Quote Originally Posted by 5FDP View Post
Question to all the Lego collectors out there - what's stopping you from creating this yourself? It's only a building right?! Would it be more expensive or take too much effort?
Some of the bricks in these sets are new/been in very few sets before which makes them crazy expensive to buy in bulk (thinking the red masonry patterned bricks)

The effort to ensure you cross reference and can get everything would be time consuming, and postage would be killer too. I've found for smaller city and other non licensed sets that the price can be far cheaper because of the use of more common elements but mostly building sets without the minifigures from scratch ends up more expensive even before postage.