Brokering Bricks: The World of Lego Investing
1–10 of 38 posts
Re: Brokering Bricks: The World of Lego Investing
#2As a kid I adored Lego. I think fondly of all the time I spent playing with my collection and all the creations I made.
As I entered my early teen years my collection had grown considerably and it was taking up a lot of space, and I was spending less and less time with Lego. I knew a younger kid down the block who was in the peak of his Lego phase and I donated my entire collection -- around five or so 30 gallon trash bags.
A couple of years after that, when I was just shy of 17 years old, I was diagnosed with Hodgkin's Lymphoma and had to take some time off of school to go through chemotherapy. Naturally I had a lot of time on my hands. For some reason I _really_ wanted to play with my old Lego, but I didn't have any around anymore.
I found some of my favorite sets on eBay and was able to purchase them albeit for quite the markup. It was great to get to experience those older sets and fulfill that spat of nostalgia. On the other hand, it was a huge bummer. I was obviously on a limited budget and every set was 2-4x what they were originally.
I understand Lego can't possibly keep producing every set forever, but this kind of speculation described in the article seriously ruins the experience for a lot of people. It's not a simple supply and demand situation if people are hoarding sets and creating artificial scarcity.
Lego is big enough as a company to put these people out of business, they would just have to occasionally re-release older sets that are ludicrously overpriced in the second-hand market.
Lego holds a really special place in my heart as I'm sure it does for a lot of the people mentioned in the article, I'm just not sure if they are aware of the consequences of their behavior on some of the less fortunate that want to experience Lego for what it is meant for -- playing.
Re: Brokering Bricks: The World of Lego Investing
#3As a kid I adored Lego. I think fondly of all the time I spent playing with my collection and all the creations I made. As I entered my early teen years my collection had grown considerably and it was taking up a lot of space, and I was spending less and less time with Lego. I knew a younger kid down the block who was in the peak of his Lego phase and I donated my entire collection -- around five or so 30 gallon tras…
Or they can have a website where one can order a set and have a robot setup the kits from standard bricks.
This should work for the majority of sets and would require a relatively small set of custom bricks.
Re: Brokering Bricks: The World of Lego Investing
#4As a kid I adored Lego. I think fondly of all the time I spent playing with my collection and all the creations I made. As I entered my early teen years my collection had grown considerably and it was taking up a lot of space, and I was spending less and less time with Lego. I knew a younger kid down the block who was in the peak of his Lego phase and I donated my entire collection -- around five or so 30 gallon tras…
As an intermittent toy collector, I've had the same frustration with a lot of childhood favorites. But the nice thing about Lego is that it's...well, Lego. You can be just as creative and have just as much fun with new sets. If the only thing you want to do is build the same set from your childhood in exactly the same way, and then sit back and admire it, then yeah, unfortunately, you are kinda compelled to pay collector's prices for it. I'm just not sure why you'd limit yourself to that.
Re: Brokering Bricks: The World of Lego Investing
#5As a kid I adored Lego. I think fondly of all the time I spent playing with my collection and all the creations I made. As I entered my early teen years my collection had grown considerably and it was taking up a lot of space, and I was spending less and less time with Lego. I knew a younger kid down the block who was in the peak of his Lego phase and I donated my entire collection -- around five or so 30 gallon tras…
As an intermittent toy collector, I've had the same frustration with a lot of childhood favorites. But the nice thing about Lego is that it's...well, Lego. You can be just as creative and have just as much fun with new sets. If the only thing you want to do is build the same set from your childhood in exactly the same way, and then sit back and admire it, then yeah, unfortunately, you are kinda compelled to pay colle…
> You can be just as creative and have just as much fun with new sets.
You absolutely cannot. Don't get me wrong, I love Lego to this day but late 90's Technic is unmatched in it's versatility by a looooong shot.
Re: Brokering Bricks: The World of Lego Investing
#6I used to conduct arbitrage of individual Lego bricks on bricklink.com when I was in high school. Was a great way to make a couple extra bucks and amass the Legos I needed for some really big builds. Surprisingly the most lucrative investment was not sets, but rather the minifigures - discontinued minifigs, especially the Star Wars ones, could 10x in value within a year.
Re: Brokering Bricks: The World of Lego Investing
#7Lego has brought back into production a couple of extremely popular sets, but as new and improved better models. One was the Millennium Falcon UCS set, another is the Imperial Star Destroyer UCS which is the first example the article gives. The article notes the Star Destroyer sold for $280 and is now going for $1500. But it's not selling for $1500 if you look carefully at the listings. Since the new version was released the bottom has fallen out of the market for the older version. Also, the high prices tend to be for unopened sealed boxes, stored somewhere for many years. Obviously there is a very small number of those brand new old stock and with each sale and opening the number decreases. Obviously unopened sealed new sets of long out of print and highly desirable models are going to be expensive. For someone that just wants the set, desirable used sets sell for considerably less than new sealed ones. Also most sets don't really appreciate that much. The ones that do tend to be the very large sets that cost a lot, in particular modular buildings and certain Star Wars sets.
The people that speculate on these stockpile them when Lego is still selling them. Lego makes more of each set until sales slow down enough, then they discontinue the set. Most sets are sold for at least 2 years before retiring. No one is deprived of any sets because the speculators are buying new sets. There's not a limited supply of sets during the time the sets are in production. The speculation mostly goes to Lego's bottom line and profitability. Most speculators don't make money because it's hard to guess what rare set will be one of the few that becomes worth a lot more than you paid for it. For the others, you might be able to sell for what you paid, but then you may have to cover the cost of shipping a big heavy box far away, and if it arrives damaged or bent yet was advertised new, they'll file a return.
In short, this is not really a great way to get rich and these sets are not really investments.
Re: Brokering Bricks: The World of Lego Investing
#8Earlier quoted context omitted.
As an intermittent toy collector, I've had the same frustration with a lot of childhood favorites. But the nice thing about Lego is that it's...well, Lego. You can be just as creative and have just as much fun with new sets. If the only thing you want to do is build the same set from your childhood in exactly the same way, and then sit back and admire it, then yeah, unfortunately, you are kinda compelled to pay colle…
> You can be just as creative and have just as much fun with new sets. You absolutely cannot. Don't get me wrong, I love Lego to this day but late 90's Technic is unmatched in it's versatility by a looooong shot.
Current Technic is honestly pretty good, IMO.
Re: Brokering Bricks: The World of Lego Investing
#9Looking for the kraggle...
Re: Brokering Bricks: The World of Lego Investing
#10Earlier quoted context omitted.
> You can be just as creative and have just as much fun with new sets. You absolutely cannot. Don't get me wrong, I love Lego to this day but late 90's Technic is unmatched in it's versatility by a looooong shot.
Current Technic is honestly pretty good, IMO.
Yeah, it's pretty good. I love Lego, it's still undoubtedly the best toy. But it's also way worse than late 90's Technic, which really felt focused on piece versatility above all else.