With the new year, I bought a #10193 Medieval Market Village... I haven't had time to put it together yet, but I'm looking forward to it... And from the time images of 2009 sets started to leak onto Eurobricks and Flickr, I'm really looking forward to this year's line up.
It feels like there's been a renaissance of sorts, that we've collectively have emerged from a dark age of product design & bad business decisions by the LEGO group. It seems like new life has been breathed back into themes like Town and Castle, we're seeing the resurrection of Pirate, and with the new year, there's rumors of a new Space line. I just got my new 2009 LEGO catalog; I'm seeing sets in it that I want to buy and build for the sake of the set & not buy because it sucks and I just want the parts -- this is saying something, I haven't felt this way about many sets in a long time.
I only have a few warnings/complaints for the LEGO group, but because the company is turning profitable, I don't see these things changing any time soon: (1) not everyone can afford $200+ sets; make more $3, $7, $12 sets; (2) stop producing sets that cater to the "collectors" market, then frown upon it when you see it's ugly side at LEGO conventions; by making these collector sets, you're feeding the monster; and finally, (3) don't make the mistake of treating all fans and collectors as being the same, we're not!
Anyway, here's to a new year! May this be a better year for you than last!
Showing posts with label market. Show all posts
Showing posts with label market. Show all posts
Thursday, January 1, 2009
Monday, March 20, 2006
The Evolution of the Lego Marketplace
Back in the day, when the Lego community was a lot smaller, the Lego marketplace consisted of trade-deals (on RTL), selling Lego (also on RTL), e-mail based auctions, and Auczilla. This was in the very early days of eBay... before BrickLink...
I think as a community, we learned quickly about snipe-ing. And the evils of eBay. Even back then, it was hard to get a real good Lego deal on-line unless someone misfiled an item in the wrong category. There were several proposals for Lego auction site that would work against snipers... but I don't think they ever took off with much following.
BrickLink emerged as the defacto standard for buying/selling of Lego. Before that, it was Todd's Auczilla. With Auczilla, you received an e-mail with parts, quantity, color, description and opening bid. You bid by placing an 'X' by the lot you bid on and e-mail a copy back to the server. Scripts would run against all received e-mails and negotiated bid amounts. At the end, you would be e-mailed out the results... at that point, you could up your bid or not.
Thinking back upon it, it was a lot of work. Michael Ulring and myself had licensed similar e-mail auction software from Steve Demlow and ran a highly successful auction... but it really ended up being so much work, that we never had a second one... It was fun... It was exciting... But things got busy and by the time we considered doing another auction, BrickLink (or then named BrickBay) had appeared on the Lego scene...
I think as a community, we learned quickly about snipe-ing. And the evils of eBay. Even back then, it was hard to get a real good Lego deal on-line unless someone misfiled an item in the wrong category. There were several proposals for Lego auction site that would work against snipers... but I don't think they ever took off with much following.
BrickLink emerged as the defacto standard for buying/selling of Lego. Before that, it was Todd's Auczilla. With Auczilla, you received an e-mail with parts, quantity, color, description and opening bid. You bid by placing an 'X' by the lot you bid on and e-mail a copy back to the server. Scripts would run against all received e-mails and negotiated bid amounts. At the end, you would be e-mailed out the results... at that point, you could up your bid or not.
Thinking back upon it, it was a lot of work. Michael Ulring and myself had licensed similar e-mail auction software from Steve Demlow and ran a highly successful auction... but it really ended up being so much work, that we never had a second one... It was fun... It was exciting... But things got busy and by the time we considered doing another auction, BrickLink (or then named BrickBay) had appeared on the Lego scene...
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