Post-Christmas and a New Year in 2015!

*Cue party noises, Christmas carols and a lot of other stuff*

OK so now that the mandatory celebratory festivities are over, on the more dour stuff.

Just kidding.

MERRY CHRISTMAS AND HAPPY NEW YEAR!

So its the last couple of days of the year, and everyone's favorite gift-giving holiday has finally come to a close. 2015 is right on our doorstep, with loads of surprises and disappointments just waiting to drop down on us from above like an incontinent pigeon.

I hope all of you have gotten your fill of the 2014 LEGO sets because very soon, we could see (or not see) them vanishing from shelves and being replaced with the 2015 LEGO sets. Us Singaporean LEGO Fans always appreciate the opportunity to spend our money on overpriced items, and use our PhDs to figure out ways to bring them in at half price from the USA.

We've started getting peeks at the new LEGO sets starting in June, and now even more information is surfacing regarding the new Promotional Polybags that will be available in 2015. Furthermore, we've even gotten the set names for some 2015 June release sets. The determination of LEGO Fans worldwide never fails to strike fear into my heart.

That aside, Singapore fans can look forward to some new developments in the local LEGO scene. This year, we experienced the joy and disappointment of the opening of our first ever LEGO Certified Store (LCS) and its piddling Pick-A-Brick selection. Next year, we can hope to see 3 more LCSes, at other BricksWorld locations and even a new one at Festive Hotel in Resorts World Sentosa.

As for me, I'm going to continue working on this blog and churning out the rest of the HK LEGO Shopping articles from my trip. You should expect the next post pretty soon (Read: Today). I'm also starting to get into the whole LEGO Buying/Selling business with my recent purchases of the Super Star Destroyer and Imperial Shuttle for investment purposes. As a 15 year old with pretty much no experience, this is gonna be very refreshing, and pretty fun from what I've experienced so far. You can check out my Carousell here. Maybe I'll even go into a bit of Web-designing so I can create my own seller's website. Who knows, its never too late to try I guess.

So this is me, SEP, signing off for the year!

10 Days in Hong Kong

Well, that was fun. This has been something like my 5th trip to Hong Kong with my family, partly driven by the need for flight transits and partly driven by the need for Disneyland (my siblings), but the 1st time I've visited the acclaimed LEGO haven that is In's Point.

This post is going to be just a general description of my trip to Hong Kong, and will be followed by more detailed posts regarding the LEGO aspect of my vacation. Since this is a LEGO-oriented blog, i'll be skipping most parts of my trip, and just describing the parts relating to my favorite toy line.

So first off, a brief outline of my trip. Over the course of 10 days, I visited multiple LEGO-selling stores around the Kowloon area. For those of you who don't know where Kowloon is, go Google it. The first 2 days of my trip I spent at the Hong Kong Disneyland Resort (For the 5th Time in Forever), and I can't deny that I did enjoy myself. Interestingly, the Disneyland Hotel Gift Shoppe was where I spotted the first LEGO item.

In those 2 days I also visited the CityGate Outlet Mall, located in Lantau Island, which was just a short MTR Ride away from the Airport and Disneyland Resort. Here, there's a small shop that sells nothing but LEGO, similar to the Monobrand Stores we have here. The shop's name is Michael's Toys (Interestingly, it is run by a woman) and you can find more information here.

Michael's Toys has a pretty nice selection of LEGO Sets, as disorganized as it may seem. Sadly, I didn't take any pictures while I was there as we were kinda rushing for lunch.

They had an AMAZING selection of LEGO Minifigure Keychains, with pretty much every Keychain LEGO ever released. They also had some really rare sets like the UCS RS-D2, Sandcrawler, Super Star Destroyer, Maersk Line Triple E and both of the Volkswaagen Models. Because of the exchange rate, even at MSRP the sets are cheaper than what they retail for here in Singapore.

Well, I guess one good side-effect of the Occupy Central protests was that Disneyland was pretty empty with most attractions having 5-10 minute wait times at most. I heard this was because China had blocked most of the tourist Visas entering Hong Kong.

So after Hong Kong Disneyland Resort, we immediately moved into another hotel located in Kowloon. The hotel was very conveniently located in Harbor City, a 5 minute walk away from the ferry terminal, Tsim Sha Tsui MTR Station and the famous Nathan Road shopping belt. If you're wondering, it was the Marco Polo Gateway hotel and the rates and rooms were pretty good. A family of 5 was able to very comfortably squeeze into a suite, with a living area to spare!

Very very conveniently, Harbor City was also home to Toys R Us's Flagship Store in Hong Kong. They had a very nice selection of LEGO sets and displays. I could go on and on about this ONE location alone, but that would take forever. So instead, I'll be writing a separate mini-report on it.

The very day we arrived in Kowloon, we headed to In's Point that evening. For those of you who aren't familiar with the abundance of information regarding this LEGO haven, it's located right outside one of the exits of Yau Ma Tei MTR station, along Nathan Road. Even more conveniently, its situated RIGHT NEXT to a HSBC Bank in case you need to get extra Hong Kong Dollars.

Again, there will be another separate post on In's Point alone. As you can see, I am a master at the Art of Procrastination.

Well, along the way, I also visited 2 of the Brickstime stores in Hong Kong. For an introduction, Brickstime is basically Hong Kong's answer to our Bricks World or Secret Chamber mono-brand LEGO stores, complete with polybags and high prices. I didn't buy anything from any of these stores though.

ANOTHER POST WILL BE CENTERED AROUND BRICKSTIME

Thank you.

So, now to the important part. As you may have noticed, I have not mentioned anything regarding the LEGO I had bought this trip. I have to admit, this is one of the most LEGO-fruitful trips ever, save for my June Trip to Boston, MA and my 2012 Trip to Orlando, FL which got me interested in LEGO all over again,

This trip however, saw me spending the most on LEGO, compared to what I had bought in the previous vacations. According to my parents' calculations, WE had spent a whopping SGD $3000~ on LEGO alone, more than enough to cover our accommodation or our airfare.

And yes, I said WE. Even my sister and parents are hooked on LEGO now. Yay for me I guess?

So here it is:

All the LEGO we bought from Hong Kong.

For your information, we had bought 2 10221 UCS Super Star Destroyers, 1 10212 UCS Imperial Shuttle, 1 9492 TIE Fighter and a bunch of Parts and Polybags.

Unfortunately for me, the UCS Super Star Destroyer and the UCS Imperial Shuttle are for my parents. This means I won't be able to build them anytime in the foreseeable future should my parents decide to sell them.

That leaves me with the TIE Fighter, Clone Turbo Tank Microfighter, Planets Tantive IV, Polybags and some Parts. 

Oh, and I also got 3 minifigures and a LEGO minifigure watch for my brother.

Majority of these purchases were from In's Point and Toys R Us, so I'll be going into detail about the prices in their respective posts. (Yay PROCRASTINATION)

So yeah, thats all for this post. Have a great Holiday!