Star Wars Universe

The LEGO Star Wars Ultimate Collector’s Series poses many questions to LEGO buyers and enthusiasts. I’ll try to answer the most common questions here. If your question isn’t answered here, please post it in the comments below. I will then try to answer the question and add it to my little FAQ.

What does UCS mean?

UCS stands in the context of LEGO for “Ultimate Collector’s Series”. By the way, LEGO used to call it the “Ultimate Collectors Series”, without the apostrophe and the “s” after the “Collector”.

Are LEGO UCS sets limited?

No, LEGO UCS sets are not limited – at least not in quantity. However, the sets are not sold forever, as the sales figures at LEGO naturally decline after a few years and it is no longer worthwhile to continue producing the set. Then the sets of the UCS series go the same way as any other LEGO set: They are taken out of the program and are then EOL (“End of Life” or “End of Line”).

The sometimes very high prices of the UCS sets are due to the fact that the sets have not been on the market for several years and not to the fact that there is only a limited number of sets. This also means that the LEGO Group can also re-release sets that have been out of date for a long time in updated form at any time.

How long will UCS sets be produced?

This is very different and depends on the demand for the set. There are very popular UCS sets that are produced over many years. The best example is the 10188 Death Star, which was in the program from 2008 to the end of 2015, only to be replaced immediately by the almost identical 75159 Death Star. The Death Star has now been available from LEGO for exactly 10 years.

However, other sets will be taken out of the program quite quickly due to low demand: The LEGO 10227 B-Wing Starfighter was only available for a little over 1 year before it disappeared from the shelves again.

Here is a list of the approximate lifetimes of some UCS sets from 2007 to 2019:

• • LEGO 10179 UCS Millennium Falcon: 2.5 years
  • LEGO 10188 UCS Death Star: 7,5 years
  • LEGO 10215 UCS Obi Wan’s Starfighter: 1,4 years
  • LEGO 10212 UCS Imperial Shuttle: 2.3 years
  • LEGO 10221 UCS Super Star Destroyer: 2.8 years
  • LEGO 10225 UCS R2-D2: 2.5 years
  • LEGO 10227 UCS B-Wing: 1.1 years
  • LEGO 10236 UCS Ewok Village: 3.3 years
  • LEGO 10240 UCS X-Wing: 2.6 years
  • LEGO 75060 UCS Slave I: 3.4 years (still in assortment)
  • LEGO 75095 UCS TIE Fighter: 2.9 years
  • LEGO 75098 UCS Assault on Hoth: 1.8 years
  • LEGO 75159 UCS Death Star: 2.5 years (still in stock)
  • LEGO 75144 UCS Snow Speeder: 1.8 years
  • LEGO 75192 UCS Millennium Falcon: 1.5 years (still in stock)
  • LEGO 75181 UCS Y-Wing Starfighter: 1 year (still in stock)

On average (if only the sets that are now EOL are included in the calculation), this results in a service life of around 2.8 years for UCS sets. However, the variation is relatively large.

Are there clear rules as to which set is a UCS set?

The question, which set is a “real” UCS set and which is not, is astonishing for many collectors in the LEGO community. Questions like these are often asked:

• • Does a set have to have an Ultimate Collector’s Series logo?
  • Is every set with a black badge a UCS set?
  • Is there an official UCS list from LEGO?

Unfortunately, the answer is somewhat sobering: Although LEGO now has relatively clear rules as to which set is an Ultimate Collector’s Series set and which isn’t, it hasn’t been dealt with so clearly in the past. Only since 2014 with the UCS Sandcrawler (75059) there is a real logo for the coveted collection series, since the end of 2017 with the UCS Millennium Falcon (75192) this logo has disappeared again and a (at least well recognizable) packaging design is used.

In the years before, LEGO usually treated all LEGO Star Wars sets with a 10xxx set number as UCS sets. An exception are the three very old sets Tie Interceptor (7181), X-Wing (7191) and Yoda (7194), which were released in 2000 and 2002. These are clearly marked with a writing on the box as “Ultimate Collector Series” sets.

From about 2004 on, there were also sets called “Original Trilogy Edition”. This has nothing to do with the UCS series, but was also used for normal LEGO Star Wars sets, whose settings come from the movies Episode IV to Episode VI.

The nameplates or badges do NOT determine whether a set bears the Ultimate Collectors Series seal or not. The discussion was mainly conducted in 2017 due to the release of the LEGO 75187 BB-8 in many forums and Facebook groups. LEGO made it quite clear that the BB-8 is not a UCS set, even though it has a nameplate and fits perfectly to the LEGO 10225 R2-D2.

By the way, there is no official list of LEGO. I used the old names of LEGO Shop at Home (the predecessor of today’s online shop) to create the tables and looked at which sets were sold in the category for the Ultimate Collector’s Series sets at that time. So the two tables above should be the current best place to go.

The following basic rules for UCS sets can be noted:

• • If the box says either “Ultimate Collector Series” or “Ultimate Collector’s Series”, it’s a UCS set.
  • If it is a LEGO Star Wars set and has a 10xxx set number, it is a UCS set.
  • One badge is not enough to make a set a UCS set