The dark side of the brick

I've finally gotten around to having enough shelf space to feel like building some more sets (I have boxes and boxes of unmade sets stacked up in my very small Lego Man Cave and honestly won't have much more space until I've started building). Because they're easy to take away on travel to home #2, I've put together two of the more recent helmets: the Boushh ( 75351 ) and the Captain Rex ( 75349 ).    All fairly standard examples of helmet builds, though I did like the Boushh mouthpiece. 

Back in 2016, I was buying some of the Lego Star Wars sets but hadn't yet conceived of the ludicrous plan to own them all.  Captain Rex's AT-TE ( 75157 ) one was one of the sets I looked at and liked but couldn't quite bring myself to buy.  What attracted me was that it was clearly Star Wars but it was colourful and quite different from the usual sets.   A while back, I finally managed to get my hands on a brand new version, which was priced cheap because someone had made the mistake of opening it (why do people do this if you have no intention to build it?  It immediately takes 20% off the resale price).  Given it's Easter weekend, I've been taking on slightly bigger sets so this one came off the pile. I have to say that I really enjoyed the build - there were lots of interesting elements and, apart from the side panels, remarkably little repetitive work.   You get a number of unique minifigs too: Imperial Inquisitor Fifth is the most unusual, bu...

Finally, after months of daily ebay alerts, I finally managed to purchase a copy of the BARC speeder with sidecar ( 75012 ) at a price I didn't consider to be too outrageous.  For the record, I paid £65... though I think I got it a bit cheap as it was missing one of the droids.  I knew I had a spare one of those lying around so I wasn't too bothered by this. So, why is this set so expensive?  I have no real idea as there seem to be plenty of copies for sale.  The reason appears to be this bad boy: This Captain Rex is exclusive to the set and seems to command a price tag of £40 or so all to himself.  In fact, any Captain Rex seems to be ridiculously expensive - I recently got the correct head for one of the other versions and that set me back quite a bit.   The Obi Wan minifig is also unique but seemingly less desirable.   Otherwise, this set comes with lots of stickers (all intact on this version) and I like the sidecar but otherwise, I recko...