that a good chunk of value is essentially in the box. I didn't buy any of the previous rounds as I wasn't really interested in them and didn't think it right to buy to sell with this type of set. But if I had bought some and wanted to build them, I'd be buying the parts (after sourcing from my existing collection and BL store) and keeping the set sealed.

But then the same is true of vintage sets, where the parts may be relatively common but decent condition boxes and instructions can sell for more than the actual sets (without box and instructions).

 

[unclejeffie]

Where do you get the instructions then if its not in the box

[Jdrewg]

2 hours ago, unclejeffie said:

Where do you get the instructions then if its not in the box

On-line

[RichardGoring]

Instructions are on the LEGO Instructions app, or can be downloaded as PDFs from Bricklink - Designer Program 2021 Instructions [BrickLink]

[DaleDVM]

I am not certain how I feel about these sets.  I am not exactly a fan of "unofficial" LEGO sets floating around.  I also do not like how TLG is (IMHO) taking advantage of AFOLs to do their set designing for them.  

I am a LEGO castle collector.  I am only short 6 tiny sets from having a complete collection a few times over.  And yet, I don't feel the desire to get these sets at all.  They are hard to get, pricey, and really do not offer anything that makes them unique.

They are well designed and beautiful.  But I feel like I am buying somebody's MOC.  Just my opinion.