Project Arcturus in Action

Here are the items I had to ship after the Monday after Thanksgiving...Four days of sales...Phew!

I am clearly not thinking big enough on Project Arcturus

Despite this person's skill in manipulating the system, he either overlooked (or just got greedy) that these huge stacks of 40-50 Lego Millennium Falcons each Target got in early November were clearly an item that was going to be on sale during the 2 day post Thanksgiving sale. This kit-#4504-a kit that costs $100 (rather pricey for a toy) and due to this, most Targets would only have 2-4 in stock at any given moment. It was clear to me the first time I saw numerous kits stacked to the ceiling in my local Target there was some sort of sale coming up. Given this guy could only re-UPC it down to a certain price level for a kit of this size (the box is 23x15x4 inches in size and weighs over six pounds…you can only fit five or six kits into a Target shopping cart)…..probably around $45-$50 or the cashiers might become suspicious. Guess what the price was during the sale...$49.99.

Since I'm a rather honest person, I pursued a similar goal by buying 22 of these kits (just under two car loads or a mere $1100 worth or so) during the 2 day sale period (9 separate purchases at 3 different stores-and I did not start shopping until late on Friday, so I didn't wreck any kid's Christmas either...At that price, I had thought they would sell out quickly but I found some even late on Saturday night)...Hopefully I should score about $25-30 on each one on Ebay (once the market settles down from the massive influx of similar minded Lego pimps...on the first day of this sale at Target, 3 times as many auctions were running for this kit as there had run in the previous three weeks. I would have bought more but there are increasing limits on my cash flow...even on items that promise at least a 50% or more rate of return in less than 3 months. And if I was really orgainzied, I could likely sell the lego minifigs (little people figures made of Lego, and a whole Lego subculture in its own right) from this kit for $40+ (there are unique Han and Liea minifigs in this kit...there are other Han and Leia minifigs but they are dressed differently) and then sell the remain pieces (ie, the entire ship) for $60 or more.


http://edition.cnn.com/2005/US/11/25/lego.theft.ap/

Man accused in $200,000 Lego Internet scam

PORTLAND, Oregon (AP) -- Agents had to use a 20-foot truck to cart away the evidence from a suspect's house -- mountains of Lego bricks.

William Swanberg, 40, of Reno, Nevada, is accused of stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of the colorful plastic building blocks.

Swanberg was indicted by a grand jury in Hillsboro, a Portland suburb, which charged him with stealing Lego sets from Target stores.

Target estimates Swanberg stole up to $200,000 worth of the brick sets pilfered from their stores in Oregon, Utah, Arizona, Nevada and California. The Legos were resold on the Internet, officials said.
Attempts to reach Swanberg at a county jail, where he was being held on $250,000 bail, were unsuccessful. It was not known if he had retained an attorney.

Swanberg is accused of switching the bar codes on Lego boxes, replacing an expensive one with a cheaper label, said Detective Troy Dolyniuk, a member of the Washington County fraud and identity theft enforcement team.

Target officials contacted police after noticing the same pattern at their stores in the five western states. A Target security guard stopped Swanberg at a Portland-area store November 17, after he bought 10 boxes of the Star Wars Millennium Falcon set.

In his parked car, detectives found 56 of the Star Wars sets, valued at $99 each, as well as 27 other Lego sets. In a laptop found inside Swanberg's car, investigators also found the addresses of numerous Target stores in the Portland area, their locations carefully plotted on a mapping software.

Records of the Lego collector's Web site, Bricklink.Com, show that Swanberg has sold nearly $600,000 worth of Legos since 2002, said Dolyniuk.