Lore of the legends: Batman v Superman The Kendama craze in Hong Kong: what is it and what makes it so addictive? Han Solo's Millennium Falcon flies out of Star Wars and lands in Wan Chai But which lucky bachelor is Mulligan going to pick? Dealing with divorce, family conflicts, and racial stereotypes ... and thriving despite it all The real Jurassic dinos: Is it a dinosaur or a bird? Want to make money? Investing it is the answer, and it's easier than you think Summer blockbusters I'm most looking forward to Abused Emojis helps young people open up and talk about abuse Real-life technology inspired by the movies and science fiction -- Cast & Crew New & Used MarketplaceCounting the Cost - China's sky-high ambitions The country is looking to the airline industry to stimulate its economy, but will it be boom or burden?LEGO City Airport Passenger Terminal (60104) Available for Click & Collect LEGO City Prison Island (60130)
LEGO City Cargo Train (60052) LEGO City Fire Station (60110) LEGO City High-Speed Passenger Train (60051) LEGO City Police Station (60141) LEGO City Fire Ladder Truck (60107) LEGO City Volcano Exploration Base (60124) LEGO City Auto Transport Heist (60143) LEGO City ATV Race Team (60148) LEGO City Pizza Van (60150) LEGO City Airport Air Show (60103) LEGO City Fishing Boat (60147) LEGO City Dragster Transporter (60151) LEGO City Buggy (60145) LEGO City Stunt Truck (60146) LEGO City Money Transporter (60142) LEGO City Police Starter Set (60136) LEGO City Fire Starter Set (60106) LEGO City Bulldozer Break-In (60140) LEGO City Fire Boat (60109) LEGO City High-speed Chase (60138) LEGO City ATV Arrest (60135) LEGO City Volcano Crawler (60122) Bilbo and his company of cheerful dwarves managed to reclaim the Lonely Mountain from the vicious and cunning dragon, Smaug. While the dwarves stayed, Bilbo went back to his Hobbit-Hole to care take of his lovely garden.
We hope you’ve had lots of fun playing with the LEGO® The Hobbit™ sets! Bilbo’s adventure may be over, but yours doesn’t have to be! You can still explore Middle-Earth and play as Lord of the Rings characters in LEGO DIMENSIONS™! The sculpture had been on display for just an hour when it was knocked over. Boy trips, accidentally puts fist through $2 million Italian painting A young Chinese boy has accidentally brought a $20,000 Lego sculpture — which took three painstaking days and nights to put together — crashing down, just an hour after it was put on public display.The 1.8-metre sculpture of Nick Wilde, a character from the Disney film Zootopia, was on display at the Lego Expo in Ningbo, China, when the incident occurred, an hour into the opening day of the exhibit. It took the artist, known as Zhao, three days and nights to construct the figure — and, according to local media, it was worth more than 100,000 yuan ($AU20, 000).He said he had to rush to finish the sculpture in time for the exhibit's opening."
I took off some parts and put some on, over and over again, especially the eyes," Zhao said, according to the Chinese tabloid Global Times."They were too big at first, so [Nick's] sly and wise-cracking traits were somehow missing."I had to redo some parts."But despite being left crushed by the incident, Zhao refused compensation from the parents of the boy and accepted their apology."The child did not intend to break it," he said, according to CCTV News.It is not the first time a child has accidentally damaged an art work.Last year, a 12-year-old boy punched a hole through a centuries-old, $2 million Italian oil painting after he tripped and fell into the piece at an exhibition in Taiwan. Zhao said the sculpture took three days and three nights to put together.Gloria Haas stole enough Legos last week to build her own plastic prison cell, according to authorities in Nassau County, New York. The 53-year-old was arraigned Friday on grand larceny charges after she allegedly snatched 800 sets of the iconic toys from a collector in Long Island and tried to unload the haul—valued at $59,000—on eBay.
Less than 48 hours later, police toppled an even bigger Lego crime ring in Phoenix, Arizona, arresting four people in connection with at least $40,000 worth of Legos stolen from several Toys “R” Us stores. They also discovered $200,000 in Lego merchandise—18 pallets’ worth—in one of the suspects’ homes and a storage facility. While Legos aren’t exactly uncut diamonds (they’re not nearly as portable), as far as untraceable commodities go, they’re almost as good. Thieves can sell unopened Lego sets, which are very difficult to track, almost immediately online for as much or more than the retail price. And if they sit on them for a while, it gets even better, because many of the bigger sets rapidly appreciate in value—at a rate much faster than inflation. In other words, they’re money in the bank. Last week’s back-to-back busts underscore what appears to be a growing awareness among criminals of Legos’ street value. Over the last couple of years, professional thieves and opportunists around the world have turned the Danish building blocks into fat stacks of Benjamins.
They’ve included Silicon Valley executives, criminal masterminds in Florida, Oklahoma conmen and even drug dealers in Amsterdam, who have started accepting Lego toys as payment. Some go for the toy stores, others rob the delivery trucks. Earlier this year, a suspected band of crooks in Australia brandished angle grinders and crowbars to pilfer at least $30,000 in Legos from four different retailers. In England, bandits in Watford Gap and West Yorkshire pulled off Lego truck heists to the tune of $87,000 and $67,000. In recent years, many criminals have devised increasingly sophisticated schemes to get their hands on the sweet plastic bricks. It took Phoenix police four and a half months of investigating before they could finally arrest Garry Fairbee, 35, Tarah Dailey, 33, and Melissa Dailey, 34. The crew was quietly stealing the most valuable sets and selling them at a discounted price to Troy Koehler, 40, a realtor by profession, who would then peddle the goods online.
Others prefer to work alone and spread the crimes across several states to avoid detection. William Swanberg made in 2005 after he allegedly boosted more than $200,000 in Lego bricks from Target stores across Oregon, Utah, Arizona, Nevada and California. The Reno, Nevada, man had meticulously mapped stores he planned to hit with special software. He would then switch bar codes on Lego boxes, swapping an expensive label with a cheaper one, according to police. In almost every case, the ill-gotten goods are eventually sold over eBay and other online marketplaces, where Lego lovers are willing to plunk down hundreds of dollars for Lord of the Rings, Star Wars and Legends of Chima sets, whose retail prices alone can run as high as $500. EBay currently lists more than 107,000 Lego sets, including a collector’s edition of the Star Wars Millennium Falcon for $3,350 and an unopened Eiffel Tower set for $3,300. BrickLink, a marketplace that deals exclusively in Lego products, lists more than 11,000 sets and nearly 35,000 parts for sale.
Online vendors say the persistent demand for Lego sets, their tendency to appreciate in value over time and their difficulty to trace over the Internet make the plastic toys irresistible to thieves. “It makes total sense why people would steal Lego,” says Nathan Francis, who grosses between $3,000 and $4,000 a year legally selling sets on BrickLink in his spare time. “Lego sets can and do fetch a pretty penny. In fact, the value of some coveted sets can skyrocket in a matter of years. For example, Francis says, the Lego 3450 Statue of Liberty sold for just $200 when it hit the market back in 2000. Lady Liberty, if unopened, now sells for as much as $10,000 on Amazon. “Lego holds its value very well on the secondary markets,” Francis says. Just ask Thomas Lagenbach. Investigators found hundreds of stolen Lego sets in 2012 inside the Silicon Valley tech executive’s multimillion dollar home. Lagenbach later pleaded no contest to fabricating his own bar codes at home, which he would then place on pricey Lego sets at Target to buy them at a cheaper price.