Would also be interesting to see how zhe PPP changes with the amount of pieces in a set. i.e. if small sets with a tiny piece count have a higher PPP than larger sets with hundreds of pieces.
At a rough glance, that does appear to be the case.
Lego price per part over the years
21–30 of 179 posts
Re: Lego price per part over the years
#22Earlier quoted context omitted.
How many sets do you buy per year, out of curiosity? I got into Lego during the pandemic and bought around 50 sets in the past three years. Over that sample, the number of missing pieces was precisely zero.
I've also always questioned this. I have purchased about 60 sets in the past 4 years. I have a friend who has purchased well over 100 (he runs a Lego YouTube channel - he spends > $6,000 a year on Lego by his estimation). I have never had a missing piece. There have been two times when I thought I was missing a piece and then found it stuck in a bag or hidden under another piece. I've never had to write to Lego to ge…
Perhaps set size is a contributing factor? I've bought two sets over the last few years, and both of them have had a piece missing. One was 1969 pieces (no prizes for guessing which set that is!) and the other 1222 pieces.
Both occasions the pieces weren't structurally important, and were small decorative elements.
Re: Lego price per part over the years
#23Earlier quoted context omitted.
How many sets do you buy per year, out of curiosity? I got into Lego during the pandemic and bought around 50 sets in the past three years. Over that sample, the number of missing pieces was precisely zero.
My experience is in fact the opposite. I usually buy the larger sets, and have nearly always had left over smaller pieces. It made me worried the first time it happened and I spent the time tracing back through the model only to find I didn't miss anything.
They do precise weighing of bags as a quality control measure. The tiny 1x1 type pieces are more likely to get missed by the weighing so they often add an extra of those pieces to offset a potential loss that might not get noticed when weighing them.
That is why you always get two helmet visors for example when you buy a speed champion. The machine is actually just designed to give you two, because that way if it breaks and misses one, you still have one that you need and it costs them almost nothing to do that. But a missing helmet visor is easy to get missed by the quality control scale. So if you ever buy a speed champion and only get one helmet visor, it is because you lost one or the machine broke. But that's why there's an extra. They do that by design. That's just one example. You see it with magic wands in Harry Potter sets, you always get two, and a lot of sets with 1x1 pieces will always have 1-2 extras just because they are cheap to add in and more likely to get missed in their QA process which weighs the bags.
Re: Lego price per part over the years
#24> Many people quote that a set should be priced at around $0.10 per part to be worthwhile. Is this the average? This has been the average, and it's so "perfect" that it has to be that Lego has been aiming for it. They've accomplished this by having more and more detail (read: smaller pieces) in newer sets. They appear to have been forced (or trying) to jump to $0.20 per piece in some sets (e.g., https://www.lego.com/…
I have a new metric when it comes to lego kits these days. How many stickers are in the kit? And honestly it's too damn high. I have been pretty vocal to lego about this in the past and current times. If they can mass produce an uncountable amount of minifigs with detailed paint schemes; they can do the same for bricks in the set. I have a hard time believing it's nothing more than a cost cutting measure. And to add…
> How many stickers are in the kit? And honestly it's too damn high.
I know I'm going against the grain here, but I love stickers. Many of the sets my kids got were "sticker infested" but as they only re-bricked it, we just did not put the stickers on some of them and got just more fun out of it.
> Within the past 10 years I have had at least 7 kits missing pieces. And the frequency keeps growing
I never had it. Also if you do, Lego will send you any piece (that is not a minifig) no questions asked. My kid threw my glob down and one of the parts got a bad indentation and looked ugly. I got a replacement part in the mail no questions asked.
Re: Lego price per part over the years
#25> Many people quote that a set should be priced at around $0.10 per part to be worthwhile. Is this the average? This has been the average, and it's so "perfect" that it has to be that Lego has been aiming for it. They've accomplished this by having more and more detail (read: smaller pieces) in newer sets. They appear to have been forced (or trying) to jump to $0.20 per piece in some sets (e.g., https://www.lego.com/…
Yeah, but Lego inflates its part counts with lots of smaller pieces now.
The licensed sets are also a big hit. The best sets Lego makes are the creator ones, some of them I've bought multiple of so my kid could have the alt builds at the same time.
Re: Lego price per part over the years
#26Top tip. Buy used Lego cheap from ebay (or similar) and stick it in the dishwasher in a string bag. Try to avoid Lego from a smoker's house or that has been heavily gnawed. And keep the dishwasher heat low, unless you want Salvador Dali Lego.
Re: Lego price per part over the years
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
How many sets do you buy per year, out of curiosity? I got into Lego during the pandemic and bought around 50 sets in the past three years. Over that sample, the number of missing pieces was precisely zero.
I've also always questioned this. I have purchased about 60 sets in the past 4 years. I have a friend who has purchased well over 100 (he runs a Lego YouTube channel - he spends > $6,000 a year on Lego by his estimation). I have never had a missing piece. There have been two times when I thought I was missing a piece and then found it stuck in a bag or hidden under another piece. I've never had to write to Lego to ge…
I don't have children and I do all sorts of kits besides lego; with even smaller pieces. Either I have bad luck or I am careless. But you'd think with multiple decades under my belt I'd eventually find the "missing" pieces. When it's like a 4x12 left wing, or a 2x1 it starts to get suss.
Re: Lego price per part over the years
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have a new metric when it comes to lego kits these days. How many stickers are in the kit? And honestly it's too damn high. I have been pretty vocal to lego about this in the past and current times. If they can mass produce an uncountable amount of minifigs with detailed paint schemes; they can do the same for bricks in the set. I have a hard time believing it's nothing more than a cost cutting measure. And to add…
How many sets do you buy per year, out of curiosity? I got into Lego during the pandemic and bought around 50 sets in the past three years. Over that sample, the number of missing pieces was precisely zero.
Same. I keep pictures of each box I get for the family. About 130 now in the last 10 years. Zero missing pieces.
Re: Lego price per part over the years
#29Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'd like to see it per pound. I suspect (based on my feelings) that licensing is less per set than you might think, and that the price per pound has been trending up as piece size trends down.
I'd expect 2 small pieces to weigh more than 1 big one. So I'd expect you to see the weight go up faster than the part count. Not sure if that would confound or exagerate the trend.
They’re not replacing a 1x4 with 2 1x2s, they’re just designing sets with more pieces per pound (by having smaller pieces for decoration).
Re: Lego price per part over the years
#30Lego is a plastics company; they're trying to become net-zero, but, unfortunately, being a plastics company, this is extremely hard:
https://www.ft.com/content/6cad1883-f87a-471d-9688-c1a3c5a0b...