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Just over a year ago, a colleague told me that a friend bought their kid a Hulk LEGO set at TRU for Christmas and when the kid opened his main present, the Hulk was missing. (That sucks.) At that point, the set was no longer in stores and the Hulk fig itself was selling for around $40. This made me somewhat wary about buying sets from retail stores with the intent to keep them sealed and resell them.
After that happened, I became more diligent about checking the seals on boxes to see if they have been tampered with. Then this morning I just read a bricklink post by a guy from Ohio who bought a Quinjet set at a Walmart IN PITTSBURGH while he was traveling. Guess what … the minifigs were gone! Before he purchased the set, he had checked the seals and did not notice anything wrong! This type of theft could potentially be the ruin of hundreds of dollars of sets that I have saved.
In the words of Bad Cop, “Darn darn darn darny darn!”
WHAT?? Do you know if this theft has been linked to particular parts of the city or does it seem to be widespread in the whole area?
The people with the Hulk set, probably went to the Monroeville TRU. The guy with the Quinjet bought his set 18 months ago but he thinks it was from the Bethel Park WalMart. He said the seals were intact and the box was opened by slicing it along one edge. Diabolical!
That is diabolical, especially since most minifigs are in separate baggies. The thief must have purchased the set, taken out the minifigs, resealed the box, and returned it as “unopened” to the store. If they paid cash, it would be nearly impossible to track them down. I rarely buy sets from retail stores anymore (mainly from S@H or a Lego Store) but would be really p-o’d if that happened to me. Greg, are you going to open any of your sets to see if they are intact? You could still list them later as MIB with a notation that the box was opened only to verify that the minifigs were intact.
On a typical LEGO box, three edges of the box are continuous and one is glued. It used to be that the ends, which now have tape seals, were also glued shut. I have a feeling that AFOL’s complained that the boxes got damaged when they were cut open, so the current style of seals were added. How sneaky it is then not to touch the seals and to open the one edge that can be sliced and reglued.
One problem with checking my unopened sets is that the sets cannot be returned after 90 days for most retailers, so I am stuck with everything older than 90 days. Also, my storage system is not exactly archive quality … a better word to describe it would be haphazard. Regardless, I know to check for more signs of tampering both in sets I already have and ones that I want to buy. I would suspect that online retailers like S@H and Amazon are less likely to have this problem.
That is diabolical, especially since most minifigs are in separate baggies. The thief must have purchased the set, taken out the minifigs, resealed the box, and returned it as “unopened” to the store. If they paid cash, it would be nearly impossible to track them down. I rarely buy sets from retail stores anymore (mainly from S@H or a Lego Store) but would be really p-o’d if that happened to me. Greg, are you going to open any of your sets to see if they are intact? You could still list them later as MIB with a notation that the box was opened only to verify that the minifigs were intact.
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