Gold is hardly a discouragement when it comes to skulduggery perpetrated by the unscrupulous. There have been more than a few reports of supposedly new, full boxes of Series 10 Collectible Minifigures having seemingly been rifled through by store staff before making it on to retail shelves certainly the current resale value of Mr. Except maybe not, if allegations of underhand behaviour by some retailers are to be believed.

Some may argue that rare though the figure may be, we all at least have a chance of finding one. So Series 10 might be my last if LEGO goes down the same route for Series 11 and beyond. In fact, it's not inconceivable that I may well end up going the same way - I've quite enjoyed collecting all 9 series of figures so far, not to mention the Great Britain Collectible Minifigures produced for the 2012 Olympic Games, but now that I'm unlikely to be able to complete Series 10 my enthusiasm for keeping it going has evaporated somewhat. It's interesting that some folks have reacted by stating that they won't buy Collectible Minifigures any more as a result - they can realistically no longer guarantee that they'll be able to acquire full sets of figures, and as such there's no point wasting time and money trying to 'find 'em all'.

I think it's fair to say that reaction to this latest development hasn't exactly been overwhelmingly positive (see for instance here and here to get a flavour of some of the opinions out in cyberspace).

Bt 16 perimeter droid