150 dollars. That’s what I paid for the Halo 3 Legendary Edition on the day it came out. I did so because I was super excited for the game and liked the idea of having the helmet on my shelf. Some people called me crazy. “You could buy two and a half games for that much money” they would say. But on release day I walked out of Gamestop 150 dollars poorer but very happy.

Fast forward to two months later and I was angry. 37 dollars for a brand new legendary edition of Halo 3? Surely, you are joking. That was a fifth of what I had paid for it. Now I don’t necessarily regret the purchase these few years later, but I learned my lesson. Not every special edition is going to be special and not every limited edition is going to be limited. No harm no foul Bungie, enjoy my money.

Now Bungie has announced a legendary edition for Halo: Reach. I immediately thought “Well surely they learned their lesson the first time around?” Nope. Look at that monstrosity in the picture above. A ten pound spartan paperweight? Really? For the same price as before? You’ve got to be kidding. It comes with two in-game pieces of armor which are an exclusive elite set of armor and a flaming helmet for the spartans.

I realize that Halo isn’t a stealth game but having a ball of fire on your head just seems like it would attract the kind of attention you don’t want in an FPS game. It also includes the journal of the fictional Dr. Halsley and other documents from the Halo universe. Now, so far the word “limited” hasn’t been thrown around a whole lot but I expect that in time, consumers will be reassured that they had better buy all the copies they can find because this will be a rare item in the future.

Please folks, before you go rushing out to buy this, keep in mind what happened with the previous Legendary Edition. I’ll be honest, I want this set, the diorama looks cool and I enjoy Halo, but there is no way that I would ever spend that kind of money again based on Bungie’s word. So I’ll be buying the standard edition on release day and a few months down the line when stores are dying to get this ten pound box off of their shelves to make room for the newest Rock Band or Guitar Hero, I’ll walk in and pay them the 30 dollar asking price and walk out