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Lego price per part over the years

brickinsights.com

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Re: Lego price per part over the years

#41

Post by poulsbohemian »

the_mitsuhiko wrote: post #24
bleepblop wrote: post #9

Earlier 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 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…

I can't help but think back to my childhood in the 1980s... there were always stickers included. In the Lego idea books they always showed those same stickers in use, making the association and relevance clear. So how many is too many? I mean, I'd say the more the merrier if that gives the set another dimension of play.

Re: Lego price per part over the years

#42

Post by gmueckl »

One thing that is not captured accurately in a simple price over parts count computation is the fact that parts complexity is wildly different between shapes. There's a huge difference between a 1x1 plate and a Technic baseplate with holes pointing in every direction, to pick extreme examples.

I believe that even factoring in the extra handling costs and margins, the prices on Pick a Brick give a decent approximation of the actual price span ($2.00 per piece).

Re: Lego price per part over the years

#43

Post by bleepblop »

the_mitsuhiko wrote: post #39
bleepblop wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am fully aware of the customer service side of lego. That's why I still use their stuff. But I suppose that is where our agreement will lie. Knowing what they are capable of and where they are now is noticeable.

I don't know. It very much depends on what you are into. I feel like a lot of the stuff that Lego does got way better in recent years. For instance the manuals in the app are a step above and beyond of where they were, and the build together element means that my kids are playing together and rebuilding old sets.

I am totally on the same page with you. It definitely boils down to what are you doing. There are a ton of cool pieces these days that would've been a pipe dream when we were kids. And lego's MO has always been imagination and creativity. I feel like the addition of stickers in essence sort of rules out the variable, but forces the builder to use it if they are following the kit by the book. Where as with a printed brick the person gets to choose whether they use it or not.

It's really splitting hairs at that point, but ascetically speaking it doesn't fit their ethos.

Re: Lego price per part over the years

#44

Post by sxp »

Is it just me or does the data aspect of the site feel horribly designed? E.g, the main graph is hard to read since most of the data points are in the $0.10/part range but the graph's y-axis is overwhelmed by the right side with it's $3.11/part train set. And if I click on that, https://brickinsights.com/sets/categories/26 shows 4 data points and it's overwhelmed by a single outlier from 1991. And the time-sequence chart near the bottom uses a line graph rather than a scatterplot which overwhelms the useful data.

A better graph would be a time-sequence scatterplot of price/part on a log scale like https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/5oanki/leg...

Re: Lego price per part over the years

#45

Post by robertlagrant »

Larrikin wrote: post #17
breuleux wrote: post #11

Earlier 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.

> and have nearly always had left over smaller pieces

Almost every Lego set I've ever owned (going back 30+ years to when I used to get Lego) and now my son's Lego recently have all had at least one leftover piece.

Re: Lego price per part over the years

#46

Post by yownie »

Larrikin wrote: post #17
breuleux wrote: post #11

Earlier 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.

you and bleepblop should probably just correspond more often

Re: Lego price per part over the years

#47

Post by ryukoposting »

I made a script last year that scraped LEGO pricing data from their website. Besides finding out that the Bugatti Bolide Technic set is a pretty good deal as a parts bag, I found that there's only a weak correlation between set size and PPP. The Dots sets throw a wrench in things, of course, and large Technic sets often have expensive electronic and pneumatic parts that must be considered.

My conclusion was that PPP is useful as a bargain-hunting tool, but not as a model for broad price analysis.

Here's that for anyone interested:

https://old.reddit.com/r/lego/comments/1328f52/detailed_lego...

Re: Lego price per part over the years

#48

Post by thomastjeffery »

jacurtis wrote: post #18
breuleux wrote: post #11

Earlier 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 bet it's more likely that a given Lego set that is missing pieces was produced, packaged, shipped, and sold, nearby other piece-missing sets.

In other words, I would not expect the distribution of Lego sets that are missing pieces to be evenly or randomly distributed.

Re: Lego price per part over the years

#49

Post by jerrysievert »

chomp wrote: post #15
yalok wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

exactly, that's been my concern as well - more and more parts now are very specialized and hard to reuse in other projects. Makes me sad for the kids - this limits creativity...

There’s actually less specialized parts these days, that’s what put Lego in trouble in the 90s, I think what GP commenter was referring to is a ton of the studs and cylinders and 1x1 diagonal parts that Lego includes, that are “fluff”. These parts are extremely cheap to produce, so you may have data that looks like price per part is flat, but in reality that’s because more of your sets are now from cheaper detailing…

having collected through the 90's, I can attest that there are a lot less specialty parts now, but in recent sets that number appears to be growing again. almost every fairly large set I've purchased in the last 2 years have had 10-12 new-to-me parts in it, and the other sets continue to include those same parts as well.

mostly, they've been pieces to make some change for SNOT, but there seem to be so many of them now that it feels like we're going back to that 90's mentality.

some of those sets:

    * batman shadow box (with my first ever missing piece!)
    * dune ornithopter (great build)
    * loop rollercoaster (not counting those loop tracks)
    * orient express (my least favorite build in the last few years)

Re: Lego price per part over the years

#50

Post by mc32 »

bleepblop wrote: post #9
bombcar wrote: post #4

> 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…

In my experience they tend to add extras for the smallest pieces and have never missed a piece.
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