Modular Building 10211 Grand Emporium

[Svelte]

I'm pretty sure you're correct about express orders, but for regular orders, the courier company is located in Sydney. They get bulk shipments from Denmark, and repack individual orders here using Lego materials.

Just from my experience (at least 20+ orders in the last few years), I tend not to believe this, mainly from the way things are packed, the names on the packing sheets, and that standard orders always tend to leave the factory (and thus charge your card) at approximately the same time of week, ie when that designated lot of international orders to Aus gets packed off from the Euro warehouse. I also don't see why so many boxes would come horribly crushed in their official LEGO outer cardboard box if they were coming from 3 suburbs away!

The S@H shipping rate is not flat, it changes depending on the dollar amount of the order. It starts at $25, but peaks at $45 after $500 purchases.

I know. I meant a flate rate on the order total, not the actual cost you'd pay if you were shipping this through the regular post. If that was the case we'd all be paying a lot more, especially for large orders! In that respect, I don't mind paying shipping, it's the crazy system whereby new products or sale items don't get released simultaneously which means we have to pay double shipping if we want to get something on sale or when new releases come out.

Compare TLG's shipping with Bricks To The World, which has almost the same retail prices, and a flat $4.99 shipping rate. Unfortunately BTTW doesn't often have easy access to the exclusive sets.

There's no real comparison here. Brett gets his sets either retail from the regular Lego warehouse in Australia and charges ordinary retail prices, or brings them in himself (like Exclusives) and basically adds the shipping on top anyway, and then redistributes them here.

Either the profit margin in Oz is too high, or the profit margin in the US is too low, and I'm the sucker who is subsidising them.

I understand how you feel, absolutely, and I resent those in Europe who complain about having to pay low shipping fees on top of the set, but either you wait for Exclusives to appear at a department store or chain, or suck it up and pay the shipping Maybe I've been an AFOL too long, but I'm kind of resigned to the latter. I don't like that they keep on increasing our prices for no real reason, especially when Europe and the US don't seem to suffer such increases, but I don't know how to effectively communicate to LEGO that they're losing business to the US just because of their price-gouging. Honestly, they don't seem to care much and obviously these sets are still selling in high quantities so they feel they can get away with it.

Personally, for the Grand Emporium (to keep on topic ) I'd rather get a few crisp boxed copies from LEGO directly and pay a bit more (I find the ordinary surface mail too damaging when it comes to nice boxes) and then get multiples from a US Bricklink seller, deboxed, for parts and expansion.

[mjenk430]

I was just able to pick up two of these sets up at my local Lego Store. I am keeping one of them for my personal collection, but I just put the other one up on ebay. If anyone is interested in purchasing this set before its official release date, do a search on ebay. It is the only one currently listed.

[Svelte]

Can you link to the listing? I can't see it.

Which country are you in? I'm curious who is doing the early releases.

[ACCURATEin]

I was just able to pick up two of these sets up at my local Lego Store. I am keeping one of them for my personal collection, but I just put the other one up on ebay. If anyone is interested in purchasing this set before its official release date, do a search on ebay. It is the only one currently listed.

Which store did you pick these up from? They're supposed to hold this set until the 1st of March.

[Follows Closely]

Which store did you pick these up from? They're supposed to hold this set until the 1st of March.

Yeah, where?

http://cgi.ebay.com/Lego-10211-Grand-Empor...=item335a7998f0

You should have made this a shorter auction. Buyers will not get this until after the set is in the stores. I would have listed in a 3 day with a higher buy it now option.

Edited February 23, 2010 by Follows Closely

[mjenk430]

Yeah, where?

http://cgi.ebay.com/Lego-10211-Grand-Empor...=item335a7998f0

You should have made this a shorter auction. Buyers will not get this until after the set is in the stores. I would have listed in a 3 day with a higher buy it now option.

I am taking your advice. I sold the first one with buy it now within 30 minutes, but I am going to try a 3-day auction for the second one, with a high Buy It Now.

Lego-10211-Grand-Emporium-BRAND-NEW-SET

My father-in-law picked these two up for me.

I will tell everyone tomorrow where I got them after I go back and get one for myself to keep. :)

[ACCURATEin]

Probably Tysons Corner. Tell the store manager Eric from Concord Mills said "tsk tsk"! haha

[GRogall]

I was just able to pick up two of these sets up at my local Lego Store. I am keeping one of them for my personal collection, but I just put the other one up on ebay. If anyone is interested in purchasing this set before its official release date, do a search on ebay. It is the only one currently listed.

Look people if your going to auction stuff of in ebay make sure your using your own pictures!

I have already asked one person to remove it. and have also removed it from my brickshelf gallery.

your in © violation!

[lightningtiger]

Oh, man ! (Ben - Ben 10)

I think a might wait a while - almost 80 bucks shipping and 250 bucks to buy - all in US dollars !

Apparently the grand store is going to available in Oz around Christmas time at a major department store chain, so like I just said I'll wait.

I'm a conformist! everyone !

[Svelte]

It is great to see the set hitting stores, but let's not turn this into an ebay discussion thread! Thanks

Hopefully if the release date is supposed to be 1 March, it will get moved forward on S@H as well (for Europe as well as the US). S@H seems notorious for shifting dates around.

[lightningtiger]

According to Lego S@H right at this very moment - 26th March for Australian and New Zealand sales, same also for UK, but a price of 139.99 pound is listed. The same as the imperial flagship.

I'm a conformist! everyone !

[Follows Closely]

.

Edited February 23, 2010 by Follows Closely

[WhiteFang]

.

Follows Closely,

Could you explain your post above? Because from what I am looking at right now, it appears to be just a simple full stop, that served no value in the Grand Emporium discussion.

WhiteFang

[Follows Closely]

Follows Closely,

Could you explain your post above? Because from what I am looking at right now, it appears to be just a simple full stop, that served no value in the Grand Emporium discussion.

WhiteFang

I posted something that could have been misunderstood, so I deleted the contents. You are right it serves no value ;) How about we turn on the ability to delete a post that has not been replied to.

[WhiteFang]

I posted something that could have been misunderstood, so I deleted the contents. You are right it serves no value ;) How about we turn on the ability to delete a post that has not been replied to.

Do think twice, before made a post inside Eurobricks. You are accountable for your own actions, and posts like this are pretty much irreversible.

No, the ability of deleting posts will not be given to members as it will be even more confusing for future citations and reference, of past quotes.

[Shadows]

I posted something that could have been misunderstood, so I deleted the contents. You are right it serves no value ;) How about we turn on the ability to delete a post that has not been replied to.

Misunderstood is one way to put it, and I appreciate that you removed it, but in the future I'd suggest being more discrete both in what you post and in what you might replace a post with later should you post poorly. As for turning on the ability to delete posts, no, it's not happening, it brings with it a whole new world of problems we don't need.

[mjenk430]

Well I went back today to get 2 more grand emporium where my father in law got them yesterday, but they pulled them from the shelves. I wish I hadn't put the second one up for auction so I could build it. Guess I'll have to wait like everyone else to build it.

[d00dz]

Well I went back today to get 2 more grand emporium where my father in law got them yesterday, but they pulled them from the shelves. I wish I hadn't put the second one up for auction so I could build it. Guess I'll have to wait like everyone else to build it.

lol That sucks!

Still say's 17th of March for USA/Canada. and 26th of March the rest of the world.

I wonder why they are delaying the release of this? Clearly stores have stock, as does some stores in the UK.

Too bad we wont see this in stores in Australia till maybe end of the year perhaps.

[GRogall]

lol That sucks!

Still say's 17th of March for USA/Canada. and 26th of March the rest of the world.

I wonder why they are delaying the release of this? Clearly stores have stock, as does some stores in the UK.

Too bad we wont see this in stores in Australia till maybe end of the year perhaps.

Well the Lego Brand stores will sell the set starting next week/month on the 1st!

[d00dz]

Well the Lego Brand stores will sell the set starting next week/month on the 1st!

Damm. Wish they'd have a Lego store in Australia!

[wooootles]

10211 is already probably on some LEGO stores.

I remember me and a few other getting stuff like the 3177 car or the repair truck on local sources like the stores or TRU well before it went live on S@H.

[ACCURATEin]

I was studying the back of the box today while on break, and there seems to be a build mistake in one of the pictures.

[Whittleberry]

As Svelte pointed out, the price for the Imperial Flagship and Grand Emporium are the same in a lot of countries, so Aussies can assume that it'll be about $280. I'll wait til they arrive in DJs and are on sale to get mine. Hopefully there won't be a ton of ebay d*cks waiting to pounce on them and buy DJs out, selling the Emporiums at a high markup. I know that it's fine as it's a free market, but I really think it's just bad manners, and makes life harder for other AFOLs.

I've had a really radical idea about LEGO's pricing in the US, although given I don't know a lot about economics it may be flawed.

Say a set is US$30 to produce at cost, which LEGO sells to Wal-mart in the US for US$32 (I have no idea how much markup LEGO put on sets sold in the US but it can't be much). Then the same set is sold to Myer in Australia for US$52 per set. Obviously this means LEGO is making a much higher profit off selling the set to Australia rather than the US, and it needs to do that to keep itself profitable considering the low cost of LEGO sets being sold to the US.

So my point is, why sell to the US? If LEGO stopped selling sets in the US then they would have to downsize but it would mean that they would be able to sell LEGO more cheaply to European and Asian/Australasian countries. Of course this wouldn't make LEGO fans in the US happy, but I just thought I'd put the idea out there to see what people think

[brickzone]

Apologies for being a bit off-topic:

Whittleberry: First of all, those figures aren't necessarily correct. Second, in the US although it's a smaller margin, Lego maybe sells a *lot* more volume than somewhere like Australia. So they probably make more than enough profit to make it worthwhile to stick around in the US market - especially as if they breakthrough even more, they stand to bump up volume by quite a lot (a small % increase in share in the US corresponds to a lot more units).

[Follows Closely]

...why sell to the US...

Why sell to the US? The profit marge is much smaller, but the quantity is astounding. I would bet that the US market accounts for > %30 of the LEGO Groups sales, and > %20 of the profits.

Edited February 25, 2010 by Follows Closely