The UK has always had a lot going for it, and the City of London has been the banking capital of the world long before the EU. With them leaving the EU they will become more competitive even if only by having to compete a bit more.
The Germans and the French cannot provide the same regulatory framework as is provided by the city.
I’m surprised their isn’t more discussion about the German domination of the EU. The current structure is not sustainable, and Britain leaving will make that more evident quickly. I would not be surprised if the Dutch are waiting to see where Britain leeds before jumping ship themselves.
The Netherlands will always stick with Germany. We're a trading nation, and Germany is our main trading partner. Also, Rotterdam is Germany's largest sea port. We may lean a bit more towards the Anglo-Saxon model than other European countries, but we're still continental first and foremost.
Abrahamic Religions arrived perhaps too recently. The records we have of ancient civilizations show that they successfully dominated their environments
already, and certainly accomplished amazing things.
Not quite. You can always part stuff out on http://bricklink.com/ and might get a penny per element or might get several dollars per element depending. Us AFOLs that make MOCs are frequently buying random elements we need for this or that. For example:
To make this Mars habitat MOC I spent about 60$ just to get some of the elements (like the curved tops of the habs, the PV panels and the ISRU tanks) because I simply didn't have the elements or anything comparable. That base plate was 11-12$ by itself and it's the only thing remotely Mars-regolith looking that Lego has produced https://www.ryanmercer.com/ryansthoughts/2016/7/29/my-lego-m...
When 31032-1 Red Creatures came out I really wanted a black dragon, not a red dragon, so that was another 15-20$ I had to spend, again didn't have some of the necessary elements, to be able to make one https://www.ryanmercer.com/ryansthoughts/2016/7/6/lego-31032...
I will agree though that speculating on any given, current production, Lego set is idiotic at best. You never know what will be popular and what won't, you'll never know when something will be retired or won't.
I also add to my Modulex collection every quarter or so. Modulex elements are considerably smaller than traditional Lego and incompatible. They were a 1:20 scale for building architectural models that never really caught on but are just neat https://lego.fandom.com/wiki/Modulex
> I will agree though that speculating on any given, current production, Lego set is idiotic at best.
The comment you're replying to doesn't suggest any of that.
yukonbound's comment made me think that comparing the items whose value really popped to those whose value didn't might provide a guide to which items would become more valuable in the future.
> You never know what will be popular and what won't, you'll never know when something will be retired or won't.
The really obvious counterexample is Star Wars-branded stuff associated with a current feature film. I don't think it would be that hard to identify stuff with a limited production run. The "will be popular" part is trickier, yes.
>The comment you're replying to doesn't suggest any of that.
Uh
>The analysis ignores 99.99% of LEGO that has been sold and is now worthless.
That blanket covers 99.99% of anything Lego, combine that with what this article is about... speculating on Lego sets... my comment is fine.
"worthless" though is not the case. Individual elements absolutely have value on the secondary markets. Bricklink has more than a million mmebers, 10,499 stores and 125,105 unique elements with millions and millions of pieces for sale.
Parting a 'worthless' set out can often yield you more, if not several times more. Sure it might take you years to sell every single element of a set, but by no means is 99.99% of Lego 'worthless'.
>really obvious counterexample is Star Wars-branded stuff associated with a current feature film.
Plenty of Star Wars sets have gone on varying levels of sale/clearance (some quite drastically) via both shop.lego/Lego stores and non-Lego retail outlets in the past several years. 42 of the 97 Star Wars sets are currently on sale on shop.lego for example and almost certainly won't rocket up in value, ever. The Clone Wars sets were probably the worst failure here.
Lego also has plenty of series that just never gain traction. Most recently I'd point at Nexo Knights. Kids just weren't interested, despite the cartoon, and most of us adult fans only bought it because we wanted space and/or castle/knights to come back and this was the closest offering. We basically got 2 rounds of releases the they scrapped it.
Legends of Chima is mostly a flop.
The Minecraft series had some of the steepest discounts I've seen directly from shop.lego/lego stores.
Architecture sets are more often miss than hit and you find unopened sets fairly regularly in thrift/budget store chains.
Bionicle flopped hard and only has a small die-hard fan base not unlike the Dreamcast.
Angry Birds had pretty steep discounts direct from Lego early on.
TMNT several years ago was a pretty big bust and hasn't retained value.
>This is a very poor example; Bionicle sets have skyrocketed in value.
Comic con/promotional exclusives, yes. Everything else, no. The biggest increase I'm seeing is a 14$ set going for staring around 42$ sealed (and only 7 new have sold in the past 6 months on Bricklink and 0 since November with only 16 new available), a 300% return that is not impressive - especially considering this is one of the 3-year old reboot sets which means the bulk of that value is likely from speculators and not actual collectors and will probably go down considerably over the next few years. You can see this clearly on Bricklink:
> only 7 new have sold in the past 6 months on Bricklink and 0 since November
Yeah, on Bricklink. Have you tried looking at more mainstream places like Ebay? There are dozens of sealed sets selling there.
>a 300% return that is not impressive
Really? You dont think 300% ROI is not impressive? Most of the regular sets from the 1-4th generation also sell at that kind of inflated price so its really not that unusual.
Yes, assuming people will be playing with Legos in 10-20 years ( which is a safe assumption) and that knock off will stay low quality (which might be not), there is a floor on the value of a set.
That was my sentiment exactly. I couldn't tell 100% from the article, but it looked like the professor only looked for items that had been on sale in the secondary market, and then looked back at the original retail price to gauge the return. Worthless (or near worthless) items wouldn't be put up on EBay at all. This invalidates the entire study.
Bulk used Lego sells pretty consistently around $10/lb. Certainly less than retail, but never un-sellable. Of course, selling piece-by-piece on Bricklink will net more, for more work.
Especially when compared to pure "collectibles" that are past their peak, they're much more regular in value and always sell.
99.99% of wine and jewelry sold is also worthless (beyond immediate enjoyment, which LEGO also provides). For any successful product the collector market will be small.
The financial incentive for these mining companies are huge though, as a driver can earn A$120k before even considering the total cost of employment for a remote FIFO site.
Mine site are open cast, mine large tonnage and have long mine lives justifying the large initial investment.
Australian mining operations are also very dry, which helps a lot.
Rain introduces a lot of variables.
Large scale automation is particular to the Australian mining industry at this point.
South African deep level gold mines have been working on this for many years with little success, and I think they have mostly given up.
The dry conditions help the automated vehicles, but there's special challenges when it DOES actually rain.... everything tends to be underwater, by a lot :-)
I don’t know. His english mistakes are very plausible just typical French grammar mistakes and his viewpoint is not incorrect and in fact most likely true for the overwhelming majority of visitors. Perhaps the tin foil is sitting a bit tightly...
The use of the phrase "white card" (carte blanche) is telling.
However, we don't need to resort to tinfoil to point out that their anecdote misses the point. "Don't be political" is poor advice when Canadian citizenship is perceived through a political lens.
As it was explained to me the purpose of the management consultant is not to solve the problem, but to take the blame for solving the problem.
The Internal politics of most reasonable sized corporates are Byzantine to say the least. Senior management might not have the political capital to drive change through an organization, don’t want to take the blame if the change does not work, or just want to signal that they are doing something, without taking responsibility for said something.
Hence...management consultants... and the pricier and the more prestigious he better.
I’m surprised their isn’t more discussion about the German domination of the EU. The current structure is not sustainable, and Britain leaving will make that more evident quickly. I would not be surprised if the Dutch are waiting to see where Britain leeds before jumping ship themselves.