European Amazon price comparator

That's great, thanks!

I love this Huw. It even highlights sets on my wanted list.... Utterly brilliant!

Edit - Happy to point these things out :-)
Also, when will the summer Friends sets be added? They are available from Amazon UK already at least. Thanks!

Nice feature... but I bet LEGO will complain that all your tools to cut down on spending means less money in their pockets... :P

Huw, that is fantastic - though my bank account is trembling again!

@Huw: Yes, but Amazon takes a percentage of the money from the orders, right?

Amazon.de does ship to the Netherlands, for free even when you spend more than €20.

Oh, and a suggestion, you could use colour to indicate how large the discount is.

@Huw: Good. :P

Im in Australia and its telling me that only Germany ships to me however I am able to buy the Tower Bridge from Amazon UK.

Hey, i need a little help here, i do hope to buy from EU or US or UK Amazon, whichever that offers great prices for Star Wars sets because Lego here in Singapore is REALLY expensive. I've tried ordering from EU Amazon (Direct link from the table) and they say that they do not ship to Singapore. Can you please help me check??

I am from Slovenia. No prices are shown in the tables. Side panel says: "Your country is set to: Slovenia. Unfortunately none of the European Amazon sites ship to you. For your convenience and clarity, prices are shown only for the Amazon sites that ship to your country."

Amazon ships to Slovenia. Please fix this.

Thank you. Very helpful. I've always done this by hand...
The only bad thing is you are often limited to 3 sets per order. Bad for army builders...

PS: Why are those Friends sets so expensive?!? They are never in stock! :(

Excellent work!

That is an excellent feature. I often made the comparison manually, but you have laid it out beautifully. Well done, Huw.

As a huge fan of Lego, Amazon and discounts, I'm enormously grateful for this. I'm sure I'll be using it often - thanks! =D

If there's one thing I may suggest, clicking the set numbers will take you to the set's main picture. I'd hoped it'd take me to its full Brickset page, so we could get additional info on it. =)

Would it be a help if we posted info here which is missing on the list (for instance, I know the retail prices of a bunch of sets in DKK)? =)

Another great resource for this site. I was still giddy over the US Amazon Bargain Watch tool. Now this. Well done!

Thanks for the effort, but I'm in Australia and just looked at Jabba's palace. Amazon.de said it won't ship to my address. It's a shame, they're much cheaper.

Barnes and Noble in the US does ship to Australia, although their range isn't complete and their shipping company seems to take about a month. I am sick of paying 50-70% more than US prices for the same sets, and even with shipping somewhere around the $70-80 level it actually makes sense to ship from the US. Anyone else know any sites?

Excellent feature. And lovely that you can see which sets you want with the purple color band.

Great job Huw :-)

Just a minor thing. I'm pretty sure Bulgaria is a European country.

Does anyone know why Amazon.ca only carry a very limited selection and all at grossly inflated prices?

Great idea.

delivery from spain only 6 euro.

Oh dear, this might just have broken my resolve to not buy large licensed sets because of the cost.... why is Spain in particular lots cheaper on some large sets I wonder?

Amazon UK will ship to the United States and Canada. You have them listed as not shipping there. Hopefully this can get updated because I would love to compare the prices.

^ I think you missed my comment above about Amazon.de shipping to The Netherlands.

Yes, it does, I've ordered multiple times at Amazon.de

Excellent work, Huw! What an effort this must have taken you! Bravo! Bravo!

flippin brilliant idea - thanks very much!!

@Huw, my mistake. Amazon UK does not ship LEGOs to the US. I was looking at http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/help/customer/display.html/ref=hp_492868_top_int?nodeId=11072981 not the specific item list.

It's worth keeping in mind that Amazon UK offers free shipping to most (all?) European countries it ships to, as long as you are above a certain figure (£20 in my experience). None of the others do, so even if something is a bit cheaper at another European Amazon, it might not be when you add shipping costs.

I'm in Australia and I have ordered MANY times over the last 12 months from the various Amazons. I've successfully bought Lego from .com, co.uk, es, fr, it, and most recently, de.

There are two interesting things worth noting:
1. What they will and won't ship to Australia varies over time.

Meaning, I've bought sets from, say, IT, only to find a month later that they won't ship that set to Australia any more. And then, three months later, that same set is available to ship. There doesn't appear to be a pattern in terms of size, price, theme, or age of what can be shipped. More recently though, newer sets and recent exclusives appeared to be more difficult to get than older sets.

2. What they will and won't ship to Australia varies by site.

Meaning, there were sets that were, at various times for sale on several Amazons but only a subset of the Amazons would ship said sets to Australia. IT was a good source for Imperial Shuttles, FR for Super Star Destroyers, and ES for DC Super Heroes (at least, when I placed my orders - things change frequently).

FR typically had the largest range for antipodeans but at a small premium. As far as I can tell, DE has only recently allowed Lego to ship to Australia, and only a small subset. I bought my LOTR and City Mining sets from there. I was eyeing the Red Cargo Train and various Creator houses but their shipping has gone from a flat €14 to a more realistic amount, so I now have to think twice. Still cheaper typically cheaper than local prices but sometimes not by a huge amount. IT seems to have cut me off completely!

There was another website which was harvesting this kind of info for Australian users of Amazon.com and Amazon.fr, programmatically I assume, because it was pretty accurate last year. However, at some point their accuracy all but disappeared, right about the same time Amazon started to notify that some products won't ship to my default address during checkout instead of on the product page itself.

When you take all of the above into account, you never know what you'll be able to buy until you've gone far enough in the checkout process to have already chosen your shipping address.

One last thing, the iPhone app just tells you 'some items' can't be shipped during checkout (without specifying which) but the desktop site, even via your phone, shows you which items are embargoed during checkout.

Oh, and don't order more than AUD$1000 at a time or you'll pay GST.

Hope this helps!

Extremely nice feature. Thank you very much.

I have personally had LEGO shipped to the United States from Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.fr. Why are the tables blank for the USA again?

I've just noticed that some prices on Amazon are nearly doubled compared to the swiss retail price, and others are nearly halfpriced. How can there be such a big range? Do they roll a dice or threw darts on price tags to ascertain a price? But anyway, this is a great feature, it makes much a lot easier.

Maybe it would be nice to highlight the prices where amazon is selling the set for x% off.
As you can select on the other shopping pages (Sets that are reduced by more than...)

superb addition to the site.

This is a marvellous feature Huw, thanks for putting in the effort.

It's also impressive to see you interacting with the users above and problem-solving in real time.

I expect to see the "Shopping Elsewhere" part of the Forum getting more traffic after this.

Nice job, Excellent work and its going to make me spend a fortune now lol

Are there translated versions of the sites for english speakers?

Another brilliant addition to the site. Brickset just keeps getting better and better!

@TimmyConstantine, I find the best thing to do is to copy and paste the text in Google Translate, either selecting the language you are trying to translate into, or let Google locate the language and it will translate from that language. Hope this helps (worked many times to understand Amazon.es)

Great addition to the site. Thanks to amazon.de for shipping to NZ; my wallet is very nervous at the moment and my mouse finger is getting very twitchy - Mines of Moria is a great price compared to local retail as are a lot of the big sets. Jabba's Palace comes up as not available for delivery to my location though.

Very impressive, but the page isn't displaying the RRP correctly for all items. For example:

8881 Battery Box £99.99

...whereas on the actual item page the RRP is shown as £5.49. Looks like you're not retrieving the correct prices from the regular DB in all cases. Maybe this just affects the Power Functions group.

"One or more of them will ship to the following countries (non-European ones shown in bold):

Australia, Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Chile, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Great Britain, Greece, Hong Kong, Hungary, Iceland, Italy, Japan, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg
Malta, Mexico, Monaco, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Republic of Ireland, Romania, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Thailand, United Arab Emirates."

Guess what? They'll even ship to Ireland!

To New Zealanders and the couple of Aussies trying to order Jabba's palace from .de, I've just done so successfully from .es (38 euro postage and the cheapest prices for the two Jabba sets - Skiff included - at the moment -total of $215NZ for both). I have ordered Lego from .com and .fr in the past but have subsequently been unable to continue with the US site. The French had amazingly low shipping for a time last year until they became wise to the rort and upped it to "normal" prices :^(
Oh and great feature thanks Huw!

Prices for Slovenia are now showing, except for amazon.fr, which apparently stopped shipping to us. It would be really helpful to have some way to enable the displaying of all prices since I can just ship the order from amazon.fr to post office in Austria (I live close to the border).

Could we get the prices enabled for the US? We still may be able to order some items on a case-by-case basis. Correct?

Nice feature.
I havn't ordered from Europe yet, but maybe I will with this new feature.

Just a note to all you Aussie's out there: I've read that Amazon is coming to Australia in the near future. Fingers crossed.

Great new feature.
Now I just need unlimited resources to buy all the bargains. :) :) :)

Hey Huw I've bought a few things from Amazon.fr, and even on Amazon.it I can buy some sets, just not all

Thanks, this tool is AMAZING!

The tool shows me Amazon.de delivers to Chile...but they don´t!
Boo Hoo...:(
I hope US Amazon or another can deliver to Chile.
In my country, all lego sets are selling in double price than rest of the world.
Sorry my bad english, we are not native english speakers.

Thanks djanscak and jpeg68 for the info, very interesting. And thanks Huw for extending the Australian view to all Amazon sites, I guess there might just be a bit more clicking.

Wow, that Spanish site is cheap (Jabba's palace 40% less than Aussie price). I really don't understand how this kind of thing can keep going on in the age of the internet.

I would like it if I could link back to the brickset page for a set not just one picture.
Just to get more details or Ebay links or Amazon US options.

Awesome!

But...

...is there any way of adding columns alongside the prices to indicate relative % discounts?

Or even better, adding a little 'calculator' to the side of the screen where you put in the RRP in one box and the relevant country's price in another so that the % discount appears in a third box... Then you wouldn't need to clutter up the tables and people can use it only if they feel the need...

shipping is hit and miss as others have said. In Australia, cant get shipping from Amazon US for lego, I tried once on GB and no luck either. Guess I should try some others, cause europe is the place to buy now anyway

Hi Huw,

you know what'd be really helpful now? More than one Wanted List.
Then I could create a shopping list and you could calculate the sum of my lists on the different Amazon sites. My wanted list contains sets OOP that I won't order on Amazon.
Also it does not contain the sets wanted by my kids, but I have to buy them...

Best,
Ronald.

Nice feature! One suggestion: Could you add links to the theme selector on the right that make the page jump down to the theme's section? Saves some scrolling when looking for a specific theme's prices.

This looks awesome! Thanks Huw :) My wallet (doesn't) thank you...

This is a great feature. But the implementation leaves a lot to be desired. In fact it isn't really working at all.

For example - I am from Singapore and it says that Amazon.de ship to me. Not entirely true. Amazon.de are only able to ship some sets to Singapore. The same goes for the rest of the Amazons, with the exception of Italy and USA, only able to ship some sets to Singapore.

Only if you are able to identify what ships and what not from each Amazon, then it will make this feature a great success. But at now, it is no use and no good at all.

@chongcheng, It is a lot of work building these tools, so sorry it may not be perfect for you, but if you can build a better tool, we would all like to see it.

@huw I think france and spain ship to Ireland as I almost did a big order once but changed my mind at the place your order button - anyway, no prices showing for them.

Wow, a very useful feature! Now I just wish I had money so I could exploit its usefulness :P

Hi Huw,

Just following up on the "Does Amazon.xxx ship to the US" issue. Regardless of what they say on http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=524836 and similar pages, I can personally attest that for at least some sets Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.fr do indeed ship to the United States.

In the past year I have purchased 14 LEGO products from Amazon.co.uk and 25 LEGO products from Amazon.fr. To check if they had recently changed their policies, I just did a test on both sites by adding items to my cart and taking the check-out process all the way to just before the final "submit my order" click.

It is trial-and-error finding which sets they do indeed ship to the US, there is no way to know until you add it to your cart and try checking out, but there isn't a blanket ban on all LEGO.

While I know you can't individually verify each set, it would still be useful to have the price-check ability.

Then again, maybe not, maybe I should keep the ability to buy from Europe my own little secret :-)

Thanks!

Great job Huw but I suspect you got more hassle from people than you bargained for, thank you very much for this awesome great feature :)

There's a new feature each time I look! Even better.

Might I suggest that in the Notes at the top of the list, you also mention that the light blue highlighting refers to items in the user's wanted list. Sorry if you've already included this information somewhere prominent and I'm just missing it.

This, in its current form, is brilliant.

Thanks ever so much, sir!

Awesome work dude, a seriously great tool, was hoping somebody would develop something like this.

As a web developer myself, I know the work that went into this.

The only change I would suggest is a graduated colour for range of price reduction on RRP (maybe blue - red) and maybe a filter by theme as its a seriously long page at the moment.

Keep up the good work.

I'm quite sure for many countries, not all sets are shippable. There are sets which are shippable and not shippable and this is usually random and determined by Amazon. This is not captured in the system here. And rightfully so as it's close to impossible to capture this information, unless you have a script with user ID of all countries and go through to the final check-out page.

It's all cool, however the only concern here is that, Huw, you're putting this method of on-line purchase from Amazon to a larger scale (depending how influential Brickset is). And although it seems to help consumer to purchase lower price LEGO from overseas, ship in (with possibility of less than perfect box), if this gain further momentum I'm sure the brick and mortar LEGO shops will complain, and Amazon will have to be more restrictive in the selections of shippable sets, especially when they are instructed by LEGO to do so.

And this will only push the selections lesser and lesser and probably with increase of transport fee to overseas customer. That being said, I am keen to see how things develop in the very near future..

Fantastic, I'd find an added option to select only wanted sets helpful (or shown on top).

Posted by Huw in United Kingdom, 21 Aug 2012 13:51

^ The easiest thing to do is just to show all prices to everyone: maybe I should change it to do that and be done with it?

Yeah HUW, I agree.. Amazon is so Random, that some weeks certain sets will be able to ship and others not. Generally speaking though, FRance and Italy tend to always ship most stuff to Canada.

Let us figure out which sets will and wont

After a few visits to the site, I know that Spain won't so I can just ignore that column...

I hate to add another item to the 'want' list, but maybe a box to check/uncheck above each country lets us all decide for ourselves which countries we do/don' want to see!

I agree with Jasper Parnebrick.

Huw - absolutely awesome. I thank you. The children thank you. The wallet doesn't!

I don't want to make more work for you but is there any chance of also shading sets that are in a user's collection? It would help in knowing what to ignore!

The problem I have with the price comparator is the same I have with the individual Bargain Watch lists: it doesn't differentiate prices from Amazon's third-party (Marketplace) sellers from the original Amazon prices.

I don't want to shop through third-party sellers because of a variety of reasons, but the main problem is that you don't know if they will ship to you until you go through the checkout process.

9473 Mines of Moria is currently listed at €53.60 for Amazon.de on the Price Comparator, but going to the listing at Amazon.de will show you that it is in fact sold by "obimo", with a price of €50.61 + 2.99€ shipping. If I add the product to my cart and go through the checkout process, ordering fails because "obimo" will not ship to my country (France).

Please consider listing prices fulfilled by Amazon only.

Really, this is an awesome tool. Thank you for taking the time to develop it. You guys rock!

Thanks Huw this is very useful. Do you make money on each click like you do with lego? Cause for the hard work you do you surely deserve it.

Great stuff, thanks Huw. Awesome idea and elegantly executed!

Doh! completely missed the theme filter marvellous. Colour highlighting didn't show in Dolphin on android, fine on desktop Chrome.

Great work, this is brilliant.

What exchange rate are you using? On the surface, it's a lot more optimistic than what my bank gives me! So, looking at the Guggenheim Museum, and buying from Amazon Spain, your comparison page says £23.77, whereas I think it'll cost me more like £24.61.

(I'm using the EUR 30,27 as listed on Amazon at the moment, which may well have be different to what it was 3 hours ago when you retrieved the Spanish pricing. But still the question is valid, which exchange rate are you using?)

Yay! Super Cool!

In that case ill buy alot more forth with.

One more complaint. RRP prices are not shown for Slovenia. Could you just display Austrian or German prices?

Gee this is fantastic, thanks very much!

>Once on the picture, click on the 'More details....' underneath it.

awesome! Never saw that. I love this site!